Where do I put "read Lifehacker"? It's alternately a huge benefit and an enormous time suck.

@sir_pantsalot: Hear, hear! Buy a cheap $3k car, and SAVE for a nicer one. In 12 months of $400 "payments", move up to a $7500 car. In 3 years, you'll be driving a 3-year old car. Maybe not a BMW, but a decent ride.

@suburbancowboy: I concur. If you can't afford it, you can't buy it. I disagree on the education financing, though. It took me a while, but I paid cash for my B.S. and have no debt besides a mortgage. I can't fathom graduating at age 22 with $80k+ in debt and making entry-level income. It's like starting behind.

@Demonicume: I went the other way. I worked from 6 to 2:30 so I could be home to meet my daughter's school bus. Lots of silly afternoons and cooking together.

@virgilstar: I agree with (and do!) both of these things. I gladly spend the money to have my house cleaned AND get to spend the afternoon with my family.

Why not make TWO compartments? One on each side, leaving the middle fixed - so the laptop can stay in place?

@Tyler Harrington: I'm not dissing you, but the logic of the law: The aquifers would only be affected if "everyone in a city" did this and KEPT the water. When they use it for gardening, car washing, or kids' squirt toys, it'll all end up in the aquifer soon enough. The rain barrel is just a temporary delay in…

@chiggr: I guess we're dating ourselves :)

I still miss WordPerfect 5.1 running on DOS 6.22. It friggin worked. 6 (LOW DENSITY) floppies for WP5.1 and 3 floppies for DOS. Good to go.

@quesadillaap: But she is a paid endorser of Fair Isaac.

@sumobear: Hear, hear! We paid off $65k in 13 months following the steps above, now we have $25k in the bank for a big, beefy emergency fund. And NO debt! We followed the steps in order. Only having $1000 does make you work harder towards getting out of debt, and you tread very lightly to avoid the big jam that…

My work phone and cell phone have missed calls lists. When people call me, they don't leave messages because they know I'll see that they called and call them back. If it was critical, they'll keep trying. If it needs an attachment, they'll email. Otherwise, it can wait.

@ospreyguy: Our local Goodwill center will take computers, but you have to boot it in front of them and demonstrate that the BIOS is less than two years old. Limited, but still donatable. Is that a word? They do good work and install lots of gOS.

I signed up as a Microsoft Partner, bought MAPS for $300 and am using Server 2008 as my home server on a nice beefy box with 8GB of RAM. I also installed Microsoft Virtual Server to add virtualization capacity - so I can play with other OSes.

I started Lent a bit early - but with similar goals in mind. I'm walking a few times a week (and not beating myself up if I skip a day), and eating NO red meat (I tend towards 16 oz steaks) and also avoiding high fructose corn syrup - which makes me also avoid soda. So far, 10 pounds in 6 weeks. I'll put beef and…

In order of priorities:

I set aside 50% of every check for self-employment "overhead": 33% for Uncle Sam, 5% for Taxachusetts, and the balance goes towards a SEP IRA or saved as retained earnings. This way, I'm forced to live within my means and still save a bit for retirement and slow months.

VOTE: WinAmp

@Iqqy: Microsoft simply better at marketing than too many companies that make a better product. Look what happened to Novell NetWare - still the best file-sharing NOS for enterprises. Same thing with WordPerfect & Lotus 1-2-3. All those publishers lost the marketing race.

@Math-Maniac: I couldn't agree more re: Dave Ramsey. Filter out the religion if it's not for you, but he makes a TON of sense.