Whew, the end of yet another week. Can you believe it’s already November? It seemed like only yesterday I was trying to figure out what to get my wife for Valentine’s Day and already we’re planning for Thanksgiving in a few short weeks. It’s been a heck of a year so far, though we still have a little bit to go, and while things haven’t been too rough, I know that everyone’s been dealing with challenges this year. One thing we can be thankful for is that we’re still here, still kicking, and 2010 is just a few weeks away. Keep your head up and keep fighting, you only fail if you give up.

I hope you enjoy this week’s picks:

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If you’re an American Express cardmember, you probably recognize the annual mailings from American Express about their cardmember gifts. They usually send out a couple of these types of offers each year and if you’re like, many of them go into the recycling bin. The one I always remember is the offer of an appointment book and day planner, but they do a lot more.

This year, the offer is for a 2009 Food & Wine Annual Cookbook that has a retail value of $29.95 (you can buy it from Amazon for $19.77 plus shipping). For the cost of shipping and handling, $2.99, we can get this book for free just because we’re a specially selected Cardmember. There is a money back guarantee on the shipping and handling costs too. If I don’t like the book, I can return it within 90 days of the billing date and get a full refund.

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All too often we go through our lives spending a little here, a little there. We make these purchases automatically because they can be so small and so routine that we forget we even make it. A lot of these things are habits, like smoking, or they’re part of our daily routine, like a cup of coffee in the morning. In this video, I talk about how you should take a look at all those small purchases because over time they can accumulate into something bigger.

I also want to thank the fine folks at Intuit and TurboTax for supporting Bargaineering and sponsoring this video. With the end of the year coming, you’re bound to see a lot of tax related articles everywhere as people give advice on what you should do before the end of the year, so it’s fitting that TurboTax is the inaugural sponsor of these videos. If you’re on Twitter, I invite you to follow @TurboTax for more information on tax and product news straight from the experts.

And before you go, one thing I want to emphasize was that the point of this video wasn’t to convince you to avoid making small purchases like coffee and cigarettes. You should spend your money on whatever makes you happy, but I believe understanding the full impact of those decisions is important in making that decision.

What are you thoughts on the video? If you like it, I would love it if you could leave a comment or tell Vimeo you liked it!

Are you taking advantage of the only loyalty rewards program in the personal finance blogging world?

The Bargaineering Bucks system rewards you for doing things on the site such as visiting daily and commenting on posts. Over seven hundred readers have signed up and earned over 26,733 “Bargaineering Bucks” that you’ve spent in the Bargaineering Store for wonderful prizes such as ING Direct promotional referrals, popular personal finance books, USB thumb drives, copies of Quicken, and so many more wonderfully awesome prizes.

Earning a buck for logging in is a new way to earn points, made live earlier today. If you thought you were missing out before, don’t worry! We’ve been testing the feature and wanted to make sure we got it right before rolling out.

You can earn bucks just by registering for the site and doing what you do already. Right now the two easiest ways to earn points require no extra effort. For every day you visit, you earn a buck. For every comment you leave, you earn a buck. You just have to make sure you’re logged in or the systems won’t know who to award the buck to.

Is this worth the extra hassle? Yes!

Reader daemondust only recently discovered the site and has been commenting furiously, racking up 157 ββ that he’s put towards about ten ING Direct referrals in the Bargaineering Store. If you have an ING Direct account with some referrals left, then you know each referral is worth $10 to you. Daemondust has already made $100 by participating in the site and doing nothing extra, he just makes sure he’s logged in before he comments!

So the question I ask you is … are you earning your Bargaineering Bucks?

(Photo: sokwanele)

When Ramit approached me about writing about his new I Will Teach You To Be Rich Boot Camp, I was a little hesitant. I was hesitant because I didn’t really know much about him, despite writing a few pages in his New York Times bestselling book I Will Teach You To Be Rich, and I didn’t know if it would really be worth it.

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Think back to elementary school, can you remember how many times your school had a fire drill? They were never announced ahead of time, the bells just rang, everyone got up, lined up, and left the building in an orderly fashion. Everyone knew what they were supposed to do because it was scripted ahead of time. No one panicked because we always assumed it was a drill, even when it wasn’t. (which puzzles me why all of my employers pre-announced rare fire drills)

When was the last time you had a financial fire? Maybe the car broke down or you broke a window in your house. Maybe you were one of the many millions who lost your job last year. I bet, in most cases, you weren’t sure what to do afterwards.

That’s why I’m recommending that you conduct a financial fire drill.

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It’s Monday and that means we have another episode of the Personal Finance Hour where JD of Get Rich Slowly and I will discuss financial rules of thumb. I’ve always believed that rules of thumb are a good way to get a quick handle on a decision but it can’t be your only handle. You need to do a proper analysis of the situation before you make a decision. We’ll discuss a lot of rules of thumb from saving 10% of your salary to asset allocation according to age (yep, the 120 minus your age rule will certainly be featured).

The show will be on live at 6PM Eastern, 3PM Pacific and will be broadcast at this page, if you want to listen to it (it’s also recorded, so you can go to that page to listen in after it airs). As always, you can call in and listen live at 347-327-9144 to chat with us or just listen in the background.

Or click play on this widget (after 6PM on Mondays it will be that week’s show, before then and you’ll get last week’s show):

We are also on iTunes and you can subscribe by clicking on this link, which will open up iTunes.

We hope you get the chance to listen, perhaps call in and chat, or just pop on into the chat room to hang out. It can get a little rowdy in there but it’s good times I promise!

A year or so ago, I’d do weekly roundups highlighting some personal finance articles that I really enjoyed each week. Sometime within the last year, I fell behind and soon abandoned these articles because I felt like they weren’t adding much value. Well, over the last few weeks, a few new readers have told me that they discovered Bargaineering from roundups on other sites.

So, I’ve decided to bring these Weekly Roundups back in order to share with you some other websites I personally enjoy and hope that you will to. These will be once weekly and I will try not to link to the same sites because that really doesn’t help you find new and fun places to spend your valuable time.

And yes, that’s a Pontiac Firebird. It’s not a Phoenix, but it’s close enough!

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This is a guest post by Danny Kofke, a special education teacher and author of How to Survive (and Perhaps Thrive) on a Teacher’s Salary. Danny and I have been emailing back and forth for the better part of the last month or two, working on a guest post about children and allowances. I asked Danny to write this post because it involves a hotly debated topic in parenting – should you tie your kid’s allowance to their chores? Or should they do chores “for free” because they are part of the family? Here’s his take.

My wife, Tracy, is a stay-at-home mom to my two young daughters – Ava, age 5 and Ella, 2. We don’t make a large salary so we have to be frugal with our money. We are trying to pass on our values to our children. Ava gets an allowance every week for the chores she does. We check each chore off on a daily basis and at the end of the week Ava gets paid for doing these chores.

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Last night, on the 25th episode of the Personal Finance Hour, we discussed mostly about budgeting and touched on some popular budgeting tools. PearBudget is an online budget management tool, mentioned by both JD and members of the chatroom, that I had never heard of.

PearBudget’s tagline is “really simple budgeting” and it delivers on that promise. Within ten minutes, I was able to setup a budget and begin tracking expenses without even entering an email address. You can play with the full tool right from the start, without even registering. That’s uncommon in any tool, let along a budgeting one.

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