J.D. at Get Rich Slowly recently published an interesting article on lazy money mistakes. I’ve made several of the lazy money mistakes he writes about and one in particular just about a month ago that really bugs me. I foolishly sent in a student loan payment late and lost a 1% interest rate reduction.

There is no way to explain this other than pure stupidity and laziness. I had the money in my checking account to make the payment  early. I had a reminder set on my computer, as I do for all of my bills. All I had to do was write a check, put it in an envelope, and mail it. I had never been late with a payment before (as evidenced by the interest rate reduction I suppose), but life just got busy and I lost focus on my finances long enough to miss this payment. That cost me a small late fee and probably a fair amount of money in extra interest over the life of the loan.

It seemed that I had everything in place to keep making this payment on time, yet I still failed. Apparently, automation really is one of the most important things you can do to manage your money well. David Bach writes about this in-depth in the The Automatic Millionaire.

I have to admit that I never really fully bought into the importance of automation before, but I think I’m sold on it now. Of course, this particular student loan company doesn’t offer automatic payments and I have to mail in a payment coupon along with a paper check. When automation isn’t an option, I guess you have to be extra careful to make payments early and hope that the non-automated business will get caught up with technology some day. A secondary reminder system would probably have helped too. As would have writing out the checks and stuffing the envelopes ahead of time so that all I had to do was toss it in the mailbox. Oh well, nothing to do now but chalk another one up to stupid tax and move on.

What about you? Do you have any lazy money mistakes or tips for preventing them in the first place?

I just finished reading 48 Days to the Work You Love by Dan Miller. I found this book to be generally helpful and easy to read, but it doesn’t offer anything groundbreaking or terribly enlightening either. I thought it had a lot in common with What Color is Your Parachute, though I found 48 Days to be much more readable and less boring (maybe it’s just me, but I didn’t care for What Color is Your Parachute at all).

48 Days to the Work You Love will likely help you find inspiration, motivation, and just may spark a few ideas. However, there isn’t much ‘meat’ to the book. It only glosses over these topics at a high level and leaves you still to do the work of figuring out the details and coming up with a plan for finding new work or making money on the side. It offers nothing that you can’t find on hundreds of websites for free, but if you want to spend some money on this book you’ll have it packaged into an easy-to-read, paper format.

If you think that earning an hourly wage, working for someone else is the only way to make a living, you can certainly benefit from reading this book. If you already know that isn’t your only option, and/or you are already earning money on the side, you probably won’t find anything new here. I’d say it’s worth reading if you think you need some help finding a new direction with your work and income. If you already have that part figured out, there isn’t anything else for you here.

To follow-up yesterday’s post, here is another excellent book that I came across while cleaning out my book collection yesterday. The Top 10 Distinctions Between Millionaires and the Middle Class by Keith Cameron Smith.

This is another short, excellent book that covers the basics that need to be understood to become wealthy. Don’t read too much into the title though, the focus isn’t about becoming a ‘rich millionaire’ rather solid advice that anyone can follow to become wealthy an successful.

Much like The Richest Man in Babylon, this book is packed with great information and keeps the advice short and sweet. It’s only 112 pages long (small pages at that), so you should probably set aside a couple of hours to read it all at once. However, the key with this book isn’t to just take in the information and move along. I highly recommend looking at each of the 10 sections and taking the time to review and work on the areas that need improvement in your life.

Read this book if you want some great motivation and an outline for financial success.

I just finished reading Common Sense Economics: What Everyone Should Know About Wealth and Prosperity. This book is an introduction to the key fundamentals of Economics, as well as a bit of Personal Finance. It’s a relatively small book too, one you can easily read in a day.

Common Sense Economics is a great book to read if you are new to Economics, haven’t studied Economics for a long time, or if you are currently clueless about your money and/or the Economy.

This book is divided into three parts. The first two deal with Economics and Government. The last part deals with Personal Finance. The inclusion of the Personal Finance part can either make this book the perfect fit for you or it may leave you wanting more. If your personal financial life is already under control, you won’t gain anything from this third part. If you have yet to take control of that part of your life, this chapter provides you an excellent outline for how to get started.

Some highlights from the book:

The reality of life on our planet is that productive resources are limited, while the human desire for goods and services is virtually unlimited. Because there is “no free lunch,” we must sacrifice something we value in order to get something else.

Politicians often speak of “free education,” “free medical care,” or “free housing.” This terminology is deceptive. These things are not free. Scarce resources are required to produce each of them. Governments may be able to shift costs, but they cannot avoid them.

Nearly all choices are made at the margin. That means that they almost always involve additions to, or subtractions from, current conditions, rather than “all-or-nothing” decisions. The word “additional” is a substitute for “marginal.” We don’t make “all-or-nothing” decisions, such as choosing between eating or wearing clothes—dining in the nude so that we can afford food.

The foundation of trade is mutual gain. The motivation for trade is summed up in the statement: “If you do something good for me, I will do something good for you.” Trade is productive because it permits each of the trading partners to get more of what he or she wants.

An increase in government transfers will reduce the incentive of both the taxpayer-donor and the transfer recipient to earn income. Economic growth will thereby be retarded.

Competition for transfers will erode most of the long-term gain of the intended beneficiaries.

Programs that protect potential recipients against adversity arising from their imprudent decisions encourage them to make choices that increase the likelihood of the adversity.

Providing others with goods and services that are highly valued compared to their cost is the key to financial success.

I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it. I borrowed it from the library, but I intend to purchase my own copy soon. Both for future reference and so I can loan it to friends. It makes for a great Economics primer and the section on Governments’ role in Economics is excellent…and quite timely given the current insanity in our nation’s bailout-addicted political climate.