Each Monday, The Simple Dollar opens up the reader mailbags and answers ten to twenty simple questions offered up by the readers on personal finance topics and many other things. Got a question? Ask it in the comments. You might also enjoy the archive of earlier reader mailbags.

I baked a loaf of bread yesterday. It was delicious. It was easy. It was cheap.

Every time I’m at the grocery store, I find myself putting at least one “new” product into my cart. Why do I do this? What is the allure of these new products? A reporter over at Neuromarketing has recently been discussing studies that suggest humans are hardwired to find “new products (and even repackaged old products) attractive.” From the article:

A friend of mine was in Paris recently, and he wrote me an email about how, while sitting in a café, and, as it happens, helping me out by editing a draft of THE HAPPINESS PROJECT book, he decided to apply his own happiness resolutions.

“You are what you eat” - popular saying

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote: "If the need for a product has to be created by the manufacturer, if aggressive marketing is required to convince people to buy the product, can the product, no matter how renewable its materials, really be called sustainable? Because isn't using resources to make things we don't even need the definition of waste?"

Just one look and my jaw dropped… I was at an art fair out in Bucks County, PA last weekend when it happened. Strolling through the food area, I took a quick glance to my right to see a booth with a sign, front and center, that read… “Taste My Nuts.”

By Xin LuStephen T. McClellan is a seasoned securities analyst who has more than 32 years experience with several different well known investment firms.

Teddy Roosevelt & John Muir at Yosemite Valley Photo from Teddy Roosevelt.com This is a guest post by Sara Ost. Sara is the editor of the fast-growing blog ecosalon.com, where sexy, smart women are hoping you men will get with the program already. (A little secret: what women really want is for you to lead.)

Each Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal productivity, personal development, or business/entrepreneurship book of interest. I like Michael Masterson’s books. In the past, I’ve given high marks to three of his works: Automatic Wealth, Automatic Wealth for Grads, and Ready, Fire, Aim.

Sometimes we in the United States forget how privileged we are. Because of our relative wealth, we can make claims like “it’s more important to be happy than it is to be rich”. In this guest post, Saravanan P of Engineer’s Finance argues that for the poor, money is more important than happiness.

By Will ChenWelcome to Wise Bread's Best of the Web roundup. So when should you buy organic? Here’s a little primer on which organic foods you should work into your budget and which ones you can pass up. Chaos in the Kitchen

At a couple of my other sites, I’ve mentioned that our Nintendo Wii died recently. “What happened?” people have been asking. “How did it die?” I don’t actually know what caused the problem, but it stopped reading discs. (I suspect it died from overuse or from cat fur — or perhaps from a combination of the two.)

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!Cancel your daily print newspaper subscription. My umbrella has wifi!Temptations to buy clutter are everywhere — even in cool gadgets. Reader question: Dealing with a cluttery significant other“I wonder if you can address what to do when one person in a relationship is content to be a clutterer, and the other person desires to be clutter-free.”