“You’re such a cheapskate.”

“Why are you so cheap?”

“What a cheap-ass!”

How many times have you said, heard, or received the biting sting of one of these zingers?

I have been called a “cheapskate” or less appealing synonym in an insulting way a number of times. And most of those times it resulted in me wanting to do a flying elbow drop from the top of a kitchen table onto that person’s temple.

Sadly, Americans have been conditioned to throw one of these verbal jabs when someone they are spending time with doesn’t do what they want them to do, when that something involves spending money in a wasteful manner.

Visions of Scrooge McDuck diving into a pile of gold start popping up in people’s heads. “This cheapskate must be absolutely miserable! And how dare they make me second guess my wastefulness?!”

So the jabs start flying…

Don’t want to fly half way across the country to a golf resort when there are 20 courses in a 15 mile radius? “Cheapskate!”

Don’t want to pay $75 for floor seats to catch that 80′s hair band you loved 20 years ago? “Cheap-ass!”

No cable TV? “You’re so cheap!”

Don’t want to go out and pay $5 per watered down pint when you have an awesome homebrew in the fridge? “You cheap bastard!”

Is there Even Such a thing as a Cheapskate?

The irony is… there really is rarely a TRUE “cheapskate”, in the literal definition of the word. When might you actually be a cheapskate?

• If you don’t patch a hole in the roof that needs patching because you don’t want to spend the money you have to do so, you’re a cheapskate.
• If your electricity gets shut off because it’s too painful to send the electric company $30, you’re a cheap-ass.
• If you get all your condiments for home from fast food restaurants, you’re cheap.
• If you don’t eat anything but WonderBread and Jif in order to save money… probably a cheap bastard.

But how many so called “cheapskates” actually fit these examples versus the former? Very few.

People are only “cheap” (I prefer “frugal”, “resourceful”, or just “smart”) in our country if they have priorities, values, and goals that they place higher than the $1,000 round of golf, $75 nostalgia, or $5 beer.

And the sad thing about it is that 75%+ of those who use the derogatory phrases actually believe it. And many who are on the receiving end start to believe it and get down on themselves, and even start giving in to the wastefulness.

Occasionally, very occasionally, the term is used in an endearing way with no passive aggressiveness or insult intended. But that is rare.

Death to the Cheapskate Phrase

So, I’m declaring death to the cheapskate phrase. Here’s how you can help make it happen:

• If you ever get the urge to say it to another, bite your tongue and have understanding of their situation and values. Then complement them on how smart they are and how much more you’ll enjoy hanging out with them when you both retire early.
• If you ever get called a cheapskate in an insulting way, realize that the person calling you it is just kind of a dick, and don’t give in to the peer pressure to waste your money.
• If they call you it again, say, “I’m not cheap, I’m just smarter with my money than you are.” Then seriously consider whether you want that friendship and the awkward peer pressure it will continue to present to go on. Who wants to be friends with a wasteful jerk anyways?
• If they call you it again after that, say, “Prepare yourself for the flying atomic elbow drop.”

However, you can still reserve full right to pridefully call yourself a cheapskate.

Death to the Cheapskate is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.

You’ll either be super interested in this, or you’ll quickly stop reading. So, here we go…

20somethingfinance has provided a decent little second income stream for me.

How do I make that income?

Ads.

I wanted to take a time-out post to offer full transparency into how this site makes money and the ethics behind blog advertising.

Before I get in to some of those ethical matters and my personal advertising policies, I want to first give you a primer of the different kinds of web ads out there…

There are four types of ads on the web:

1. Contextually Matched: these are generally the banner (image) or text ads you see on sites. Most personal finance blogs use Google AdSense. These ads contextually are matched out to the content of the web page. So if I write an article about a Toyota Prius, for example, the reader would likely see a Toyota, local Toyota dealer, or even competing automaker ads. Kind of like magic. If the ad is relevant to you and you click on it, I make money. Other times, advertisers opt to have their ad show on a cost-per-impression (view) basis, instead of click.

Most of the times, these ads are spot on with their targeting. Sometimes they are not. For example, I could write up a criticism of a company like Comcast (which I’ve done multiple times), and in those very same scathing reviews, you could see Comcast ads. Contextual ad matching is smart, but it’s not THAT smart. Publishers have little control over who’s ad shows. We can exclude certain advertisers and categories of advertisers, but we can’t say whose ad shows where.

2. Affiliate Ads: Instead of a pay-per-click or impression basis, affiliate advertising is based on a cost-per-signup or cost-per-purchase model. Here, publishers have full control of which advertisers ads show and where. Advertisers also like it because they only have to pay if someone actually signs up for their product or service versus paying for a click that might not generate any business for them.

3. Paid Links: This is when an advertiser pays a blog/website to include a link to their website with the purpose of manipulating search engine rankings.

4. Paid Reviews (sponsored posts): This is where an advertiser pays a website to write a review on them.

The Ethics Behind Web Advertising & my Personal Policy:

Diving in to the ethics is probably going to piss off a lot of bloggers, but oh well. Of the four ad methods I just highlighted, I use the first two. I’ll go into more detail…

1. Contextually Matched: With contextual ads, we talked about a lack of control. We can’t control whose ads show, but we CAN control whose ads don’t show. We can exclude both specific advertisers and categories of advertisers.

The ethics come down to what advertisers ads you are allowing. Even though they might be willing to pay a boatload to advertise on my site, I have excluded high-paying but ethically questionable financial categories like gambling, get rich quick, and payday loans because they don’t have any place on any personal finance blog that is worth anything. I have also excluded all “sensitive” categories like politics, religion, sexual-related, etc. No advertisers in these categories are allowed to advertise here.

Beyond that, I have also excluded 219 specific advertisers (constantly growing) from showing their ads on 20somethingfinance, because I think they offer little value to my readers. I can’t catch all the bad ones, however, so if you see any junk websites being advertised, let me know the URL.

2. Affiliate: The second type of ad I use is affiliate ads. With affiliate ads, the blogger has complete control over which advertisers they promote, as we discussed, and I am compensated on a signup or purchase.

The ethics of affiliate advertising comes down to three things: the quality of the recommendation, frequency of promotions, and transparency involved.

As far as quality, fortunately, most of the world’s best companies have an affiliate advertising programs. This makes it easy for me to find the phone, credit card, online bank, or investment account that I use or have heard great things about and then recommend them to my readers. 8 out of the 10 products or services I recommend on this site I use or have used myself and have no hesitation in recommending them to readers because I think they can save or make the reader money.

The other 2 out of 10 I have not personally used because it was not directly applicable to my situation, but I get asked for my recommendation all the time and make recommendations because I am familiar with the company, believe in their offering’s value proposition, and/or heard great things from other readers. Some of these promotions are exclusive to affiliate publisher partners, which makes them even more useful for readers.

You’ll see an upcoming promotion shortly from Chase that could help readers who have credit card debt, for example.

My mention of affiliate advertisers is not all “kittens and lollipops” either (is that a phrase?). You’ll find numerous occasions where I have blasted affiliate partners because they have made moves that are not customer friendly – ETrade, Lifelock, Amazon, Netflix, Comcast (search for the dozens of posts), and Virgin Mobile, to name a few – despite the financial repercussions of doing so. I’ve also recommended dozens of companies for which I have no affiliate relationship at all. I try to stay fair and balanced.

Bottom line: an affiliate promotion has to help my readers. I have a very guilty conscious, which you probably have noticed if you have read any of my environmental related posts. Therefore, I exercise extreme caution and could not live with myself if I knowingly promoted a junk offer for my own financial benefit.

A stream of constant promotions is not good for readers either. To address that, you’ll find that only about 5% or so of the posts on this site are of the promotional variety.

The other matter is transparency. To address this, I’ve talked openly about it here in this post, on my “money saving products” page, in the site “terms of use”, in the site-wide sidebar disclaimer, and on the promoted content itself.

3. Paid Links: The goal of paid links is to improve search engine rankings. There are ethical ways to do that, but paid links are not one of them one of them. The search engines frown on it, and if you get caught, your site could be demoted. If you ever see a blog that has odd text links to questionable websites, that is a paid link.

Despite thousands of offers to do so, I have never and will never put a paid link on 20somethingfinance.com. I would question the integrity of anyone who does. You would be well served to do the same.

4. Paid Reviews (sponsored posts): With paid reviews, if the review writer has tried the product/service and really likes it, a paid review can be done in an ethical way. I think this is a rarity though. More likely, the intent is for the reviewer to write a favorable review in return for getting paid to do so. At other times, the review is nothing more than a glorified paid link and the reviewer knows this. The latter two scenarios are unethical, in my opinion.

I have never done a paid review here on 20somethingfinance.com and don’t intend on doing one unless it is of the first variety and benefited readers. If that rare situation were to arise, I would notify readers that it was a paid review.

Final Thoughts…

So that’s it, in a nutshell. That’s how personal finance bloggers and I make money blogging. I will continue to aim to be balanced, transparent, and helpful with ads on 20something and challenge all of my personal finance blogger peers to do the same.

Any time you have doubts about a certain promotion or ad, please reach out to me via my social media profiles so that I can address it.

The World of Personal Finance Blog Advertising & the 20somethingfinance Advertising Policy is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.

Nothing like a good back patting by bringing it up, right? But, seriously, I felt really honored to be mentioned along with some of the personal finance heavyweights.

I also feel honored because I really respect Kiplinger as a personal finance resource. Despite taking an axe to my budget, Kiplinger is still a magazine I subscribe to and have for over 7 years. And it’s a true bargain. At $1 per monthly issue, the high quality articles from their personal finance experts have returned multiples of thousands on the actual subscription cost.

And, as a bonus, they just validated you wasting hours of your time on this blog. Now, don’t you feel better about yourself?

Which blogs (personal finance or otherwise) make your top 10?

20somethingfinance Rated Among 10 Best Personal Finance Blogs by Kiplinger is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.

But that doesn’t mean that it can’t pull off the glasses, let down the hair, show some lace, and be seductive at times (ladies/gay guys may quietly insert their male personal finance fantasy).

Yes, there are certain personal finance topics that can tempt, tease, seduce, and lure the reader into a world of financial nirvana (or maybe I’m just really messed up after four years of writing about this stuff).

As a personal finance blogger, I tend to read a ridiculous amount of personal finance content.

My Google Reader RSS feed is loaded with hundreds of personal finance articles. I often sift through these pretty quickly (I have to or I would never get any work done).

When I do so, there are certain topics, or categories of topics, that say “hey big fella, come read me”. And I often indulge.

Those topics have historically varied based on my interests at that point of time. Lately, I’ve been repeatedly seduced by the following topics:

1. financial independence: I never get tired of this topic. It’s become the driving force of 20somethingfinance. From budgeting to savings to income, everything I do with a financial focus is around financial independence.
2. bicycles: sounds goofy, right? Ever since I started biking to work, I’ve rediscovered my love for bicycles. I want to start working on and restoring bikes when I have the time available.
3. credit card rewards: my wife and I have made over $1,000 in the past year on credit card signup promotions (I should probably write about this). I love a good credit card, bank, or investment broker sign-up offer.
4. economics & personal finance: if you hadn’t noticed, I’m very interested in how the economy works on a macro level and how that impacts our lives on a micro level. We’re entering different times, and I’m excited about it.
5. dividends/bonds: I haven’t written about dividends and bonds at all here because I don’t feel like I have a strong enough background on them yet. But privately, it’s an area where I have been devouring content and building knowledge. How can I maximize my fixed investment income without taking on too much risk so that I can’t sleep at night? This one tugs at me.
6. re-purposing/multi-purposing/de-cluttering: I’ve been in the midst of a multi-year battle with clutter. I’m slowly winning, but it has taken a lot of time and effort. Any article that can teach me of a new way to cut the amount of stuff I own by re-purposing or using an item for multiple uses is great.
7. low-cost travel: I know about couch surfing and a few other sites, but I’m constantly amazed by people who travel (with kids no less) full-time and spend less than most people do living at home. I would love to be able to do this at some point.
8. simplifying life & re-focusing: this is closely tied to de-cluttering, but it goes beyond “stuff”, into the digital, and mental realm. Life has become too cluttered, in many ways and if you aren’t looking for ways to simplify and re-focus you’re probably wasting your time on a lot of things that you shouldn’t be.
9. energy efficiency: from fuel efficiency to saving on electricity and water, I have been a bit obsessive about this topic.
10. re-skilling: I have a good amount of disdain for how dependent we, as human beings, have become on technology, gadgets, and other people to do our work for us. Learning how to garden, auto maintenance, cook, fix a bike, build a piece of furniture, fix up a home, or even fix a plumbing problem on my own are things I’ve been interested in.
11. income diversification: having only one source of income is usually bad news unless you have vast sums of wealth saved. I’m interested in dividends, bonds, business ventures, side income, and generating passive income.

If you like these topics, you’re in the right place (enter shameless plug to subscribe to my free email, RSS, Facebook, Twitter, or Google+ feed).

Some of these topics I have not discussed little here on 20somethingfinance thus far. Others, you’re probably getting a bit sick of. But that doesn’t mean I’ll be stopping. =)

With the posts I write, I try to have a healthy mix of:

• stuff that I am crazy passionate about or interested in.
• stuff that is meant to help you.
• stuff that is fun to discuss and share.

If I can combine two or all three in one post? Even better.

And I’m very interested in the last two bullet points. Which brings me to the question of the day:

What are your favorite/sexiest personal finance related topics at the moment to read about and discuss? And why?

What are your Favorite (& the Sexiest) Personal Finance Topics to Read & Discuss? is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.

The accessibility of information is so prevalent that you can find an answer to just about any question with a tiny bit of time and effort.

We (humans) did not have access to any information you couldn’t find in a textbook or learn from a scholar/elder up until the last few of millions of years OF HUMAN KIND (this isn’t news, but when I let it sink in for a moment, it is profoundly amazing).

The Internet was not widely adopted until the late 90′s, and the quality of information that was accessible really didn’t pick up until the second half of the last decade (2006-2007′ish).

You could even argue that for older folk who didn’t grow up with or go to school with the internet, it wasn’t until the past 2 years or so that it was no longer socially acceptable to use the “I don’t like this new technology stuff and don’t know how to use a computer” free pass.

Eventually, the Internet has sucked in just about everyone. When my parents and my wife’s parents started emailing me links to website content, I knew we had reached a new era.

Which brings me back to my original point – you, me, everyone – now that we have the power of the world’s collective knowledge base at our finger tips from the comfort of our own homes – we no longer have an excuse to be uneducated about personal finance, consumer purchases and rights, human rights, decisions that impact the environment, how to do things on your own, the food you eat, political deceit and inaction, animal rights, unruly governments, or other things that impact you, your community, and the world you live in.

We can no longer play the dumb card.

We can, however, still play the following cards:

• lazy
• gullible
• undisciplined
• apathetic
• stubborn
• evil

But who wants to play one of those? Not exactly the most desirable of societal labels to accept.

It was so much easier to just be endearingly, even lovably dumb.

I, for one, welcome the accountability and responsibility that comes with the death of the dumb card.

Do you?

Accessibility of Information & the Death of the Dumb Card is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.

If you look at the timeline of human history, there are certain inventions that have allowed the human population to explode and expand, which has also driven economic activity to increasingly new heights.

The most powerful of these inventions and their impact on human society, in approximate chronological order (please spare the historian corrections) would be:

• hunting devices: instead of being hunted, we became the hunter. Small game became big game. We could now feed more bodies
• fire: heat supplied from saved untold lives from hypothermia and cold weather conditions, allowing human population to expand geographically
  
• shelter: propagated health and population growth
• clothing: allowed humans to live in all climates on the planet
• agriculture: storing food allowed humans to avoid famine and population to explode by expanding food supply and diversification
• use of domesticated animals for transportation, agricultural work, and food consumption: food and transport improvements
• bartering: trade was the first economic activity and it still exists to this day
• monetary exchange: increased commerce activity previously limited by physical goods
• boats: permitted inter-continental trade and population expansion
• the furnace/stove: permitted geo-location expansion to the poles
• banks: personal economic safety and debt to grease the economic engine
• modern water purification: allowed population to explode further
• modern four-walled shelter: drove significant exchange of wealth in building and filling the homes
• printing press: education and advertising to drive commerce
• steam, electric, and fuel-engines: transportation
• the use cheap fossil fuels to power engines: powered engines and transport of people and commerce
• electricity: powered machines, appliances, and light
• light bulb: now humans could work beyond day light hours
• telegraph: increased the speed of delivery of communication
• trains: moved huge/heavy materials quickly
• refrigerators: permitted the storage of perishable food
• phones: rapid communication by everyone
• the 40-hour workweek standard: humans jumped from 2 to 8 hours of work per day over time, drastically increasing economic output
• automobiles: revolutionized travel and geo-location
• the postal service: a service to transport goods
• highway system: permitted fast, simple nation-wide transport of people/goods
• planes: fast inter-continental travel
• radio: more advertising to drive commerce
• credit cards: improved ease of transactions
• television: even more advertising to drive commerce
• air conditioning: geo-location expansion to the equator (its impact is very underrated – how different would population patterns in the U.S. be without it?)
• cheap global labor: why make stuff at home when you can pay someone across the sea 10% of the wages?
• computers: storage of data without physical constraint
• cell phones: rapid mobile communication
• the internet: cheap transfer of data and information to everyone. Enhanced commerce activity

Did I miss anything?

Each of these inventions were the result of humans becoming more clever about how they could manipulate the physical world to the benefit of themselves and/or their fellow human beings. Each solved what their inventors deemed to be a human “problem”. The more recent the invention, the more refined the problem solved.

Over the millions of years of human history, most of these inventions came within the last 200 years. Each has created a sizable jump in economic activity. The inventions that have come within the last 100 years have driven the overall value of an increasingly complex global economy, jobs, and personal wealth.

Like a giant machine that needs the addition of new parts to mask a problem or continue running, the addition of each new cog has resulted in an increasingly delicate inter-dependent system.

A few examples of these dependencies include:

• the economy is dependent on the aforementioned inventions working
• the economy and wealth not deteriorating from inflation is dependent on these inventions being powered by cheap fossil fuels
• jobs are dependent on the continued growth of the economy
• humans are dependent on jobs to buy stuff
• the economy is dependent on government and people using debt to pay for stuff they don’t need
• debtors are dependent on creditors offering credit
• the economy is dependent on people buying stuff
• the economy is dependent on people paying off their debts
• the economy is dependent on cheap manufactured junk from overseas driving profit
• investment returns are dependent on the continued growth of the economy
• population growth and economic growth is dependent on the use and manipulation of resources (inventions)
• population is dependent on food production
• affordable food production is dependent on cheap fossil fuels
• growth of the economy is dependent on either: a.) new inventions to drive GDP or b.) population growth to drive GDP

But what happens when:

• the cheap fossil fuels used to power the inventions and food production become increasingly rare or run out?
• the resources used to grow the population become increasingly rare or run out?
• the population doesn’t grow or starts to decline?
• governments no longer can pay their debt?
• individuals can no longer pay their debt?
• the cheap labor overseas catches up in wage equality?
• people run out of money to buy stuff and pay off their debt obligations?
• GDP stalls or starts an unstoppable decline?
• there are no more significant inventions to drive the economy?
• there are just too many of us to take responsibility, address, and fix the problems we’ve created?
• humans get tired of feeling like they are nothing but commoditized labor?

You get:

• greed
• inflation
• war
• disease
• famine
• unemployment
• gross income inequality
• high turnover/dissatisfaction with work
• personal debt
• government debt
• political corruption
• currency manipulation/quantitative easing
• shrinking or flat monetary wealth
• environmental degradation
• fear
• deflation
• and a slow reversion back to basic needs

Economic growth had a great run. But what more evidence do you need that we have peaked?

A new invention or two may come along to briefly lube up the economic machine, but it will only delay the inevitable decline.

You can see the trend against bigger, better, nicer, and more expensive everywhere around you. Deep down you know this. It’s partly why you are reading this very commentary right now.

Welcome to the new economy.

It’s already been here for a while. And it’s not going away.

The more extreme it gets, the more basic skills and meeting basic needs will be valued.

Three things to ask yourself:

1. Am I financially/physically/mentally/psychologically/spiritually in position to succeed against the challenges the new economy will throw at me?
2. Do I have the right skills to fall back on today, 5 years from now, 10 years from now, or even 20 years from now?
3. If I don’t have #1 or #2, what is it going to take to get me there?

We all have some work to do.

Believe it or not, I’m kind of looking forward to it.

Related Posts:

• Consumers Need a 12-Step Program too
• Americans are Overworked
• 5 Ways to Recession Proof Yourself
• Did the Internet Destroy the American Economy?
• Forget Wall St., Occupy Should go to DC

The Quick Rise & Inevitable Decline of the Modern Economy is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.

So for this year, why don’t we focus on what we actually accomplished for the 2011 year and throw out some ideas for 2012.

Looking back on last year, I’m most proud of three accomplishments:

1. I was able to push my personal savings rate above 85%. It was not a goal that I set out to achieve, rather, it was a product of continuously pushing to lower my expenses and increase my income. I didn’t set out to achieve this, but it happened, due to a lot of hard work and some luck.
2. The wife and I put ourselves in the position financially that she was able to start attending nursing school without accruing any student loan debt. At the end of 2012, she’ll graduate debt free, will make a higher income, and start a new career with a low unemployment rate that she is excited about. Win, win, win.
3. The wife and I sold or donated roughly half of our personal belongings. We had been meaning to get rid of clutter for a long time, but this is the year it finally came together. It’s still an ongoing process, but thus far we’ve made roughly $3,000 by selling stuff online (Craigslist, EBay, and Amazon) and through a garage sale we had over the summer. I gave a ton of stuff to charity as well. Although, loosely a financial accomplishment (I did financially benefit), it was the one personal goal that I was most passionate about this past year.

As I look forward to 2012, some areas that I want to focus on include:

• Having Less of my Savings in Cash: I have too much money in cash, not earning any return, that is eroding due to inflation. I need to change this.
• Optimize my HSA and HDHP: In the 2011 open enrollment season, I changed my health insurance elective. 2012 will be my first year with an HSA and HDHP. I want to optimize my medical expenses and invest my balance so that I can hit health insurance nirvana with 2 years. And now that I’ve thoroughly jinxed myself, I’ll pray for a little luck on this one.
• Be Ready if I Need a New Car: My wife and I share a 2000 Pontiac Grand Am. It has 190,000 miles, is burning a quart of oil every 2 weeks, and smells like gas fumes occasionally. I don’t know how much longer the engine will last. It’s on an IV now. I have been researching the cheapest new cars in the event it dies on us.

What About You?

Enough about me, I want to hear about what members of the 20somethingfinance community are proud of accomplishing and excited about looking forward so we can all share, congratulate, brainstorm, and discuss.

• What are your biggest financial successes in 2011?
• Did you set out to achieve them or did they just happen as a byproduct?
• What are your biggest goals/resolutions/focus areas for 2012?
• What personal goals are you most excited about?

Share your Biggest Financial Accomplishment of 2011 & what you’re Excited About for 2012 is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.

I created a 20somethingfinance Google+ page, but was surprised to find that you cannot add people to your circles unless they add you first. Bummer!

So I decided to instead focus on my own personal Google+ profile. Thus far, you’ll find pictures of me, my dog, my wife, a mystery animal, and my first few posts. Most 20somethingfinance Google+ content will be hosted here.

I am looking forward to trying out some new things on Google+ that you won’t be able to find here, on Facebook, or elsewhere. This will include original content (in the form of short and sweet personal finance tips), hangouts, and commenting discussions from 20somethingfinance posts. I like the idea of seeing a REAL face and a REAL name behind a comment. I am hoping it encourages genuine interactions and discourages negative trolling.

To give it a test run, I will disable the comments on this post, and as a follow up discussion on Google+, please share any other ideas you have on Google+ and what you’d like to see. And if you add me to a circle of yours, I’ll do my best to add you back. And if you don’t remember how to get there, just click on the little G+ icon you’ll find all over the blog.

Or just click on the big Google+ logo on the sidebar

If you haven’t yet done so, you can also subscribe to the 20SomethingFinance Facebook page, follow me on Twitter, or subscribe to get new posts via email or RSS.

I’m on Google Plus! Let’s Circle it Up is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.

It’s a complicated world out there and we are bombarded with information on a daily basis. When presented with advice or solutions that make our lives easier, we latch on. As a result, cliche advice that sounds good on the surface can transform into cultural memes. If heard enough times from numerous peers and the media, those memes become blindly accepted as truths.

Some of these cliches are deftly true, but others can be particularly dangerous when interpreted the wrong way. They can be universally strong, oversimplified and misleading, or just flat out wrong at times.

So, I’ve decided to start a series of posts break down and analyze some of the most popular personal finance cliches to determine if they are legit advice to follow or not. And then you can debate to your hearts content.

This will be the first…

“A Penny Saved is a Penny Earned.”

“A penny saved is a penny earned” is used to describe a scenario when a consumer has or will realize the benefit of a discount, promotion, or sale when making a purchase. It attempts to equate the act of saving money to having earned that money. And who doesn’t like earning money? So where is the debate?!

There is only one problem – as already stated, the phrase is used in the context of saving money on a purchase. With the exception of offsetting the future cost of needs, the reality is that you are saving nothing when you are spending money. In fact, you’re doing the opposite.

I fear that many blindly apply this advice as a justification for making purchases on wanted items that are on sale. And that’s dangerous.

While you chew on that, consider that the origin of this cliche is through a misquotation of a statement made in Ben Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack, which Franklin began writing in 1733. The original phrase was: “A penny saved is twopence dear. A pin a day’s a groat a year.”

A twopence was a silver coin used in Britain in that era. A pin and a groat? Consider it a history class homework lesson.

So if we break down Franklin’s original statement, he seems to simply be making a currency comparison between a penny and the British twopence. Yet, the remodeled cliche has lived on and morphed into personal finance advice with a different meaning that everyone has heard and repeated.

There is no doubt that it is good to save money – but only in the context that it is money you would have needed to spend. Just remember that the next time you go to grab your groat.

Verdict? While it may seem rather innocent on the surface, this cliche can be misleading, and potentially harmful if transformed into purchasing motiviation.

Alternative Advice? “A penny saved is a penny saved. A penny earned is a penny earned. A penny spent is a penny spent.”

Related Posts:

• How to Calculate your Personal Savings Rate
• Personal Savings Rate by Country
• Your Personal Savings Rate Poll Results
• Money Saving Products I Use

Good or Bad Personal Finance Cliche? “A Penny Saved is a Penny Earned” is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.

This past Friday a number of major retailers – including Kohl’s, Best Buy, Target, and Macy’s – all decided that they were going to push their open times to midnight. A few retailers – Toys R Us and Sears – took it a step further and decided to open at 9 PM on Thanksgiving night. WalMart opened at 10 PM. An entire mall by my in-laws opened at 9 PM on Thanksgiving. Madness!!

The masses liked it though, apparently. Black Friday sales rose 6.6% to the highest mark EVER – with a reported $11.4 billion being spent in one day.

The Race to the Bottom

Yes, the precedent has now been set for all retailers to open their doors at 9 PM or midnight on Thanksgiving – ironically, the national holiday that is supposed to be about getting together with loved ones and giving thanks for what you have in life.

As if recent Black Friday mob tramplings, lootings, and pepper sprayings weren’t enough of a race to the bottom for consumers, retailers have now raised the bar even higher. Who cares that they may be separating their employees from their families on a holiday? We can all benefit by getting 30% off a pair of shoes that were overpriced by 25%!

I’ve never been a fan of Black Friday and have not participated in years. I find shopping to be flat out exhausting on its own. Add in thousands of zombie-like shoppers to the mix, no parking spots, gimmicky sales on artificially marked-up items, and depleted inventories, and it’s downright hell to me.

The ethics behind this move by big box retailers has sealed the deal that you will never find me shopping on Black Friday again.

Consumers Feed the Corporate Greed Machine

In taking the bait to go shopping at 9 PM in Thanksgiving, you support the cultural race to the bottom that prioritizes shopping over family. And in doing so, you take those workers away from their families on a holiday. What’s next, a 9 AM Thanksgiving morning open? Why not just replace Thanksgiving with Black Thursday?

Nope. Not doing it. And to send a big “Screw you!” message to the retailers who subscribe to this madness, I decided to put together a list of miserable, yet common evils that we would all rather put off but could be doing that would be better than shopping at your store on Black Friday (or any time).

25 Awful Things that are Still Better than Shopping at a Big Box Retailer Store on Black Friday

1. I’d rather clean out that gunk that gathers underneath and behind a refrigerator than shop at your store.
2. I’d rather give my fully clawed psychotic cat who hates water a bath than shop at your store.
3. I’d rather go to an awkward holiday party and make small talk with people I don’t know and will never talk to again than shop at your store.
4. I’d rather listen to a Justin Bieber album than shop at your store.
5. I’d rather watch a romantic movie with my wife than shop at your store.
6. I’d rather de-frost a freezer than shop at your store.
7. I’d rather pull 36 beer bottles that weren’t properly rinsed from a plastic garbage bag to recycle than shop at your store.
8. I’d rather get a planter’s wart burned off than shop at your store.
9. I’d rather ask my neighbor for salt than shop at your store.
10. I’d rather go to the DMV and wait in line for an hour than shop at your store.
11. I’d rather get solicited by a Jehovah’s Witness than shop at your store.
12. I’d rather clean out the mucky leaf piles that have gathered in my gutters than shop at your store.
13. I’d rather get a cavity filled than shop at your store.
14. I’d rather get a flu shot than shop at your store.
15. I’d rather eat two pounds of meatloaf and suffer the after-effects than shop at your store. (I’m vegetarian)
16. I’d rather have my annual performance review than shop at your store.
17. I’d rather given a co-worker feedback for their performance review than shop at your store.
18. I’d rather scrape off that unidentified, burned-to-hell lump of food at the bottom of my oven than shop at your store.
19. I’d rather collect my dog’s poop from the backyard after 2 months of neglecting to do so than shop at your store.
20. I’d rather watch Friend’s re-runs than shop at your store.
21. I’d rather read a newspaper that has been soaking in the rain for hours than shop at your store.
22. I’d rather unclog a toilet than shop at your store.
23. I’d rather fill out a medical history form for the 20th time while waiting in a doctor office waiting room than shop at your store.
24. I’d rather have a flat tire than shop at your store.
25. I’d rather negotiate with Comcast than shop at your store.

OK…. maybe not the last one…

The point being… if you’d rather do these miserable things, then imagine the thousands of fun or enjoyable things you could be doing than supporting these big box retailers.

Why let the fun stop here? What awful things would you rather do than shop on Black Friday? Share your list in the comments and forward to your friends so they can share theirs! Let’s send the message to retail execs that we won’t participate in feeding the consumer disease that plagues our country.

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25 Awful Things that Still Beat Shopping on Black Friday is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.