We couldn’t decide between 2 captions this week:
a) She never took a toothbrush on tour, and things worked out just fine.
b) Who says British women are unattractive?

An unscheduled feature in which we fill you in on what’s happening with other personal finance blogs. Because after all, Control Your Cash doesn’t have a monopoly on good advice:

Bible Money Matters

The author is going to a blog conference this week. Because he writes his blog for other bloggers, rather than a general audience, it’s filled with minutiae of interest only to that tiny little subgroup. Imagine how much more popular Bill Simmons would be if he wrote about paragraph spacing and interview techniques in every column. Guess we’ll never find out.

That’s actually not fair. And we strive to be fair. Bible Money Matters has handy tips for anyone traveling to any kind of conference. Or traveling, period. Or leaving the house:

Photo ID: Planning on getting drinks at the conference after party, or flying? You’ll need a photo ID of some sort.

Bet you thought tooth decay was an inevitable part of traveling, didn’t you? Well, it turns out that it isn’t:

Assorted toiletries: Don’t forget all your assorted toiletries from deodorant and shampoo, to a toothbrush and toothpaste.

When other bloggers are reminding you to remember your toothpaste and toothbrush, there’s not much we can add. “Wipe”, e.g.

The author also suggests that you take your phone, just in case you were dead set on leaving it at home. Like most people do when they travel.

The Simple Dollar

Well, here’s the opening sentence, formulated for the Alpha Centaurians whom the site’s author usually writes for. It’s a good refresher for any extraterrestrials, really, who aren’t familiar with human living customs:

In most American family homes, you’ll find one or two adults, sometimes paired with some number of children.

Some of these homes also feature pets, such as a dog or cat, or multiple dogs or cats, or a single dog and multiple cats, or a single cat and multiple dogs, but now we’re getting into advanced-level course work.

This post features the most toothless word in English, “consider”. As in, “consider quitting smoking to reduce your risk of lung cancer.” No, just freaking do it. Or don’t do it, whatever. But to tell people to “consider” doing something is the equivalent of telling them nothing at all.

To summarize, the Hamm-fisted (hey-oh!) author suggests that you “consider an alternative living situation” to save money on housing expenses. Whereas a normal person would say “find a roommate”, “consider an alternative living situation” adds that spunk of impenetrability.

But wait, he’s not done. The concluding tip in this post?

construct a second home on your land. 

Yes! A months-long full-time project that will require you to hire a contractor and laborers! Why doesn’t every person who’s short on funds try this? Heck, we should all be rich.

The point is that none of this garbage – pack a toothbrush, build a house on the house-sized lot that you already own but never thought about improving – is actionable, worthwhile, or anything other than a waste of both the author’s and the readers’ time.

Here’s some advice:

• If you live in Washington, Idaho, Nevada, California, or Oregon, buy your groceries at WinCo. Good God. Their prices make Walmart look like Whole Foods.
• You have an emergency fund? What the hell for? Take that money and put it in a 401(k). Buy gold with it. Buy BHP Billiton stock with it (3½% dividend yield, trading at near a 52-week low, ridiculously profitable.) That emergency will never come. Then again, there’s every possibility that it’s happening right now and you’re too blindly optimistic to even notice.
• Change your freaking oil. Buy a permanent air filter, too. You can install it in 30 seconds, without tools. A $7 AutoZone battery tester will help out too, unless you want to run the risk of your battery dying in traffic and you have your heart set on paying a premium to get it fixed then and there.
• Buy a house. The big quinella of low interest rates and low home prices won’t last forever. It’s lasted for years, but we’ve reached the nadir. The housing market is having a sale. Everything must go. Make someone an offer. Unless you have a compelling professional reason for renting, stop giving 100% of your dwelling expenses to a big fat rich landlord. (Note: The CYC principals are neither big nor fat.)
• Which brings up another point. The proverbial ounce of prevention is physical activity. You know how some old people can fill out a pair of shorts without completely nauseating everyone around them, while others have those thick purple ankles and feet that terminate in toenails you could use to harvest crops with? What do you think those folks were doing 40 years ago? The former were taking the stairs and lifting weights. The latter were watching All My Children with one hand in a bowl of dry Froot Loops. (Note: Example cited may or may not be drawn from author’s real family life.)
• Spend an hour or two running the numbers before spending 4 years in college. Chances are, your university education will not pay off. For it to be a worthwhile investment, you need to major in something not meaningless. If the very idea of running said numbers intimidates you to the point where you don’t want to do it, that’s a pretty good indication that anything you’d feel comfortable majoring in is not going to be worth studying.

Personal finance is as simple or as complex as you want it to be. As a general rule, the more complex it is (and the more you rationalize), the worse off you’ll be.