Last week’s show covered a topic that’s been well documented on both of our sites: gardening. We had an interesting discussion on a variety of topics including our varied climates, growing techniques (pots vs. in the ground), fertilizers, and choice of plants. We also had callers, most notably William, who joined us on the call to discuss organic/heirloom seeds and share his experience with using manure in the garden.
Click here to listen to the Personal Finance Hour show on Gardening.
Posts of the Week
Jim’s post of the week was The Best Time to Start Thinking About Money from Poorer Than You, a blog written by Stephanie, a recent college graduate in her 20’s. Stephanie joined us on the show to talk about her experience getting into credit card debt, dropping out of school, only to turn it all around and graduate a few years later, getting on the Dean’s List every term after she went back, and without credit card debt! It’s a great motivational story if you’re in debt, regardless of your age.
J.D.’s favorite blog post of the week comes from Philip Brewer at Wise Bread. Brewer just wrote about trying to reverse-engineer the best time of your life. “Why should the best time of your life be some time in the past?” he writes. “With some clear thinking and some effort, you can recapture what was great then for today.” What he’s really talking about is Mihály Csíkszentmihályi’s concept of flow. It’s a powerful thing.
Trivia
Last week’s trivia question was “Can you name the first modern mutual fund and the year it was created? ” to which Dana, our week’s winner, submitted the correct answer of Massachusetts Investors’ Trust formed in 1924. She will be receiving a $20 gift card to Starbucks!
This week’s trivia is gardening related and the winner will be able to pick their choice of a gardening book from Amazon.com. Charles Darwin is best known for expounding the theory of natural selection. But as a naturalist, he explored a variety of subjects. In his final book, he wrote about this garden helper, saying:
“The plow is one of the most ancient and most valuable of man’s inventions; but long before he existed, the land was in fact regularly plowed and still continues to be thus plowed by [X]. It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world, as have these lowly organized creatures.”
Without using Google, can you name this beneficial garden critter?
