What’s the difference between cheap and thrifty? What makes society waiver between embracing thrift and frugality and shunning it in preference for luxury and avarice? In her book, In Cheap We Trust: The story of a misunderstood American value, author Lauren Weber discusses these and many other questions as she examines the historical relationship we have with being cheap and thrifty.

Starting back with Benjamin Franklin and his sayings, examining the imposition of cheapness on Jews and Chinese (presumably in an attempt to negate their economic competition), and ending with dumpster diving and hoarding, Weber delves into the psychology of thrift. She asks questions about what causes it, what accelerates it, what it does to us, and how we view our world as a result of it.

I really loved reading this book and I’m sure that readers of The Wisdom Journal will as well! Some of my favorite sections were those written about Benjamin Franklin, who penned so many of our thrifty and frugal sayings. Weber mentions a voyage that Ben Franklin took, noting how he had taken care of all his business prior to sailing. On the voyage, he found himself somewhat bored but still managed to write, examine how the Gulf Stream worked, and notice how the grease dumped overboard behaved on the surface of the sea (remember that this trip took FOUR weeks).

Even after Franklin had published many of his thrift sayings, the book notes that:

[His] essay stood out at the time, with its encouragement of industriousness and thrift, as a piece of uncommonly good sense. But the truest words in the whole sermon might we be the ones at the end, poking fun at the simple fact that, even though people usually know what’s good for them, they rarely act on that information. Franklin knew this quite well: you can tell people to work hard and save their money, but when the markets open, all that good advice drains away like so many shillings in a torn pocket.

It’s a real problem, one I struggle with everyday — doing what I KNOW I should be doing and fighting the urge to be lazy, concerned primarily with my own personal comfort.

Part of our problem with accepting thrift as a way of life stems from the shear abundance available to us. Never before had any people, so steeped in industriousness and frugality as a result of the Puritan and Quaker roots, been faced with opportunities such as those offered by America.

Weber later examines her own history with frugality. Her father would set the thermostat at fifty degrees and, though she resented him for it, later found herself drawn toward frugality like a moth to a flame, walking, for example, thirty blocks to avoid a two dollar subway fare. Indeed, the apple never falls too far from the tree!

This book is a treasure trove of the history of frugality and thrift and would make a fantastic resource for anyone interested in it.

If you would like to win my advanced reading copy (the book will be available in September), simply leave a comment on this post. I’ll select one winner via a random number generator and mail the book to you (I pay the postage). The drawing will be held September 4th. Remember, an advance copy has no page numbers in the table of contents and may actually be altered in its final version!

Links to products or services may be affiliate links. See my disclosure policy on the site or on my About page.

Congratulations to Nate Desmond, the winner of Who’s Got Your Back?by Keith Ferrazzi. Nate sent in the FREE BOOK CODE found at the bottom of my RSS feed and was selected by Random.org as the winner.

Nate writes for Debt Free Scholar, a personal blog about how to get a degree frugally. He writes about different tools and advice to help students with their finances. I know that when I first started college, I had NO IDEA about anything related to personal finance. This site is a great resource for students.

Here are a few of his recent posts:

• 9 Little Known Activities to Complete During Summer Break
• Write An Email You Can Be Proud Of
• Book Review: 120 Jobs That Won’t Chain You To Your Desk

Congratulations Nate! I hope you enjoy your new book.

Links to products or services may be affiliate links. See my disclosure policy on the site or on my About page.

In his latest book Who’s Got Your Back?, author Keith Ferrazzi advises everyone to give up on the myth of the professional “superman” and the culture of the lone wolf who defies all odds and accomplishes great things. The path to success isn’t paved with the bodies of those we’ve stepped on, but is lined with friends, mentors, and especially an inner circle of trusted advisors who will tell us the truth. Far too many times we see CEO’s, government leaders, and professionals at all stages of their career with a go-it-alone mentality. If they DO decide to bring in some outside counsel, it’s often in the form of “yes-men” who will say only what they think is expected or in some self professed “guru” who actually doesn’t have a clue.

The secret to finding the 3 people who will change your life

No, says Ferrazzi, to really achieve that deep level of success we crave, the secret lies in developing a trusted group of advisers who will shoot straight, tell us where we’re wrong, ask the surprising questions that we don’t want to answer, and then provide the feedback to help us overcome those success-destroying habits we’ve developed. The book packs a LOT of information and Ferrazzi follows his own advice by confessing a lot of his shortcomings to readers. The style and pace of the book felt like a blog to be honest. It didn’t feel like the typical self help book that pumps you up and tells you to “go get ‘em tiger!”

The “none of us can go it alone” mantra was reminiscent of Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. But where Gladwell pointed out how successful people had a lot of distinct advantages along their way (young Bill Gates having access to computers at a prep school, for example), Ferrazzi would point out that Gates probably had a small inner circle of people he trusted that helped spur him on to develop his company. Who’s Got Your Back? has some great twists on old subjects:

• The Four Mindsets – Generosity, Vulnerability, Candor, and Accountability – and how to use them to your advantage
• Nine steps to building a dream team that will spur you on to reach your goals
• Tactics, strategies, and structures to help you stay the course
• How to use “sparring” as a productivity tool
• How lowering your guard will help you in the long run

Buy or Don’t Buy

I always struggle with recommending a book when there are so many people struggling with their finances, but this is indeed a very good book. If you feel isolated, if you feel that there’s no one you can trust to help you make decisions, if you wonder why you don’t have deeper relationships, this would be a great book to read. It is very fresh and very new and I’m giving away my “Press Release Copy” to one reader who emails the Free Book Code at the bottom of my RSS feed by May 16th. I’ll use Random.org to select the winner and I’ll even pay the shipping charges to get this book to you.

Keith Ferrazzi is also the best selling author of Never Eat Alone.

Links to products or services may be affiliate links. See my disclosure policy on the site or on my About page.

On April 25th, I’ll be drawing one reader’s name (via Random.org) out of the proverbial hat for Allan Roth’s book, How A Second Grader Beats Wall Street. In my opinion, this book is a MUST READ resource for anyone looking to increase their wealth with the least amount of risk and the most opportunity for growth.

How do I enter the drawing?

Very simple! Just leave a comment on my book review post How A Second Grader Beats Wall Street and you’re entered. I’ll be sending the winner a gift copy from Amazon. Only comments on that post will be considered so be sure and read my review.

It really IS completely free — I pay all costs of the book and all shipping costs as well.

More free books to be given away soon, so stay tuned.

Links to products or services may be affiliate links. See my disclosure policy on the site or on my About page.

If you could ask 40 of the top bloggers in the world 25 questions about blogging, what would you ask? Stephane Grenier did just that, interviewing some of the most influential people in the blogosphere today in his book Blog Blazers: 40 Top Bloggers Share Their Secrets to Creating a High-Profile, High-Traffic, and High-Profit Blog! The book is rich with good advice, ideas, knowledge, and wisdom about getting a blog started, what to look out for, what blunders to avoid, and how to take the steps necessary to become a successful blogging superstar yourself.

I liked the approach Stephane took by asking virtually the same questions to every blogger. By asking the same questions, a reader is able to do an “apples to apples” comparison of the answers. That was helpful in my opinion.

Here’s just a few questions he asked:

• What’s your best tip on writing a successful blog post?
• What are your main methods of marketing your blog?
• Which 5 blogs do you regularly read?
• What makes a blog successful to you? Is it traffic, reach, revenue, etc?
• How long does it take to become a successful blogger?
• What’s your best advice in regards to content and writing for bloggers?
• What repels you the most from a blog (animations, in your face advertising, etc)?
• Do you make any direct money from your blog through advertising, product placements, etc?
• What is your best monetization method?
• What’s the most common pitfall new bloggers generally fall into?

I encourage you read the book to see the other questions and read the answers from each of these powerhouse bloggers (listed and linked below). Some of their answers were, well, snarky, while others were a bit more respectful of the interviewer.

Some of the answers were surprising. I was intrigued by how many in this list hold disdain for advertising and then again, by how many make a living with their blog or directly because of it. Several seemed to feel that advertising somehow tainted the blogger. Many were involved in outside consulting activities because of their success in the blogosphere. Blogging gave them an outlet for expressing their ideas and make extra money on the side or even establish a full time income.

What was universal was the advice to write often and to insure great content is all you publish. Reader numbers result from great content. Another universal piece of advice was to use a headline that will catch a reader’s eye.

Another (almost) universal tidbit was that no one spent any time of money on marketing. THAT was intriguing and quite the opposite of what I would have expected.

What struck me most, though, was the wide variety of people involved in blogging and the diversity of opinion on how to measure success as a blogger.

But or Don’t Buy?

Overall, I thought it was a very interesting book and well worth the Amazon Price of $16.94 if you’re interested in learning from highly successful bloggers without having to make 40 separate contacts.

But why spend the money when you can WIN my copy? Simply email the FREE BOOK CODE at the bottom of my RSS feed to thewisdomjournal at gmail dot com and you’ll get your name entered once for a random drawing. For two entries, enter the free book code from my Twitter feed!

In case you’re interested, here’s the bloggers he interviewed:
Aaron Wall of SEO Book fame
Abdylas Tynyshov
Al Carlton of Coolest Gadgets
Alex Papadimoulis of The Daily WTF
Andy Brice of Successful Software
Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends
Asha Dornfest of Parent Hacks
Ben Casnocha of My Startup Life
Benjamin Yoskovitz of Instigator Blog
Bob Walsh of 47 Hats
Dan Lyons of The Secret Diaries of Steve Jobs
Dane Carlson of Business Opportunities Weblog
David Armano of Logic + Emotion
David Seah
Derek Semmler
Dharmesh Shaw of On Startups
Eric Sink
Ian Landsman of Userscape
James and Alex of Google Sightseeing
J.D. Roth of Get Rich Slowly
Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror
Jeff Clavier’s Software Only
Jennette Fulda of Half of Me
Jennifer Perry of 101 Reasons I Hate Being Fat
Jessamyn West of Librarian.net
Joel Cheesman of Cheezhead
Jonathon Snook of Snook.ca
Manolo of Manolo’s Shoe Blog
Neil Patel of Quick Sprout
Pamela Slim of Escape From Cubicle Nation
Patrick McKEnzie of MicroISV on a Shoestring
Penelope Trunk of Brazen Careerist
Ramit Sethi of I Will Teach Your To Be Rich
Rob Walling of Software By Rob
Rohit Bhargava of Influential Marketing Blog
Seth Godin
Stephane Granier (yes, the book’s author interviewed himself! – hey, why not?) Follow Steph
Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion
Trent Hamm of The Simple Dollar
Yaro Starak of Entrepreneur’s Journey

There were a LOT of software/computer related bloggers included in this book. Notably absent from the list:

Brian Clark of Copyblogger
Darren Rouse of ProBlogger
John Chow
Steve Pavlina

I suppose it would be impossible to include (or even get) an interview with every influential blogger, so leaving someone out was to be expected. Perhaps a Blog Blazers Part 2 could come out in the future?

[tags]blog, Blog Blazers, ProBlogger, Copyblogger, book, book review, technorati[/tags]

Links to products or services may be affiliate links. See my disclosure policy on the site or on my About page.