Doing good in a "bad" economy

A couple of good articles today on get rich slowly and the simple dollar. On get rich slowly JD wrote:

"Whatever happens, I’m going to pursue the get rich slowly philosophy. It’s worked for me so far, and I’m confident that it will work in the future (whatever that may bring). I will:

Avoid debt.
Spend less than I earn.
Maintain an emergency fund.
Track my spending.
Exercise frugality.
Save for my retirement.
Ignore the media hype."

I cannot say that I have personally been practicing all of these. We are starting to spend less, building an emergency fund, sporadically tracking spending (thank you Mint), thinking about frugality, doing some retirement savings and reading lots of media. However, we are on track and discussing practicing them. Baby steps, right?

On simple dollar, the author wrote, "Every single minute, you have choices in life. You can sit there twiddling your thumbs and reading TMZ or you can bust your hump getting a great project done on time. You can burn $30 at the bookstore, or you can go to the library and get those same books for free. You can spend your evening watching television, or you can use it to educate yourself."

Good stuff.