Money Crashers: 2 new articles

Here's a quick update on my two latest articles for Money Crashers. The first is very much in an  ecofrugal vein: a list of ideas for eco-friendly small businesses. If you're thinking of starting a side business, making it a green business could help you stand out from the crowd. More than one-third of all consumers, especially younger ones, are willing to pay around 25% more for green products and services. So you can  both boost your profits and help the earth — a win-win.

20 Green Small Business Ideas for Eco-Friendly Entrepreneurs

The other is less ecofrugal, but still useful: a list of the most common credit card scams of 2022. To protect your money, learn to recognize these cons and stay one step ahead of the scammers.

9 Credit Card Scams and Frauds to Watch Out For

Money Crashers: Gender Pay Gap – Negative Effects of Inequality & How to Fix Wages

Just a quick update here: my article on the gender wage gap has now been split into two. The first one, at the original URL, covers the size of the pay gap and what causes it. This new one explains why the pay gap is a problem for society and what can be done to fix it.

Gender Pay Gap – Negative Effects of Inequality & How to Fix Wages 

 

 

Money Crashers: COBRA Health Insurance Guide

Just a quick update here to let you know about my latest Money Crashers article. It's about COBRA, which I kind of doubt is all that useful for anyone these days, since an ACA marketplace health plan — even without subsidies — is almost always cheaper than paying for your old workplace plan without your employer's help. But there are some cases in which it could possibly be worth the money, and this article explains what they are, along with other details such as who's eligible for the program and how to enroll. Here it is:

COBRA Health Insurance Guide – Continue Coverage After Ending a Job

3 new(ish) Money Crashers articles

I've got a bit of a backlog of new Money Crashers articles to tell you about here, since for some reason my work e-mail stopped sending me messages for nearly two weeks. This afternoon, I suddenly found over 40 "new" messages dating back to October 15, including several notifications about newly published pieces. They are:

1) An article on reducing winter heating costs. This is something I've struggled with personally, as I'm such a weather wimp that just turning down the thermostat from 68 to 67 left me shivering. But with winter tips and tricks like weather stripping, wearing a blanket over my clothes, using fleece sheets, drinking hot tea, doing lots of baking, and keeping a pressure-cooker space heater next to my desk, I'm managing to get by. This article can help you do the same.

How to Lower Your Heating Bills & Save Money on Winter Energy Costs

2) A piece on money-making schemes that won't make you any money. Some of them are outright scams, some are illegal, and some just don't pay diddly, but they all have one thing in common: they promise a big payoff for practically no work. In other words, they sound too good to be true, and they are.  

10 Money Making Schemes That You Should Probably Avoid

3) And lastly, a guide to digital cameras. This isn't exactly my area of expertise, since I've been using the same cheapo camera for the past ten years (except that I've somewhat switched over to my phone camera since I bought one that was reasonably easy to use), but hey, if my years at ConsumerSearch taught me anything, it was how to research a purchase. So if you're in the market for a camera, you can gain the benefit of all my skill in this area. You're welcome.

9 Best Digital Cameras to Buy for Photography in 2020

 

Money Crashers: 10 Most Satisfying & Fulfilling Jobs and Career Opportunities

Earlier this year, my editors at Money Crashers asked me to update an article on the best careers for the next decade. They left the criteria for "best" careers up to me, so I chose jobs that combined high wages, strong prospects for growth, and reasonably high ratings for job satisfaction, based on a Payscale survey data. 

Initially, they accepted this, but then one of them got back to me requesting that I add a couple of computer-related fields, including Web design and software development. When I pointed out that these fields didn't meet my criteria for job satisfaction, they decided that what we really needed was two different articles: one on jobs that are satisfying (but still pay enough to live on), and one on jobs that are lucrative. So I went back to the drawing board and rewrote the article as two articles, each with its own focus.

This piece is the first of those two: the one that focuses on job satisfaction. As a result, many of the careers on this list are not particularly lucrative; in fact, some of them just barely pay a living wage. But they're all in reasonably fast-growing fields and they all get high marks for career fulfillment from workers at Payscale and other sites. And although there are only ten jobs on the list, they cover a variety of fields and require varying amounts of education, from a high-school diploma to a graduate degree. The piece also goes into what exactly it is that makes a job satisfying in the first place — info you can use to evaluate your current job and any other you might be considering.

10 Most Satisfying & Fulfilling Jobs and Career Opportunities

 

Money Crashers: 3 new articles

In the past week, Money Crashers has popped up three articles of mine that are only tangentially related to ecofrugality. So I've decided to just cover them all in one post here, with a brief rundown of what they're about and how they could help you put, or keep, more money in your pocket. (There's also a fourth one which should be popping up shortly that's much more along ecofrugal lines. I'll give that one its own post.)

The first piece is for those who are considering going back to college as adults, but can't figure out how to afford it. It explains how many of the financial aid programs available to "traditional" (i.e., young) students are also available for adults, including grants, scholarships, loans, and 529 plans. And it explores other options adult students have that aren't available to teens, such as targeted scholarships for older students, tuition benefits from employers, credit for past work experience, and discounted college classes for senior citizens. Finally, I discuss online learning and how it could help you earn your degree at a lower cost.

How to Afford & Pay for College as an Older Adult 

The second article is for everyone who has ever struggled to stretch their money until the end of the month (which includes more than 40% of Americans, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau). These are the people who are most likely to take out costly payday loans, the dangers of which I've outlined in a previous article. In this piece, I discuss a modern alternative: apps that can give you access to the money you've already earned at work without having to wait for payday. They're not a long-term fix for an ongoing budget shortfall, but they can give you the cash you need to get by while you whip your budget into shape. 

9 Best Paycheck Advance Apps to Help You Make It to Payday

And lastly, a piece about how you can turn all that time you spend on the Internet into a money-making opportunity. I discuss a whole host of ways to earn extra cash online, from the quick and easy (picking up a few bucks' worth of cash back for your online shopping, or boosting your return from savings and investment) to the complex and lucrative (selling products, services, and content online). With these techniques, you can use the Internet as anything from a piggy bank you dip into for extra cash to your primary source of income.

5 Ways to Make Extra Money Online (on the Side)

Money Crashers: 6 Health Insurance Options If You’re Self-Employed

It's now been over 15 years since I first left my job to become a freelancer. It was an uncharacteristically daring move on my part, since freelancing meant an uncertain income and, more seriously still, no benefits — particularly health insurance. I think the only reason I had the nerve to do it when I did was that Brian and I had just become engaged, so I knew I'd soon be able to get health insurance through his job. I just had to sign up for pricey but short-lived COBRA coverage to see myself through the few months before the wedding.

Today, freelancers have a much wider array of options. Instead of having to pay through the nose for COBRA, freelancers can buy a policy on their state healthcare exchange. This is significantly cheaper even at full price, and cheaper still for those with low enough income to qualify for an ACA subsidy.

However, with Obamacare perpetually under siege, first from Congress and now from the courts, it's unclear how much longer freelancers will have this option. And even if it remains available, there's no guarantee it's the best or cheapest way to get coverage.

So if you're a freelancer, it makes sense to learn about all your options. In my latest Money Crashers article, I cover all the different ways freelancers have of finding health care coverage, including Medicaid (for low-income freelancers), Medicare (for those over 65), coverage on a family member's plan, and coverage through organizations. I also discuss the possibility of getting a part-time job that provides benefits.

6 Health Insurance Options If You’re Self-Employed

Money Crashers: How to Survive a Job Without Benefits

When I decided to quit my full-time job and become a freelancer, one thing that made it an easy call was that Brian and I had just become engaged. Within a few months, I knew, I'd be able to rely on his job for health insurance, so I wouldn't have to pony up for an individual policy—which, in the days before Obamacare subsidies, could be hugely expensive, particularly in New Jersey.

However, many Americans don't have that luxury—and their numbers are growing. According to a 2018 NPR/Marist poll, over 30% of all Americans who work full-time say their job doesn't provide health insurance. Retirement plans are even less common: 40% of full-time workers say their job doesn't provide one. And of course, all of us in the gig economy are on our own when it comes to vacation days and sick days. On the plus side, we can take time off whenever we want—we just have to go without pay to do it.

If you're in this position, my new Money Crashers article is for you. It provides info for freelancers and anyone else who doesn't get workplace benefits about how to supply your own health insurance, retirement funds, sick leave, and vacation leave. And if you're not in this position, you might want to check out the article anyway; the way the economy is changing right now, you could need this information soon.

How to Survive a Job Without Benefits: DIY Health Insurance, Retirement & Vacation

Money Crashers: 7 Things You Need to Do Now to Prepare for the Next Recession

Earlier this week, as I was looking at the traffic report for my Money Crashers articles to see which topics seemed to be the most popular with readers, I noticed something interesting: For the past several months, my story on getting help in a financial emergency received far and away more hits than any other. And that was interesting, because the article had first come out two years ago, and it certainly wasn't hugely popular at the time. But around mid-2018, it started creeping up the ranks, from 3% of all site traffic to 4%, then 5%, and now over 7%. Clearly, some time in the past year or so, more and more people have felt the need to know about this.

To me, this looked a lot like a sign that, no matter what the official jobs numbers say, there's definitely some weakness in the economy. And right around the same time, I read a New York Times editorial by Paul Krugman—who was, let us not forget, one of the only economists to see the subprime mortgage crisis coming before it hit—indicating that he thinks so too.

And so I dropped a line to my editor and suggested that the article I'd written last year on how to prepare for a recession, which they'd been sitting on for several months, probably should be published now—because if we waited much longer, it could be too late to do anyone any good.

So here it is: my take on how to weatherize your life to ride out the coming economic storm. It talks about how to:

1. Improve your employability, so you'll be less likely to lose your job and/or better equipped to find a new one
2. Develop extra income streams, which will help you get by if your income declines
3. Increase your emergency savings, so you can survive a period of unemployment if necessary
4. Reduce your expenses, so you won't have to tighten your belt in a hurry later on
5. Pay down debts, so you won't have to struggle to pay them later on
6. Increase your insurance coverage, so a disaster won't bankrupt you
7. Adjust your investments, not to make them "recession-proof" (which is neither possible nor desirable), but to make sure you're not risking more money than you can afford to lose

Read all about it here: 7 Things You Need to Do Now to Prepare for the Next Recession

Money Crashers: 9 Easy Ways to Make Some Extra Cash

Last month, as you may recall, I was quite pleased to discover that my Money Crashers article on finding missing money had already been useful to one person—my sister, who scored "a tiny little extra payday" after checking her state's unclaimed funds pool.

So I'm hoping that my latest Money Crashers piece, 9 Easy Ways to Make Some Extra Cash, will prove useful to even more folks. It covers not just one, but nine ways to put a little extra money in your pocket.

Some, like claiming missing money or claiming a sign-up bonus for a new credit card, are quick and easy ways to collect a one-time payout. Some, like getting cash back for shopping or selling ad space, are ways to pick up a few extra bucks on an ongoing basis. And some, like getting a side gig or starting a business, involve more work, but have the possibility to bring in real money—possibly even enough to take the place of your day job. The article conveniently arranges these methods from most to least complicated, so you can skip straight to the ideas that fit your schedule and your inclination.

Check it out, and if it helps you fatten your wallet a little, please let me know.

Money Crashers: The Gender Wage Gap

Last year, I wrote a piece for Money Crashers on how men and women deal with money. It discusses how men and women differ in shopping, saving, and investing habits, how they deal with debt, and their hopes and fears about money. One topic I didn't cover in this article, though, was the differences in earning between women and men. I originally intended to, but the more I looked into the subject, the more clear it became that this was a major can of worms that really needed an article all to itself.

And here that article is: The Gender Wage Gap – Do Men Really Earn More Than Women? It addresses such questions as:

• How big is the gender wage gap, really? (The answer depends on what you're measuring: data across all workers, full-time workers only, or men and women in the same field. But I can give you one spoiler: The commonly cited statistic that "women earn 70 cents for each dollar men earn" isn't right by any of these measures.)
• How does the gap vary based on factors like age, race, and location?
• How has it changed over time?
• What's behind it? Is it mostly differences in the career paths men and women choose, the hours they work, time taken off for family responsibilities, or outright sexism? (Answer: A little of all those things.)
• What effects does this gap have, not just for women, but for families that depend on their income?
• How does it affect the economy as a whole?
• And finally, what - if anything - can be done about it? (Answer: "Equal pay for equal work" isn't a solution. It will require much more complex changes to the structure of the workplace and society as a whole. But this isn't impossible; in fact, in some places, it's already happening.)

I found this article really interesting to work on. I hope you'll find it equally interesting to read.

Money Crashers: 9 Passive Income Stream Ideas

One of the things I like about working for Money Crashers is that every month I earn a traffic bonus based on how many views my articles have received. This is for all the articles of mine that are up on the site, not just the ones I've written in the past month or even the past year. It's not a huge amount, but it's the equivalent of at least a full day's pay that I get every month for work I've already done and been paid for once.

This is an example of passive income - something many financial experts describe as the key to wealth. Basically, passive income is any earnings that come into your pocket automatically, without your having to work for them every month. In most cases, you have to do some work initially to get them, like I had to work writing all those articles for Money Crashers—but once that work is done, the money just keeps rolling in. And the more passive income streams you have, the more money you can take in each month regardless of how much work you do.

I talked about one form of passive income, earnings from investments, in my article on financial independence. However, there are lots of other ways to generate passive income. You can collect rent for properties you own, royalties for books and other works you've created, or ad revenue from a blog or podcast (one of the most popular sources these days. I've never managed to make any money off this one, because my readership is just too small, and increasing it would most likely mean writing about things that are interesting to a wider audience—and of no interest to me.)

In my latest Money Crashers article, I talk about the benefits of a passive income stream, and about nine possible ways to create one. Some take a lot of work up front, like writing a successful book; others are so easy pretty much anyone can do them, like earning credit card rewards. More work up front typically yields a bigger payoff—but even a little trickle of passive income is better than none at all.

9 Passive Income Stream Ideas & Opportunities to Make Money

Money Crashers: How Much Does Your Job Really Pay?

My latest Money Crashers article was inspired largely by two pieces out of Amy Dacyczyn's Complete Tightwad Gazette (all hail the Frugal Zealot!). In the first piece, called "The Time and Money Chart," she talks about how to figure out which money-saving tasks are most worth the effort, based on how much money they save you (and how much satisfaction they provide in other ways) for each hour you spend on them. For instance, she calculates that making two homemade pizzas takes 20 minutes and costs about $2, while having two similar pizzas delivered would cost about $18 (remember, this was nearly 30 years ago). That's a savings of $16 for 20 minutes of work, or $48 per hour, making this a task that's definitely worth the time. Canning pears, by contrast, is a labor-intensive task that saves only $1 per hour of work compared to buying canned pears at the store.

One of the most interesting items in this chart appears at the bottom, where she claims that going back to work as a graphic designer would yield only $3.33 per hour. She reaches this figure by calculating that, while she could nominally earn $15 per hour, after taxes and expenses for child care, wardrobe, and transportation, her pay would be "whittled down to $5 per hour." Moreover, her nominal 40-hour week would really require 60 hours of effort counting "additional dressing and grooming time, dropping kids at a sitter's, the lost lunch hour, commuting and after-work-crash-from-exhaustion time," bringing the actual hourly wage to a mere $3.33, far below many of the other frugal tasks she does every day.

She makes the same point again in the second article, "Trend Reversal," talking about the "nationwide trend" of women dropping out of the work force to stay home with their kids. She cites a study saying that the "percentage of women under age 30 in the workforce peaked in 1989 at 75 percent" and had fallen by 3 to 4 percent by the early nineties, and speculates that this is partly because many mothers don't find it worth their while financially to work. She points to a Labor Department study showing that "about 80 percent of working mothers' incomes is absorbed by job-related expenses such as child care, clothing, transportation, and meals away from home." She also makes a point of noting that this same strategy could work for stay-at-home dads as well, but she couldn't find any data on whether their numbers were increasing.

Putting these two ideas together, I wrote a piece for Money Crashers called "How Much Does Your Job Really Pay? – Calculating Your Hourly Wage," which replaced an older article called "Quit Your Job to Save Money" (which I thought was a bit of an overstatement). The main point of the new article is that, if you're staying at a job you don't like much because you need the money, it's worth calculating how much you actually make for each hour you devote to the job, and how much you could potentially make doing something else you might like more—whether that's a different job, freelance work, or staying home with kids. For anyone who's ever wished they could afford to quit their job, it's worth a read.

Money Crashers: Labor Unions in the United States

I got the idea for my latest Money Crashers post while working on another Money Crashers article (not yet published) about the gender wage gap in America. One fact I learned while researching it was that women who belong to labor unions earn about 30% more per week than non-unionized women and are also more likely to have access to benefits. I thought that when covering this fact, it would be useful to link to an existing article about labor unions to give readers some background—and to my surprise, I found there wasn't one.

This seemed like an important omission to fix, because labor unions have played a big role in the history of the American workplace, particularly during the 20th century. Indeed, many scholars have noted that the much-lamented decline of the middle class has occurred more or less in parallel with the decline of unions. And given that frustrated workers are generally given the credit for putting Donald Trump into office, banking on his promise to "make America great again," it's worth considering how much of the past greatness they're longing for—specifically, a strong economy and abundant jobs, even for those without higher education or specialized training—could be credited to the labor movement.

So my new article delves into all those topics. I start with an ultra-basic explanation of what unions do, in terms of both collective bargaining and political activity. Then I give a quick run-down of the rise and fall of labor unions in America and contrast the state of labor unions today in the USA and the rest of the world. I explore the concrete benefits unions can offer, both for their workers and for society as a whole—along with their legitimate downsides. And finally, I explore some ideas for improving unions so they could continue to bring their benefits to society with fewer drawbacks.

It's a dense, chewy topic, but it's worth a look if you have the time.

Labor Unions in the United States – How They Work, Pros & Cons

Money Crashers: 9 Passive Income Stream Ideas

In one of my earlier Money Crashers posts, I talked about how to reach Financial Independence by saving up enough money to live on your investments alone. The basic idea here is that the interest you earn from your investments provides "passive income," which you get without having to life a finger, and if you have enough of it, you no longer need earned income, the kind you get by showing up to work every day.

However, one point I didn't really discuss in the article is that investments aren't the only way to earn passive income. You can also receive ongoing payments for work you've already done, or for rent you charge on something you own. So in my latest Money Crashers article, I talk about the various other ways there are to earn passive income, including rental properties, residual sales income, sales of creative works, various ways to monetize a website (through ads, affiliate marketing, or subscriptions), car advertising, and earning cash back when you shop.

As I note in the article, you probably won't get rich doing any of these things, at least not without putting in a lot of work up front - but having one or more of these passive income streams to add to your investment income can get you to FI faster. And in the meantime, it gives you a nice cash cushion for emergencies.

9 Passive Income Stream Ideas & Opportunities to Make Money

Money Crashers: How to Become a Freelancer

As my regular readers know, I've been a freelancer for about 12 years now. As I wrote back in 2012,  my decision to quit my job and start working as a freelancer was much easier because Brian and I were about to get married that year. His job would provide us with one steady income and a source of health insurance, which are two of the biggest things a freelance job lacks.

Also, in my case, becoming a freelancer wouldn't require any equipment or training I didn't already have. I already had writing skills, experience in publishing, and a home computer, and that was pretty much all I needed to get started. And since the development house where I worked hired freelancers on a regular basis, and I also had contacts in the publishing world, I had several potential clients already lined up. So under the circumstances, quitting was a pretty easy decision for me.

I can also honestly say it's a decision I've never really regretted. Sure, freelancing has its drawbacks: the income is uncertain and the work flow is uneven, with too much work at some times and not enough at others. Also, I have to pay my own taxes every quarter, including the dreaded self-employment tax. But for me, the upsides—no commute, no dress code, complete control over my work schedule—far outweigh the downsides.

However, I also realize that each person's situation is different. For me, the decision to work from home was an easy one, and the right one—but my experience isn't enough of a guide for other people whose circumstances may be completely different. So in my latest Money Crashers post, I've done my best to cover all you need to know about freelancing to decide whether it's a good choice for you. I talk about all the ways there are to make money working from home, the benefits and drawbacks of freelancing, and the most important skills and tools you need to succeed at the freelance life.

Check it out here: How to Become a Freelancer – Types of Work, Pros & Cons

Money Crashers: 4 Common Health Myths You Can Ignore

Myths, especially in the age of the Internet, have a way of taking on a life of their own. The website Snopes.com exists for the sole purpose of debunking Internet misinformation, yet many stories continue to spread long after Snopes has shown them to be false; I've occasionally received slightly different versions of the same inaccurate story years apart.

Most myths are pretty much harmless. A fake story about Coca-Cola buying up and discontinuing Dr Pepper, or about Prince playing a role in the creation of Air Jordan sneakers, doesn't really hurt anyone, except by wasting their time as they pass it around and read it and pass it on to others. But there's one type of myth that can actually cause physical damage: health myths. If you read and (for some reason) believe an article telling you that a diet of nothing but bacon and 14 hours a day of television is the key to longevity, taking that advice to heart could be a quick ticket to a massive coronary.

So it really annoys me when I keep reading - particularly in sources that are supposed to be reputable - health "facts" that have no basis in fact. One of the most egregious is the old one about how you need to drink 8 glasses of water every day for optimal health. As this New York Times article explains in considerable detail, this claim has "no science behind it," yet health textbooks I worked on as recently as five years ago were still repeating it.

My latest Money Crashers article covers this and three other health myths, explaining where they come from, why they're wrong, and how they could be costing you time, money, or general hassle:

• The myth that you need 8 hours of sleep a night. Actually, sleep needs vary considerably from person to person - and the average person's need appears to be closer to 7 hours rather than 8.
• The myth that eggs (or at least egg yolks) are dangerous because of the cholesterol they contain. While the American Heart Association clings stubbornly to this view, most medical studies show that cutting back on eggs doesn't improve health outcomes and may even make them worse.
• Newest of the lot, the myth that standing desks - like the one Brian build for himself to use at work - are better for your body than sitting in a chair. Although there is indeed evidence that sitting for long periods is bad for you, there's also ample evidence that standing for long periods is just as bad, if not worse. Experts say switching off between sitting and standing throughout the day is better than spending hours in either position (which is why Brian designed his desk to let him do both).

So next time someone throws one of these spurious health claims at you, be prepared to fight back with the facts. You can get them here: 4 Common Health Myths You Can Ignore – Know the Facts

Money Crashers: How to Save Money at Work

I've been working from home as a freelancer for about 11 years now, and I'll admit, it's been a mixed blessing. I love having complete control over my own schedule, but what I don't have so much control over is how much work I actually get, and how much money I can make doing it. Glancing over my records for the ten years for which I have complete records, it looks like on average, I've made about $5,000 less per year as a freelancer than I did when I was working 9 to 5.

This isn't quite as bad as it sounds, though, because my expenses are also lower now that I don't work in an office. For instance, when I lived in Princeton and commuted to work on the Dinky, I used to spend about $800 a year on train fare and another $400 to buy my breakfast each morning at the nearby Wawa. That's over a grand per year I no longer have to spend because my office is now in my home.

Actually, as workers go, I was getting off pretty lightly. Most workers commute by car, and when you factor in all the costs—gas, tolls, wear and tear on the vehicle—that adds up to thousands of dollars a year, not hundreds. The 8 or 9 bucks a week I used to spend on my weekday breakfasts is dwarfed by the $37 a week the typical American worker spends on lunches. Also, since my workplace had a casual dress code, I didn't have to spend extra money on a working wardrobe. And the biggest work-related expense of all, child care, didn't affect me since I was single and childless. A less fortunate nine-to-fiver, one who has to pay all these expenses in order to keep working, could be losing as much as $25,000 out of her paycheck by the time she's hauled that bacon home.

For her sake, I've devoted my latest Money Crashers post to ways to save money on the hidden costs of holding down a job. I deal with ways to save on child care, commuting (whether by car, train, bus, bike, or foot), a professional wardrobe, and workday lunches. Because working for a living is hard enough without having to pay for the privilege.

Here's the full article: How to Save Money at Work on 4 Major Job-Related Expenses

DIY sitting/standing desk, version 2

After using his improvised Lack sitting/standing desk for about two months, Brian noticed a few flaws in his original design. First, the surface area of the standing desk was slightly too small to accommodate his keyboard, mouse, and monitor easily all at the same time. Second, the table was just a bit too high for him to use comfortably. The adjustable monitor, in its raised position, sat right where it should at eye level, but the surface of the desk was too high for the keyboard; he had to bend his arms at an uncomfortable angle to use it.

To fix these problems, he had two options: raise himself up higher by standing on a stool, or make the desktop lower by shortening the legs of the Lack. Unfortunately, both of these options would just create a new problem: while his keyboard would now be at the right height, his monitor would be well below eye level. He could have just set it atop the wooden stand that he made for using it on his regular, seated-level desk, but when he considered the idea of piling the monitor stand on top of the Lack table on top of the desk, it started to sound a bit too much like a game of Jenga. So he realized that, to make a stable stand that worked at both hand level and eye level, he'd need to add on a built-in monitor stand to the top of the Lack.

So, one rainy day when he wasn't biking to work, he brough the Lack table home with him in the car and hustled it back into his workshop, where he spent the next couple of hours producing assorted whirring and banging noises. His first task was to shorten the legs of the Lack. This involved a bit more work than simply sawing off the ends, since the legs of the Lack are hollow except for the very bottom bit, and he needed some way to stabilize them. So after removing the bottom 2.5 inches from each leg, he cut four 1.75-inch square blocks out of two-by-four, pressed them into the ends of the legs, and glued them in place.

Once this was done, he assembled a little "pagoda" out of scrap wood to sit on top of the Lack. The stand itself was simple enough to build: he just cut one large piece and two smaller upright pieces and attached them together with wood screws and glue. However, attaching this new piece to the top of the Lack proved a bit trickier. He couldn't simply run wood screws up through the underside of the tabletop, because the tabletop, like the legs, is hollow and can't hold a screw in place. He could have simply screwed them up through the thin veneer of the top and into the solid wood of the stand legs, but he feared this wouldn't be stable enough.

Fortunately, a solution presented itself in the form of the leftover hardware from last month's futon misadventure. Since we ended up using only one of the three cross-dowel nuts from the hardware that White Lotus sent us, we still had two left, and these looked like the perfect tool for securing the bolt in place. Brian started by drilling a horizontal hole through each vertical support of the monitor stand. Then he drilled two long vertical holes up through the hollow top of the table and into the wood of the supports, intersecting with the holes he'd already drilled across in the other direction. Once all the holes were in place, he fed a cross-dowel nut into each horizontal hole and screwed a long bolt into the vertical hole and through the cross-dowel nut. Then all he had to do was tighten up those cross-dowel nuts to make everything rock solid. (That explanation was probably incredibly confusing, but if you look at this little cutaway diagram that Brian drew, it should make more sense.)

Here's the newly remodeled piece in Brian's workspace. The monitor and keyboard are now at the correct heights respective to each other, but the surface is still a bit small to accommodate the keyboard and mouse. For now, he's compensated for that by setting the Lack atop his desk at a slight angle, so he can lay the keyboard and the mouse pad diagonally across the top of the Lack desk. However, if this doesn't work out in the long run, you may be seeing yet another post sometime in the future about the Lack sitting/standing desk, version 3.0.

Oh, and incidentally, the cut-off ends of the Lack table legs did not go to waste. I was able to put these four little square bins to use holding paper clips and various gewgaws on my desk—a rather tidier solution than the assortment of small bins and origami boxes I'd been using before. Waste not, want not, that's the ecofrugal way.

Do I need a paycheck?

Regular readers of this blog have no doubt noticed that I've been posting a lot more frequently for the past few months. That's a positive side effect of a negative event: my biggest client, ConsumerSearch, laid off all its freelancers in June. I've tried contacting other clients, searching the freelance want ads at MediaBistro and FreelanceWriting.com, and offering my services to interesting sites like Wise Bread, The Billfold, and Money Talks News, but nothing has turned up. So I've tried to put my time to somewhat productive use by posting more often here, writing a couple of articles for HubPages, and setting up a little mini recording booth in the hopes of eventually getting some audiobook recording gigs. (More about that in a future post.)

Unfortunately, none of these activities actually brings in any money in the short term. Sure, learning to do voice-overs might get me some gigs eventually, but according to my friend Steve, who's involved in this business, it really isn't any easier than getting writing jobs; both fields are now overcrowded with amateurs willing to work for peanuts. Posting here and on Hubpages will bring in a tiny trickle of Google Ads revenue, but we're talking literally pennies a month; I might be able to increase it if I build up my readership, but that's an iffy proposition. And while it's theoretically possible that this blog will one day attract enough attention to land me a book deal, I'm not holding my breath.

So basically, I've been feeling kind of down lately about the fact that I'm not making any money. And it was only today that it occurred to me to ask myself why.

After all, it's not like we really need the money to live on. Brian and I have always been able to pay all our bills with his salary alone, so mine was just gravy. Having that extra padding in our budget was very useful, of course; it's the main reason we were able to pay off our mortgage as fast as we did. But now that it's all paid off, our expenses have dropped to the point that we actually have plenty of cash to spare even without my income. We can live quite comfortably on what Brian brings home and still have extra cash to put toward our new goal of reaching financial independence.

Yet even though we're doing just fine without my income, I still feel guilty somehow that I'm not contributing my fair share. This doesn't make a whole lot of sense, really, since my income was never anywhere near as high as Brian's, and so my "share," as measured in dollars, was never close to his even when I was working steadily. And Brian has made it clear that he doesn't mind at all being the sole breadwinner for as long as necessary. As he put it, he knows I'm not just sitting around the house watching soap operas and eating bonbons; I'm actually doing and learning useful things, whether they bring in money or not. So what exactly is it that's bothering me? In what way is my current lack of income a problem for us?

Once I actually put the question into words, I realized that what was worrying me wasn't that Brian is currently supporting me; it's that, so long as I remain out of work, I'll never be able to support him.

See, on the Excel sheet where I keep track of all our household finances, I've added a few lines at the bottom to keep track of our progress toward financial independence. I worked out (very roughly) how much additional savings we'd need to provide us with enough income to live on, and then I calculated how long it would take us to save up that sum of money. But below that, I added a few extra lines to track our progress toward partial financial independence: the point at which we'd be able to live on my income alone, so Brian could quit his job if he wanted to. And up until a few months ago, my estimate was that we'd get there in a little over three years. But now, with my income holding steady at zero, this goal is exactly as far away as full financial independence. Until we have enough money in the bank to pay our bills, I won't be able to make up the difference—which means Brian can't quit his job.

Being able to put my finger on the problem this way helps me, at least somewhat, to put it into perspective. After all, it's not like Brian had any intention, or even any wish, to retire next week. Even if I were still working steadily, it would still be a long-term goal. So maybe what I need to do is to focus on the long term for myself as well. Instead of worrying about how I can bring in money right now, I should be thinking about how to improve my prospects in the long term. My efforts to branch out into recording work, for instance, even if they don't yield any results right away, will certainly add to my skill set and make me more desirable as an employee. I can also consider ideas like using my recording setup to add a podcast to this blog, which may help boost its popularity and eventually turn it into a money-maker. I could even take a stab at something completely new, like interior redecorating.

Of course, none of this means that I should stop my current efforts to find new clients or seek work from old ones. It just means that I can stop beating myself up if it doesn't get me anywhere.