Erin M. Simpson analyzes the techniques of revolution as depicted in Les Miserables. (“The movie offers more than tragic romance and soaring ballads — it provides a blueprint for understanding the relationship between cities and violence.”)

In 2013, I’m feeling confident about my financial future. Last year, I proved to myself that I can live on $40/week worth of groceries, which is pretty cool. And it’s not all Easy Mac and soda—I buy lots of fresh veggies! — Jacqueline Drayer

My husband and I are on our way to being first time homebuyers in Brooklyn. I’ve stopped buying coffee on the go to save the $2, but when placing the offer on our house, we calmly talked spending thousands of dollars more over eggs. I’m eating Trader Joe’s noodle bowls, yet when our mortgage broker told us he needed $370 for a potential second appraisal I didn’t flinch when I handed him my Amex. We feel broke, but are playing at rich and, if it goes well this month, we can be all of that in our very own garden. — Kate Tellers

What about you? Are you feeling good about your financial outlook in 2013?

Josh Miller talked to his 15-year-old sister about her social media habits and her answers will make you feel old and unhip and old and uncool and old. (“I don’t read links. I don’t read blogs. I don’t know. You mean like funny videos on Facebook? Sometimes people post funny links there.”)

Dinner parties are probably my favorite way of getting together with friends (I had one last night with three courses of food and lots of wine, and it was pretty wonderful). Which is why I’m really into this Washington Post story on how to throw a Downton Abbey dinner/viewing party. Deviled eggs and sticky toffee pudding? Yes.

In 2012, I learned a lot more about value than I did about money—the value of my family, the value of friendship, and the value of making the best of what you’ve got. Stressful or not, I’ve got a great life going on in New York. It’s challenging. It’s exciting. There is always something to do.

But last Mother’s Day, after a particularly difficult workweek, I freaked out a little bit as I Skyped into the family party. I counted my available vacation days in my head and calculated whether I’d even be able to leave town for Christmas.

My entire family lives in California in the same town where I grew up, and most of them within a 15-mile radius of one another. While I loved my life in New York, I was really unhappy to be missing all the births and deaths and weddings and holidays that come with having a huge family. So, with the promise of a short-term job (election work), a subletter in my apartment, all my non-furniture belongings in storage, and a few thousand dollars in savings, I hopped on a plane to Los Angeles and hoped it would all work out. 

Almost everything went awry, from my job disappearing before it started, to Hurricane Sandy destroying my entire storage unit while I was stuck in the California sunshine (you can, indeed, be stuck in the sunshine), to my New York subletter ducking out a month earlier than he said he would. Yet emotionally, it was worth every penny I lost.

With the countdown to my NYC return down in the single digits, here’s what I learned in 2012:

• Never believe your ex-boyfriend when he says he can get a job for you. Never. Particularly if he works in politics. You will end up an underemployed “freelancer” for four months and be bored out of your mind. You will consider, far too often, if your life has any meaning. 

• Always get the expensive storage insurance that seems really unnecessary and is not included in the price quote. Because the only thing that could possibly threaten to destroy all of your belongings (once-in-a-hundred-year-flooding), inevitably will. I did not do this. I am returning to New York City with no winter clothes, no books, no pictures or art or personal touches. But post-Sandy, I’ve got a great renter’s insurance policy!

• If you think you are going to live for four months on a freelance income, don’t write for the company that is notoriously late paying freelancers. Or at least have a few months of living expenses saved up.

• If you can, call your grandparents more often. Build great adult-to-adult relationships with your parents. Babysit your cousins’ kids. The laugh of a four-year-old will make your problems seem just a little better.

• Sacrifice a lot for your family. But don’t sacrifice everything.

Despite having had a great time, and feeling so close to a lot of my family members, I can’t wait to get back to my life. At the end of the day, there is nothing more valuable to me than following my dreams. I’ve loved the comfort of my childhood home, but I’m bored, the bartenders suck, there is no public transportation, and I don’t have a job. The thing I am qualified to do (write about million-dollar art transactions) doesn’t exist in this sleepy little beach town. Supporting my decision to live 3,000 miles away is the most valuable gift my family will give me.

Shane Ferro is an art market journalist in New York City, again, as of January 7, by way of Ventura, California. She annoys people on Twitter @shaneferro.

People who want a job but aren’t actively looking are called “discouraged workers” by the Labor Dept. CNN is calling them the “hopelessly unemployed,” and there are a lot of them: “Five years ago, before the recession began, about 2.5 million people said they wanted a job but hadn’t searched for one in at least a year. Now, that number is around 3.25 million.”

In today’s edition of “What Would You Do?,” another item found on the street, this time a gift card. Here’s Jamie:

I found an Amazon gift card lying on the street as I walked home from the subway, in a pile of snow. It was only $25, so not a major amount, but not pocket change, either (at least not for me!). I took it home and stared at it for a while, and then I jumped through all of Amazon’s customer service hoops to find out the owner. All they could tell me was: 1) They knew who had purchased it. 2) They couldn’t tell me who purchased it.

I said thank you and left the chatroom and stared at the card for a while before I got another email from Amazon, telling me “You may keep and use the gift card if you can.”

So I did. And I still feel guilty to this day. WWYD!? — Jamie

I’d like to think of myself as a person who tries to go above and beyond to do the right thing in every situation, but if I found a $25 Amazon gift card in the snow, I would probably not have gone through the trouble of contacting Amazon’s customer service to track down the person who bought the gift card. The gift card would probably would have ended up forgotten in a drawer at home, or I would have given it away.

Jamie, you get a gold star for all that trouble you went through. Theoretically, the person who lost the card can contact Amazon to get it replaced. Amazon told you to keep the card and use it. Don’t feel guilty at all.

Email me your WWYD experiences to me with “WWYD” in the subject line. See previous installments.

After editing an advice column for two years, I’ve decided that there is no such thing as advice. There are only problems and the ways people handle them. Advice, on the other hand, is when you hear a description of someone else’s problem and then tell the person something about yourself. Hopefully whatever you say is funny or interesting, but it has little to do with actually helping anyone. It may seem or feel like it does, but there are always more variables than we’ll ever be able to see or understand, and best case scenario you’re pressing on the problem a little bit in a way that engages the problem-haver.

But even though there is no such thing as advice, advice is still a word that means something, so I guess it’s less that advice doesn’t exist and more that it’s a flawed or impossible concept.

Because either the asker doesn’t take the advice, since everyone just does what they want or are otherwise going to do anyway, especially if it’s cheat on their boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, or wives (oh my god, you should see the inbox; at first it was sad but now it’s actually kind of comforting that everyone’s the same), which can create a rift between the advice-giver and the advice not-taker. Or they take the advice, except that’s not particularly helpful, either, since it strips them of the opportunity to learn the lesson first-hand (presuming there is one), which you already have (again, presumably). And telling someone to trust you blindly can come off as condescending. Or like wrapping a finish-line ribbon around someone’s chest instead of encouraging them to run the race. Kind of. Maybe? I don’t know. More on how little I know in a moment.

And advice columns are like one person handing another an oversized check while giving a thumbs-up for the cameras, but then walking away after the flashbulbs stop, and then it turns out the check is just another piece of unredeemable cardboard. But those photo-op pictures! Everyone loves those pictures. And I don’t think I set this up quite right, but those pictures are like advice columns, because people like to hear about other people’s problems (appreciate a good photo-op), and then hear what a stranger has to say about them, and then either say something about the problems themselves (i.e. say something about themselves) or move on to the next thing. So ultimately it’s a lot of swarming around other people’s problems that’s been dressed up as well meaning, but is really driven by voyeuristic hunger for reassurance that other people’s lives suck, too. Usually, at least. At first I wanted The Hairpin’s “Ask a ___” column to be a place for anonymously asking one another answerable questions—why do you sit so weird on the subway, etc.—sort of like passing notes through a wall, but then it became more traditionally advice-oriented, and I’m not sure how I feel about that, although maybe things will shift in the coming year, and I should finish this sentence inside my own head.

I could also just be reeling from the advice I took a few months ago to do this somewhat dramatic thing over text, which I did, and which did not work out so hot, to put it mildly, and which I now think about almost every day. A friend encouraged me to tell someone exactly what I felt about a situation, which seems like maybe the only piece of incontrovertibly useful advice, except texting isn’t really my thing, and what I felt about the situation wasn’t totally nice, and it came to the recipient out of the blue, so it turned into this insane, raw back-and-forth in which all pretenses were dropped and it unexpectedly felt like I was communicating the most nakedly with someone than I maybe have in my entire life. So maybe that’s its own lesson and the advice worked sideways, and in any case I’m grateful for it. Although who knows. Who knows anything? How can anyone even think they know anything? How can anyone think they know enough about anything to tell anyone else what to do? We’re all idiots who know nothing, especially whether other people might actually know something and that it might just be us (me) who’s an idiot, because there doesn’t seem to be a meaningful way to tell, or such a thing as truly right or truly wrong, or good or evil, or objective truth, maybe, probably, I actually have no idea, but maybe if I keep freaking out I’ll levitate upward on this funnel of flustered apology! Also please submit questions to advice@thehairpin.com!

Also by this author: Letters to the Editors of Women’s Magazines (the very first one!)

Edith Zimmerman edits The Hairpin.

Logan: Happy New Year, Mike Dang! New year, new you ?!!?!

Mike: Happy New Year, Logan. New year, same me! I’m pretty much the same person I’ve been all of my life. I think? I hope.

Logan: Oh I want to change everything. (About me.) But that’s not so different on January 1st as it is on December 1st or November 1st or whatever. I love new beginnings. Birthdays. New years. New weeks. This could be the week I turn it all around! Never is. (Rarely is.) (Rarely ever is.)

Mike: Yeah, I’m not the sort of person who makes New Year’s Resolutions. When I want to change something—whether it’s January or June—I go ahead and do whatever I need to do to make the change. But I’m pretty happy with who I am, which helps a ton. And I don’t think you need to change everything about yourself. Part of figuring out what you need to change is seeing what you don’t need to change. Feel good about the things you’re doing right. You have to have that balance or you get too bogged down on the negative aspects of your life.

Logan: Oh but change is so positive! The list of things I want to change in my life is pretty much the same all the time, though I sort of have periods when I’m more focused on one thing—eat better, workout, be more organized, drink less, spend less, save more, have more self control, keep my room cleaner, decorate my apartment, do creative things, write letters, cook dinners, read books that aren’t overlong disappointing fantasy novels with better television counterparts, figure out what I want in life, find a good haircut, floss. 

Mike: That’s a lot! A lot of reasonable things. Though I do think we’re more likely to make changes when we narrow down what we want to change, because changing a bunch of things at once is overwhelming. That’s what I meant about getting bogged down by all the negatives—you think, gosh, I have too much I have to do! And then you avoid doing any of it. And that’s also why I like your weekly “Do One Thing” posts, because you get to focus on the one thing you can manage and do. It’s much more realistic. If I have to choose one goal right now, it would be to choose my projects wisely. My time is super limited and I have a tendency to say yes to everything (because turning down paying gigs can be a hard thing). I also want to jetset somewhere outside the U.S. so I’ll set a savings goal for that.

Logan: I had this plan over break to write up a year in review type thing for the site, but you know, all about ME. Some kind of cute thing—maybe in crayon!—with fun facts and a narrative and basically saying what I’d accomplished and not accomplished FISCALLY over the year. But then I didn’t do that because you know what’s a BORE? Looking back. Looking ahead is much more fun. But while contemplating this project that I didn’t start, I realized that the biggest thing I did this year, besides actually figuring out how much debt I had, was to pay off two credit cards. And I did that in part because of those monthly check-in things you do, which I thought was a stupid idea at first! For me. Not for you. For me. Because: I’m of this mindset that I should just be able to DO THINGS and that using LITTLE TRICKS is stupid. Like: I know the egg timer thing will work for me. I know it will be of utmost benefit to my productivity to get a little egg timer and put it on my desk and set it at the beginning of each task and have it go off when said task should be done. BUT. BUT. I hate the idea of doing it, and I feel like, well, if that can work, I should just be able to watch the clock like a normal adult human, and there you have it. No egg timer. Poor productivity.

I paid off both cards because you checked in and said, “Tell me your balance on that card.” And usually after you asked me twice more I’d login (SO CUMBERSOME) to see what it was and then think, well that’s not that different than last time, so I’d then make a big payment because the automatic ones were all just interest and nothing was happening. So what I’m saying is, thank you, that little trick worked. And also sometimes things that you think are stupid, like putting your credit card balance in a blog post on a regular basis, are not stupid after all, actually.

Mike: Haha. Thank you. And also, I like the idea of setting these goals together, and then sort of being able to publicly hold yourself accountable for it. Because that means we all get to share each other’s triumphs. Everyone was so excited and happy for you when you paid off that J. Crew card! Paying off a credit card balance you’ve been carrying around with you for years is a big deal, and we should celebrate that. So here’s to making our resolutions or changes or whatever, accountable. I’m going to add that vacation savings goal to our next monthly check-in. So we’ll get to see me slowly paying down my gigantic student loan balances, in addition to saving for something fun. I’ll encourage others to do the same. Is there anything you want, Logan? I mean, like a vacation somewhere—something that’s more of an experience than a consumer object.

Logan: I only want consumer objects. Actually I’m not that into consumer objects right now, most just like, face creams and baskets. Which I guess are both … consumer objects. I’d like to buy some plane tickets and see some friends and go on some walks and see some places. Those are goals. But I don’t know. Saving money seems kind of like a lot to do right now. And I really do love an impulse buy, as you know. One of my goals for this shiny new year we have is to diversify my income and freelance or do some odd jobs, so I’d rather just take a random extra bonus check that I get for doing some random extra bonus work and buy a plane ticket than SAVE.

And it’s funny, even though I know the group accountability works … it’s not my favorite? Like, it’s wonderful that people are happy for me when I pay off a card—that feels good—but it feels nowhere near as good as just knowing myself that it’s paid off. I need the accountability I suppose, but not the praise? I’m not sure. Or maybe the praise is actually what works and I’m mad that it works and so I’m denying it works. HUMAN BRAINS. SO INTERESTING. SO VARIED.

Mike: Well the praise is just a bonus! If it make you feel good, and not, I don’t know, bad? then why not just take it in stride. I don’t think any of us are doing this accountability thing for praise. We do it because we’re in debt and we don’t want to be in debt, and having that community there—oh I’m not the only one having trouble paying down my debt?—is really nice. Anyway, I would like you to be able to take a nice trip somewhere too. And I think you can impulse save for it just like impulse paying off credit cards (like using Impulse Save, which I haven’t tried but I hear works for people). Maybe that’s another goal I’ll have: Try Impulse Save and see if it works.

Logan: Yes I’d be pro Mike Dang impulse anything-ing! Impulse take a day off! Impulse buy a puppy! Impulse go to Moscow! Right now I’m going to impulse go back to bed. Impulse take some Advil. Impulse stop feeling like shit. Impulse cure myself of the flu? Hope you don’t get what I got, impulsively.

Happy Monday! Let’s check-in.

On Friday, I called the place I go to get my haircut to make sure the guy I see was still there. Hairdressers in New York come and go very often (unless they own the place, or have a senior stylist title), and I usually pay the price for a regular stylist to cut my hair, and my guy always does a great job. He had one remaining time slot open, so I grabbed it ($65, plus tip, including one for the young woman who washed my hair).

On Saturday, I had brunch with five friends ($58.05). We had plenty of food and things to drink, and they explained to me what Snapchat is. I had a quiet Sunday, and spent it mostly catching up on episodes of Top Chef, paying my gas/electric bill ($50.68, because I away for most of December), and doing some work. Total: $173.73

How were your weekends?

Tom Wolfe on Wall Street is long and weird! The lit part of the internet and the money part of the internet are converging to explode over it! Pow! Bam! It is not my favorite thing I’ve ever read, BUT he is talking, basically, about how Wall Street dudes really aren’t all THAT and in fact are now the opposite, which is a fun thing to read if you are feeling powerless and also poor.

Ockley Drive, Shreveport, La., 2006-2007, $500/month
After graduating college and spending the requisite few months at my mom’s house while I searched for a job, I got hired to work at the college in town. I found my first non-college apartment after driving around town looking for “for rent” signs. The structure was gorgeous—a 1940s apartment with a telephone nook and a kitchen big enough for a two-person breakfast table. There wasn’t central air or heat, but I never lived there during the summer so thankfully I never experienced the full misery of a Louisiana summer aided only by ceiling fans. However, I was bored out of my mind living alone.

When I moved out, the property manager tried to withhold my deposit due to dust on the blinds, and I learned the value of acquainting oneself with local tenants’ rights laws and the definition of “normal wear and tear.” 

Oak Street, Shreveport, La., 2007-2008, $675/month (split with a roommate)
My second year in Louisiana, my good friend and I decided to get a place together. The college where we worked owned real estate in the neighborhood, and we lucked into a great little two-bedroom house right on the edge of campus. The rent was incredible and included utilities, and the college could deduct it straight from our paychecks.

Our house was next to a fraternity house where a number of the members were tour guides who worked in our office. Despite living literally on the campus of the college where we worked, we still often drove to the office. We both quit our jobs in 2008 to move to other states.

Tunlaw Road NW, Washington DC, 2008-2010, $1900/month (split with a roommate who paid more because she got a parking spot)
I moved to Washington, DC in 2008 to begin grad school. After getting over the sticker shock of apartments in an actual city, I found a Craigslist ad looking for a replacement for a roommate who was moving in with her boyfriend. The spot was in a gigantic apartment near campus, and the Craigslist roommate turned out to be a great friend. With an upstairs neighbor, we got together weekly to cook and watch terrible movies. When my roommate moved in with her boyfriend (it’s a pattern in this apartment, apparently) another friend moved in. When we moved out, landlady, who until that moment had been very easy to work with, withheld over half of our deposit, saying she needed to replace the carpet. When she posted the apartment for sale a few months later, she’d installed hardwood floors. A part of me took karmic solace in the fact that the price was repeatedly lowered before the apartment sold.

Frere Road, Cape Town South Africa, Summer 2009, cost included in program participation
As part of my graduate program, I took two months in South Africa for a seminar and internship with eleven other MA students. We all lived, Real World style, in a guest house in the Sea Point neighborhood of Cape Town. The house was managed by a local family, and there was a seemingly never-ending supply of apples, bread, and tea in the kitchen. And so it became our habit after a night out on the town to come back to a surprisingly refined late night snack. The house was also walking distance to a restaurant with the best view of the beach sunset we could find and the best chocolate cake as well.

13th Street NW, Washington DC, 2010-2012, $1200/month
After graduating with my Master’s, I spent a few months living on friends’ sofas, guest beds, and futons while I interviewed for jobs up and down the East Coast. I received an offer for The Job (the one that eventually turned into the job I now have) and immediately found a home to call my own—a closet of a studio apartment in the city’s trendy U Street neighborhood. Despite the tiny size, I loved the place. It was in a great location (convenient to work AND fun) and owned by a property management company, rather than a private owner, which meant when it came time for my deposit to be returned, there wasn’t contentious haggling. Alas, it was far too tiny for two people, so when my boyfriend and I decided to live in sin, we had to look for other options.

Varnum Street NW, Washington DC, 2012-present, $1200/month (split with my boyfriend)
Right as my boyfriend and I were deciding to shack up, I was deciding I was ready to become a homeowner. I received downpayment assistance through a local program, which I am VERY grateful for, but which also meant there were twice as many hoops to jump through! But I finally closed on a small one-bedroom condo in a residential part of DC that is considered “up and coming”—meaning it’s mostly residential, but every month another restaurant, bar, or vintage store opens up down the street.  After nearly two years in a studio apartment, I was grateful for a separate bedroom and a kitchen that more than one person could fit into at once. Homeownership has had its ups and downs, but it’s a great little unit in a fabulous area. I’ve found buying a home has made me invested in my neighborhood in a way that I never was when I rented. They recently demolished the sketchy-in-a-quirky-way grocery store down the street to build an upscale version with luxury apartments atop it, so I suspect the next five years will bring a lot of change.

Nora Cobo lives in Washington, DC, but would move back to Cape Town in half a heartbeat.

Not here, duh, that would be INSANE and IMPOSSIBLE, but in Uruguay, sure!  José Mujica is president there and he lives off $800/month, donating 90% of his salary. I like this man, based on this short article about him. (“With two years remaining in his term, Mr. Mujica seems to cherish the freedom to speak his mind. About his religious beliefs, he said he was still searching for God.”)

By Dr. Jeff Godin Ph.D., CSCS, CISSN and Tammy Godin, B.A.B.

Seventy-eight percent of people fail at achieving their New Year’s resolution. Why? Is it because their goals are too lofty and will-power is crushed? Maybe they are in the contemplation stage of making a habit change and don’t know how to prepare and take action. Or is it because they are focused on the negative and not the positive aspects of their goal? Is it because they are extrinsically motivated, not intrinsically motivated, and when results don’t happen overnight they get frustrated?.

Some common New Year’s resolutions are, “I am going to lose weight,” “I am going to exercise more,” “I am going to learn a new language.” Regardless of the resolution, the key is to develop a SOLID PLAN.

Start by asking yourself the following questions:
1. What is my resolution?
2. What is holding me back now?
3. How will I accomplish my resolution?
4. How will I know when I get there, what are the acceptance criteria?

Here is a hypothetical example that utilizes an approach that you can follow to join the 22% that are successful.
1. What: I am going get fit in 2013!
2. What is holding me back?

Here are some lame excuses that keep most people from achieving their fitness goals:
o I don’t have enough time
§ Solution: Wake up 15 minutes earlier during the week and incorporate the Spartan warm up and cool down as a daily habit.

o I am exhausted at the end of the day
§ Solution: If you are exhausted at the end of the day execute the “10 minute rule”. Start walking or doing some calisthenics for 10 minutes; 99% of the time it will result in an entire work out. One of my personal favorite sayings, “It takes energy to make energy”

o I don’t feel comfortable in the gym
§ Solution: Pushups, sit ups, body weight squats, and lunges do not require a gym.

o I don’t like to exercise
§ Solution: Find an activity you like. Go for a walk in the woods and smell the pine trees. Join a dance class. Join a basketball league. Sign up for a Spartan Group X exercise class. Embrace the power of many. Enjoy the social interaction with others that have similar goals and interests. It has been shown that adherence to a program increases as the social cohesion of the group increases.

Your barrier may be completely different from those above, but you get the point. Identify your barriers, figure out what has prevented you from being successful in the past, and then find a solution to overcome that barrier. Predict, forecast, take a wild guess, but figure out what might hold you back.

3. What is my plan? How am I going to exercise more?
Start with small yet incremental goals and experience the feeling of success NOT failure. This approach will create the intrinsic motivation that you need to continue the journey towards your goal! For example:

– “I will start by getting up 15 minutes earlier, 3 days per week, for the next 2 weeks and walk/run or do body weight exercises. Every 2 weeks, I will get up another 5 minutes earlier until I have enough time to complete the Spartan WOD.” This may seem like slow progress to some, but slow steady progress is more likely to cause long term success than rapid short-term progress.

– Do what you know is accomplishable. Challenge yourself, but don’t set the bar too high. “I will take breaks throughout the day and do Burpees every 2 hours throughout my work day”. Establish the habit of being physically active, you are developing a lifestyle, the intensity doesn’t matter at this point.

– Slowly expand your comfort zone. Do slightly more than you did in the previous week. Large leaps in expectations or challenges will certainly lead to failure. Take one small step at a time.

– Put your plan in writing. Today I will do X. Each week I will add Y to X. Ultimately leading to accomplishment of Z. Whatever X, Y, and Z are, is up to you, the point is to have the plan and have it in writing.

4. Final Step: What are my acceptance criteria?
“I will accept that my New Year’s resolution is completed when I have been exercising 4 hours per week for a minimum of 3 months.” That does not mean that you have to start with that amount of exercise, it is realization of your goal. It may take 6 months to get there. Accomplishments, no matter how small, will keep you motivated. Reward yourself for accomplishing goals. If you go a full week getting up 15 minutes early and incorporate Burpees every 2 hours in your work day, reward yourself with a fitness magazine and stay motivated!

The above processes, without even realizing it, will increase your self-efficacy, which is a measure of one’s own ability to complete tasks and reach lofty goals. It affects every area of human behavior. Believing in one’s self, setting realistic goals and creating a plan to reach those goals results in self-empowerment, confidence, and success!

Don’t be just another statistic of an unsuccessful attempt at a New Year’s resolution. In advance think seriously about your resolution, identify potential barriers, and develop a written plan. Don’t leave it to chance, your success is in your hands.

New York magazine has a fascinating piece looking at the black market currency power of Tide detergent, which is being stolen from stores all across the nation:

Tide bottles have become ad hoc street currency, with a 150-ounce bottle going for either $5 cash or $10 worth of weed or crack cocaine. On certain corners, the detergent has earned a new nickname: “Liquid gold.”

It’s not just for drugs either—people steal the detergent and sell them to other stores, too. Tide detergent is expensive even for wholesale prices, which means the profit margin is slim.

In general, a retailer clears just a few percentage points on a Tide purchase. A store that charges $19.99 for a 150-ounce bottle might claim $2 in profit. But if it buys stolen bottles for $5, that jumps to $15.

Other things I learned from the story: “the average U.S. consumer buys 68 pieces of clothing a year,” Tide is everyone’s favorite laundry detergent by far, and people are loyal to the brand regardless of what’s happening with the economy.

The  promotions department at HBO is giving away free rent for a year in celebration of the return of Girls. It will be paid in a single $24,000 check. (thx, Brokelyn)

December—the end of the year, encroaching darkness. Adam and I worked a lot and nestled when we could. Blustery winds rushed around the nooks and crannies of our little top-floor apartment, moaning softly. Long sleeps were lulled by this noise. We had a small Christmas tree-juniper bush squatting happily to one side of our couch, decked out in lights and baubles. On Christmas Eve impenetrable gray fog banks invaded the Georgia Piedmont, resulting in a strange and deadly Christmas Day thunderstorm.

I meant to have a simple Christmas and in some respects I did. Adam and I focused on our families and sharing the good fortune that we had in 2012 with them. We may not be in the ideal place in our lives and maybe we are frustrated with our jobs and the place we live, but we are doing better this year than last year, and we are thankful for what we do have.

We didn’t save any money in December, but we didn’t go into debt or anything either (total savings still $1,900), so I am mostly okay with that. We used what we would have saved to share with our family and to buy gifts for each other. I continued to plan out our meals (why didn’t I do this sooner?) and we have been eating very well because of it. In December we spent $616.79 on groceries, on target for my goal amount! I only ate out twice the entire month—two under-$10 work lunches—and there were zero dinners out. On nights when Adam worked the closing shift, instead of feeling somewhat lonely and morose as I sometimes do, I tried new recipes in the kitchen and filled our tiny apartment with the most savory smells.

It makes me feel good to make something that is equally good to eat as it is good for our budget. There is no joy in nasty TV dinners reheated in the microwave or ramen every night or peanut butter sandwiches all day, every day. All that food is super cheap but also super depressing. I have been choosing moderately-priced dishes that fulfill what I want out of food (that it be delicious and nourishing). I’m not any kind of an expert on cooking and budgeting (obviously, but maybe someday), but I made some good things this month that I would like to highly recommend and encourage you to make, and also some bad things this month that I would like to discourage you from ever attempting. Hopefully my experiments will encourage you, if you are in a similar position as me, to pick up a knife and set a pot to boil in the name of cash conservation and learning useful skills.

The Best of December
Jamie Oliver’s Perfect Roast Beef		$/Serving
Halfway devoured before I thought to take a picture.	This is so easy to make and so ridiculously delicious. The cut of meat is on the pricier side, but there aren’t any other fancy ingredients that drive the cost up. It’s just meat, potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, thyme, salt, pepper, olive oil & done! Make this! You will not regret it!	• Serves 6 • $23.53 total for me • $14.33 for roast, easy to adjust this cheaper or more expensive depending on cut of meat • $3.92/serving
Azizeh Koshki’s Chickpea and Chicken Dumplings		$/Serving
	These Iranian-Jewish versions of matzo balls taste like the most satisfying, belly-warming chicken soup you have ever had and then some. My fledgling writer skills are unable to fully explain how good these were and how often I will be making them again. The recipe has some unusual ingredients (chickpea flour?) but do not be deterred! This is pretty easy to make.	• Serves 8 • $28.65 total for me • I had to buy turmeric and cardamom, so that drove the cost up. Once you have chickpea flour and spices, you can roll that cost into future repetitions. • $3.58/serving for the first time. • $2.21/serving for next x times you make this (until you run out of flour/spices)
Lynn Rossetto Kasper’s Rice Noodle Salad		$/Serving
	Perfect for when you’re tired of heavy winter soups or when the long nights start getting to you. This salad has a lot of ingredients and requires a lot of chopping, but the end result is a gigantic yield of crunchy, spicy, tangy, noodle-y goodness. Each bite has so many textures and flavors that it is impossible to stop eating it.	• Serves 8+ (recipe says 4 but who only uses “6-8 cabbage leaves”?? not me) • $25.55 total for me • I had to buy fish sauce and rice vinegar, but that can be rolled into future iterations. • $3.19/serving for the first time. • $2.48/serving for next x times (until you run out of fish sauce/rice vinegar)
Muffins		$/Serving
	If you are a late sleeper and have to rush out the door every morning and wind up buying your breakfast or starving until lunch, make a batch of muffins for the week! I make mine with bananas, blueberries, or pumpkin, and with walnuts, chocolate, and/or crushed bran flakes thrown in for extra nutrition/energy. ½ cup sugar per batch at most so they aren’t too sweet. Very grab & go.	• Serves 12 • If you have zero baking ingredients, all of the things you need will probably cost ~$15.00 total, which is $1.25/muffin. For every batch you make after that, you just have to buy whatever you’re missing (can of pumpkin puree, chopped walnuts, etc.), which brings the cost/muffin down to a few cents/muffin. Value!
& More: Sliced ham & onion pizza topped with arugula that I would have wasted otherwise, amazing chicken noodle soup made with lots of onions, miso broth, and soba noodles, two more batches of the meatballs from last month, cilantro lime rice & beans with charred lime chicken, more basil pesto pasta, spinach and arugula salad mixed with homemade guacamole and pan frito. Tip: It turns out that most everyday meat goes on deep discount right after Christmas, even at fancy grocery stores! This is because most people buy special cuts of meat to celebrate the holidays with and there are a lot of beef scraps and chicken breasts that are passed over. I know this because I went shopping the Friday after Christmas and that is what the guy at the meat counter told me after I inquired why the grass-fed ground beef was marked down to $2/lb.
The Worst of December
Nigella Lawson’s Beet and Ginger Soup		$ Wasted
	This was gross. The recipe looked intriguing and I followed the instructions scrupulously, but the end result is unavoidably disgusting. Extremely tart, bitter, grainy, and watery. I gamely tried to eat it but wound up having to throw it all away which was frustrating. This is what I get for thinking I could totally compete on Chopped and be a cool avant-garde chef.	• Happily, not too much: $6.78
&More: I made two recipes from Smitten Kitchen: Deb’s Three-Bean Chili and Squash and Chickpea Moroccan Stew. Both were disappointingly mediocre. Not sure if I did something wrong? The chili was just an enormous quantity of beans and tomato puree. Bland, simple, and very filling. Too filling? Filling in only the way beans can be? Not lip-smacking good and very beany, is what I mean. The soup was very bland as well and it turns out I don’t like eating chunks of boiled squash. I salvaged this by adding a bunch of garlic and cayenne, pureeing the mixture, then putting it back in the pot and adding in chopped poached chicken with its water and chopped kale.

Last month I talked about a business idea I had, and I planned to try to launch it. This didn’t happen, but I still want to do it! I’m giving myself another chance since I am confident that if I put in the effort, I would start pulling in money pretty easily. It’s not a get-rich-quick scheme, more of a pad-the-wallet-a-little scheme, and since it is Internet-based I could take a tiny income stream with me wherever I go. I will keep updating as I proceed.

I made five goals last month and didn’t obtain any of them except #4 sort of, which was to keep my grocery spending down. I’m a little frustrated with my progress but I’m feeling peaceful and confident and excited mostly. I can do it! So can you! We can conquer our weaknesses! I have thought up a few obtainable goals for January that will help Adam and I greatly:

Goal 1: Immediately deposit a chunk of Adam’s pay into savings when he gets paid. I have learned that if we procrastinate on this, nothing gets saved.

Goal 2: Continue shaving away grocery costs and keep up the good progress in the kitchen.

Goal 3: Set alarms on our phones or get a marker board with a calendar so we know when to pay our bills!

Goal 4: Follow through on my business idea, or at least get started on it.

Goal 5: Find some free or cheap activities in Atlanta so we get out more often and our lives aren’t just work-home-work-home-park-home-etc. Suggestions welcome.

Previously: See Amanda’s “Betting on Love” series here.

Amanda Tomas is feeling cautiously optimistic about the New Year.

Over the past few years of working as both a journalist and a bartender, I’ve realized that the skills needed for both jobs are pretty much the same. They’re both about convincing strangers that you’re their new best friend.

A few rules that apply to both bar customers and sources:

1. Everyone loves to talk about themselves. In both cases, as long as you keep them talking you’ll be OK. Nod and smile, look shocked when appropriate, ask for more information about boring crap you don’t care about. When bartending, occasionally slip in an offer for another drink, when reporting, occasionally slip in a question you actually want the answer to.

2. Turn on the flattery. People go to bars and talk to journalists because they want validation. In the bar, it’s your job to let people think they’re not losers, that they have a friend in you, and that ohmygod their jokes are SO FUNNY! They’ll want to stay for more, and they’ll tip you as if you really were friends. When reporting, it’s your job to agree with your source’s side of the story (while talking to them, not while writing). Reassure them that they’re in the right, and they’ll keep elaborating for you just how right they are.

3. Let them think they’re winning. Sources tend to think that you’re there to tell the story as they want it told, that you’re some kind of free PR person. It’s usually easier to just let them believe that while you get the information you need. Likewise, sometimes a bar customer who you’ve seen once or twice wants their friends to think they’re a regular. They tell stories about the last time they were there and act like you’re old friends. If you play along and give them a free drink while their friends are watching, you’ll get a good tip.

4. Don’t get taken advantage of. As much as bartending and journalism involve lots of flattery and smiles, both also require finely tuned bullshit radar. No real adult leaves their ID at home and then expects to be served in a bar. Anyone that will argue with you about an ID is probably a teenager. Kick them out. And everyone you interview has an agenda. They’ll tell you what they want to see in print, whether it’s the truth or not. It’s up to you to draw the line and recognize bullshit.

5. Be quick. This one is kind of a given with bartending (or should be, anyway), but don’t leave an empty glass sitting on the bar. Always ask a customer right away if they want another one so they know that your whole world revolves around whether or not they have everything they need. Likewise, when your source starts freaking out (which they often will), respond right away so they don’t start getting paranoid. Be quick with the email version of a finger to the lips and a soothing head rub.

6. Know when to call it. Sometimes a bar customer has just had enough and needs to be kicked out, and sometimes a source is just more trouble than they’re worth and it’s time find a way to write around them.

Lilly O’Donnell blogs about women’s issues for Bust Magazine, and rants about America’s student debt crisis to anyone who will listen. She’s also working on her first book; a biography of her deceased artist father and a study of the creative lifestyle. She tweets. 

At The Atlantic, Matthew O’Brien explains everything you never wanted to know about the TRILLION-DOLLAR COIN. (“[Supporters'] logic is that as silly as the trillion-dollar coin sounds, the debt ceiling is far sillier — and much more destructive.”)

Our pals at LearnVest have a really nice piece by a woman diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and how the disease is bankrupting her family:

The thing you need to understand about MS is that there is no cure. There’s no getting better–there is only slowing down the progression of the disease. Statistically, my life expectancy is about average, but the last years of my life will look different from other people as my disease progresses. I’m lucky that I now have full mobility, with only the occasional muscle twinge–and I keep it that way with a daily self-injection.

As the years go by, the price goes up. Since I was diagnosed, the prescription for the injection has risen from $2,800 to $3,600 a month. If I didn’t have health insurance, which covers all but $250 a month, it would cost me $43,000 a year.

These numbers sound insane–but what would you pay to be able to see? Or walk? Or swallow? It’s all relative. I look at my syringe every day, hoping that the $120 dose is working.

She’s also prepared to get a divorce from her husband (but continue living with him) so her finances are no longer tied to his. It’s a very sad account.