I’m going to pick up and start doing these digests again. My goal is to highlight articles and blog posts from around the web that contain good self-reliance advice or “how to”s. I try to avoid rants, political or otherwise, and any other information that would just waste your time. I choose from topics that I think would help someone become self reliant in any area of life – finances, food, emotions, family, plumbing, whatever.

Enough talk. Here are this week’s links

• How to Earn Free Plane Tickets and Cash Back by Shopping Online – This is a guest post from April Dykman, an avid GRS reader, and a writer and editor by trade. April is a potential Staff Writer for Get Rich Slowly. In her first article, April described how she discovered freedom from mindless spending. April is an active commenter at this site. When my husband and I went to Italy in 2006, we spent $2500 on plane tickets. We’re planning to spend much less for our next hop across the pond because as of this month we have over 80,000 airline miles — just enough for two tickets to Europe. I used to think frequent flier miles were only awarded to, you know, frequent fliers. Or people who use an American Express for big company expenses. I certainly didn’t think little ol’ me who gets on a plane maybe once a year would be able to rack up enough miles to matter. Then I stumbled upon Free Frequent Flyer Miles, [...]
• Survival Gardening Doesn’t Have to End With Fall -             There’s still plenty of summer left, so I don’t mean to rush things, but fall is my favorite time of year.  Usually we think of it as a time for winding down gardening, putting up the harvest, and getting ready for winter. (…)
• Rule #9: Do It Yourself. – A reader asked me if I could break down my ideas into a handful of principles. After some careful thought, I came up with a list of fourteen basic “rules” that summarize my money and life philosophy. I’ll be presenting these as a weekly series. A couple times this spring, I watched a TruGreen [...]
• canning turkey – The Damsel and her sister went completely insane and bought 40 pounds of turkey meat from a farmer. It had been cut off the bone, in great slabs of quivery raw meat. The Damsel is a tentative carnivore. She eats meat happily, but doesn’t like to think about it too much. She likes it cut and [...]
• How Low Can You Go? Vegetarian Burrito Bowls – In April and May, National Public Radio featured a series on inexpensive gourmet dishes entitled “How Low Can You Go?” Although many of the dishes looked quite tasty, most of the dishes weren’t actually all that inexpensive, often narrowly getting below $10 to feed a family of four, and many involved arduous cooking processes. I [...]
• The 7 Essential Rules To Optimum Health & Weight Loss
• The “Do-I-Have-Enough-For-This?” Effect – This is a guest post from Baker, who writes about personal finance at Man vs. Debt. Baker is a potential Staff Writer for Get Rich Slowly. His first post described the many advantages of couchsurfing. Along with his wife and 15-month-old daughter, Baker has recently moved overseas to New Zealand, where his young family is passionately continuing their own personal “war” on debt. “Do I have enough money for this?” It’s a very simple question, but one that has had tremendous implications in my financial turn-around. There was a time, not too long ago, when that combination of words didn’t exist in my life. Lately, I’ve stepped the phrase up a notch with some mental emphasis, “Do I really have enough money for this?” With the new emphasis included, my impulse purchases don’t stand a chance. Well, at least most of them don’t… You see, our brains are incredible machines. They are bombarded by over a billion tiny bits [...]
• Discovering (and Challenging) Your Financial Values – This is a guest post from Karawynn, who writes about personal finance at Pocketmint. Karawynn is a potential Staff Writer for Get Rich Slowly. In her first article, she visited the Island of Misfit Foods. Karawynn has been blogging since before “blogging” was a word. My parents taught me nothing about money management. My dad opened a checking account for me in high school and showed me how to use the checkbook register. Beyond that, I was on my own. I never had any clue how much money my parents made, and very little sense of how much most things cost. Taxes and loans and bills and credit were all vague mysteries. Mortgages and retirement accounts weren’t even on my radar. My family simply never talked about money at all. My parents might not have taught me anything, but I learned things from them all the same: I learned that when you moved into a new, larger, nicer [...]
• Review: How Much Is Enough? – Every other Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal finance book. As time goes on, I begin to see more and more that personal finance is mostly psychological. Sure, it’s useful to have a long list of money saving tactics, but if you’re under the belief that such tools are useless, it doesn’t matter how [...]
• The Get-Started-Now Guide to Becoming Self-Employed -  Working from home isn’t easy, but it can be rewarding.
• Frugality in Practice: Alternate Modes of Transportation – I’ve always been a car guy. It’s not that I’m mechanically inclined or that I get into the latest makes and models — neither of these is anywhere close to the truth — but that a car has always been my primary mode of transportation. When I was a boy, my family lived in rural Oregon, six miles from the nearest town. Automobiles were our only real option for getting around. Even when I went away to college, I relied on a car for most of my mobility. And so it’s been for forty years. As I say, I’ve always been a car guy. This summer, though, I’ve had a sort of epiphany, one prompted by your comments and suggestions. I’ve learned that I can save money and improve my fitness by leaving my car at home — by exploring alternate modes of transportation. The bus After my small adventure riding the bus in April, I’ve begun to view [...]
• Get The Primer on Seed Saving in Your Survival Garden -  Seed to Seed, by Suzanne Ashworth is this week’s featured Amazon Pick.  It’s time to start saving seeds from things you’ve grown this year, if you haven’t already started. (…) 
• Leftovers: 6 Money Saving Ideas for Those Bits at the Bottom of the Jar –

  We all have them. Those little bits of good stuff left at the bottom of one jar or another that we don’t want to really throw out, but don’t know what to do with. Here are six great tips for scraping the bottom of the barrel, so to speak.

• Are You a Money Victim? – I’ve heard it all before. You can’t earn more because of your boss. You can’t earn more because of your career path. You can’t earn more because of the economy. You can’t earn more because you don’t have enough time. You can’t earn more because you’re ugly and only the beautiful people [...]
• Bottled Meat Stroganoff – Here’s one of my favorite bottled meat recipes. It is so fast and easy it’s almost unworthy of a post of it’s own, but seeing as school doesn’t start for another week and archery season is on and I’m still doing laundry from the two camping trips, an easy post is all you get
  
  
• sharpening tools – For today’s lesson, we will venture to the Knight in Shining Armor’s workshop, where he loves to hang out when he’s in between dragon slayings. The Knight says that rusty tools are bad. If not taken care of, they’ll just keep rusting. Rust is more than just nasty looking red stuff. It actually eats away at [...]
• The Many Reasons to Make Do with Less –

  Why would someone choose to have less than they could? Lots of reasons. There are as many ways to live large as there are people who refuse to think small. Over the time I’ve been writing for Wise Bread, I’ve expanded my list of reasons by quite a bit.

• How to do Good AND Make a Profit –

  With the world economic and business outlook still so uncertain, a key question is just how the businesses world can continue to do good as well as maintain their bottom line.

  Over the last few years, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become such a buzz word for business people with companies sprouting all sorts of CSR initiatives, but are companies really embracing CSR because they believe in it or are they in it for entirely selfish reasons?

• Survival Kitchen – Is a Pressure Cooker the Survivalist’s Microwave? – Could a small pressure cooker be the survivalist’s answer to microwave cooking?  Based on an item I read recently in Mary Hunt’s Everyday Cheapskate newsletter, I think the answer could be Yes. (…)  
• The Simple Dollar Podcast #12: The Anti-Budget – The twelfth episode focuses on budgeting. I found that traditional budgets didn’t work for me, so I explore the methods that did. Total length: 7:20 Listen In! Other options for enjoying The Simple Dollar Podcast include: Listen to this episode on a separate page Subscribe via iTunes Download this episode (right click and save) Subscribe in the media player [...]
• MousePrint.org Exposes the Pitfalls in Fine Print – Does fine print drive you crazy? Like me, do you find yourself wading through 63-page credit card agreements — trying to understand the legalese but often failing? Don’t you wish there were a site that highlighted the lunacy of this stuff? Well, there is. Mouse Print is a blog devoted to “exposing the strings and catches buried in the fine print” of all sorts of offers and agreements. Here’s what Edgar Dworsky says about his site: “Mouse print” is the fine print in advertising, in a contract, or on a product label, often buried out of easy sight. In the worst cases, the mouse print changes the meaning of, or contradicts the primary claims or promises being made. Sometimes, the catch is not even disclosed. In other cases, the fine print is merely an unexpected surprise for the reader. Fine print is not inherently illegal. But, advertisers are not safe from false advertising claims merely because an [...]
• Prepaid Gift Cards for Modern Envelope Budgeting – By Paul Van Lierop

  Envelope budgeting — what is it?  It’s an incredibly simple but powerful way to manage your money.  At the beginning of the month or pay period you decide how much money you want to spend and in what category.  If you are already actively budgeting this should be straightforward but if you are just starting out you might want to pick some of your problem areas. For my family that was groceries and eating out.  So we make our budget and get out cash for each category, slap it in an envelope and Wazaam! You’re envelope budgeting.

• What’s the Difference Between High-Income Earners and Low-Income Earners? – In June, a user at Ask Metafilter wondered: What are the differences between someone who makes $100,000/year and someone who makes $30,000? As you might expect, this question generated a lot of discussion — all of it interesting. Many commenters noted that, from their experience, high-income earners generally exhibited several of the following traits: They maintain a strong work ethic. They don’t watch the clock. They seek to improve their skills. They do quality work. They’re flexible and adaptable. They maintain a good social network. They possess self-confidence. A few commenters noted that there are two other factors that absolutely play a role in how much a person earns. Chief among these is choice of profession. Even if you’re the best damn high school physics teacher in the world, you’ll still probably earn just $50,000 or so. (But if that gives you a fulfilling life, that’s probably worth more than a high salary.) Hard work, etc. do not guarantee a higher salary — but [...]
• How to Get Good Advice – by Julie Rains

  Sometimes the shortest and best path to making a decision or solving a problem is to ask for insights from a wise person. Here are ways to make sure you are getting good advice.

• Berkey Light Water Filter Review

• Best of Personal Finance: 41 Financial Calculators for Major Life Decisions – By Linsey Knerl Welcome to Wise Bread’s Best of Personal Finance roundup. If you’ve ever wanted to make a million bucks from eating lunch, learn how to raise a $221,000 baby (not from the black market, either), or cook over 4 dozen different ramen dishes, we’ve got the goods for you!

• tea dyeing – In the olden days, folks used all sorts of things to dye fabric . . . plants . . . minerals . . . and even crushed insects, although for bug crushing instructions you’ll have to look elsewhere. The Old School will not be covering that. For eggshell and tan colors, using tea is simple and [...]
• Perspective – Recently, a brilliant little article popped up over at Five Cent Nickel, outlining the idea that one’s take on long-term investment performance is often a matter of perspective. I go even further: almost every assumption that you base your money decisions – and even your other life decisions – on is a matter of [...]
• I’ll Do It Tomorrow – Tom left a great comment on the recent article about taking care of your things: How can you fight off I’ll do it tomorrow-ness? My lack of motivation makes me lazy, even though I see the benefits of not being like this. Procrastination is a big enemy of financial progress. It’s easy to say “I’ll do [...]
• The Personal Finance Toolbox – I like to think of one’s personal finance state as something like a toolbox. In order to accomplish a major task, one must use more than one tool from their toolbox to make it happen. Let me explain with a bit more detail. The Tools There are many, many different personal finance tools in one’s [...]
•  Letter Re: The Usefulness of the AK-47 as a Survival Rifle –
  Dear SurvivalBlog Readers:
  The immediate impression of most shooters, upon hearing "Kalashnikov", will involve the words cheap and reliable. Non-shooters will often maintain a huge negative connotation to the AK-47 and its variants, though they may not recognize the maker’s name. I will not delve into the rifle’s history today, but instead intend to highlight a weapons platform and illustrate the finer points in favor and against its use…