I have been so impressed with many of the responses to this recent Reader Poll About Emergency Funds.  Next week, I’ll write a post, summarizing many of those responses, and share the final poll results with you.

Some of the comments (and a couple of emails that I received) really got me to thinking.  So, I turn, once again, to my loyal readers.

If you had a chance to talk to a personal finance ‘newbie’ – What would you say to them?  Imagine advising a recent high school or college graduate, a young married couple, a single-parent, a teenager working at her first job.  What advice would you have for them?

I’d love to read your practical tips for newbies – simple, everyday choices which will lead to successful futures.  Your comments can be as detailed as you’d like, but what I’m looking for are tips that are easy to understand, realistic, and universal.  I’m thinking about things like – managing a checkbook, reducing fees, managing credit cards, understanding interest, things to avoid, building better budgets, etc.

Once several of you leave comments, I’ll summarize the results and present the ‘best-of-the-best’ in a post.

I don’t really do “contests”.  But, for the first 200 people who contribute a practical tip, I’ll donate one dollar to a local charity.  So, your comments will not only help those who read the blog, they’ll also help a local child go to camp!

Side note:  A few months ago, I asked my fellow personal finance bloggers to submit their very best personal finance tips.  If you are a blogger and your best tip is not listed, leave a comment here (or over at the ‘very best tips‘ post) and I’ll add your link to the original list.

This month’s poll is pretty straightforward -

Do You Use A Written Budget?

(By “written” – I mean an actual budget – one that is written down, or typed into a spreadsheet, or entered into some type of budgeting software.  In other words, the budget actually “exists”  – somewhere besides “in your mind”.)

I’ll leave this poll up for a few weeks.

Here are the results from last month’s poll – Are You Debt Free?

Number of votes – 590

57% of voters are ‘working on it’. If you add both “yes” categories together, 40% of voters are either debt free with a mortgage, or debt free without a mortgage! Awesome. (3% of voters are not focused on debt reduction…)

I also asked folks to share their stories – click here to read about their awesome progress!

I have decided to leave this poll up for another month, so please click over and vote!

Did you happen to see Oprah today? (I rarely watch her show – but my wife was watching and she called today’s show to my attention.) Oprah interviewed a woman who had hidden – wait for it – more than $50,000 in debt from her husband. (I was going to write an article about the show, but Dedicated to Financial Freedom has already done a nice job of recapping.) If you want to see clips of the show, click here to visit Oprah’s site. (By the way, I’m not a big fan of Suze Orman, and I think she was a little harsh on the husband – but she does a very good job of setting this couple straight.)

After watching the show, I was left with huge questions -

Do you hide money / purchases / debt from your spouse?

How could she spend thousands of dollars a MONTH and her husband never notice?

Is there really THAT much pressure to “keep up with the Joneses”?

Is the fact that my wife and I sit down and discuss our finances THAT rare of a thing?

Do we have an entire generation of couples / individuals / students who are addicted to credit and debt?

I know that folks struggle with debt, but I figured (naively, I’m sure) that most couples were struggling together – for richer, for poorer and all that jazz. Wow.