Great Ways to Slash Your Electric Bill

I've seen and heard many comments lately about how impossible it is to save money, especially since people "can't save money on food, gas or utilities".

I beg to differ.

Over the next few days I'll be posting a series of blog updates on different ways to lower your electricity consumption and reduce that monthly bill.

First however, let me lead with the results. Here is my electricity usage for the month of February in 2007, 2008 and 2009 (in kilowatt hours per day, or kWh):

'07 - 9.9 kWh
'08 - 9.3 kWh
'09 - 4.5 kWh

That's right - I cut my electricity consumption in half, and my goal in March is to creep below 4.0 kWh. Two notes - this is in a month where I'm not running my AC and I heat my home with gas.

How did I do it? Stay tuned!

Composting Made Easy (and Cheap!)

Vermicomposting is the art of using worms to break down organic matter and create nourishing, high-quality compost.

Here is a link to a nifty little page showing you how to start composting at home for a minimal investment (less than $10).

File Your Taxes For Free

Did you know that large tax preperation companies have parterned with the IRS to file your taxes for free (as long as your adjusted gross income is $56,000 or less in 2008 - which applies to more than 70% of US taxpayers).

Check out the IRS website for details and to find a list of tax providers!

Interested in free state income tax filing?  Check out this website to find out whether your state supports free e-filing.

Some Sound Financial Advice

Credit Cards For Your Retirement

Especially in these tough economic times, rewards cards are a popular way to earn cash rebates, gift cards or other free stuff in return for paying the bills that we have to pay anyway.

But how about rewards cards that deposit your savings in a brokerage or IRA account?

It's in an interesting idea, and since the money is staying with the institution offereing the card, the rebates are actually fairly high - 2% cash back on all purchases.

Interested?  Check it out:

Fidelity Investments: the Fidelity Retirement Rewards Cards (AMEX).  Users earn 2% cash back on all purchases, with no limit on points.  All rebates are deposited in a Fidelity traditional, Roth or SEP IRA.  You're still limited to regular contribution limits though.

Nest-Eggz: the Next-Eggz card (Visa). Users earn 1% cash back that can be directed to any retirement or investment account.

Schwab: the Schwab Bank Invest First Signature (Visa).  Users earn 2% cash back, deposited into a Schwab (taxable) brokerage account.

Of course, as with any benefits card these rebates are only worth it if you pay your balance IN FULL each month.  It makes no sense to pay 17% interest in order to get 2% back!

How to Make Money Blogging

All right. Let's get down to brass tacks. The real question is: how do you make real money at blogging?

Well, not easily. The only real way to earn money through blogging is by selling advertising.  Do you see the adwords links on the right hand side of the screen? Well, try clicking on one of those. Come on- try it. Every click generates a tiny, tiny bit of revenue. It's called Google Adwords, and it's revolutionized the online marketing industry. 

Want to make a go of it? Well, there are three rules to producing a good quality weblog that people might be interested in reading:

• You need dedication. Go two weeks without posting and you've lost your audience completely.
• You need talent. Write with wit and humor. Dense prose? Dry words? Fageddaboutit.
• You need to pick a theme or a niche that is useful to your audience and that they'll keep coming back for.
  

One good way to do all of the above is to start blogging about something you enjoy.  Do you like going to farmer's market?  Start rating your area's farmers markets and interviewing organic farmers.  Biking?  Review trails and post your miles on a specialized Google map.  Frisbee golf? An updated listing of events and games would do.

It's important to try and find a niche that others aren't exploiting.  You can do video game reviews, but so do a million other people and they've got an awful big head start.

One good sign that you've found a empty niche is not being able to find what you're looking for on the internet.  In other words, if you can't find something then other folks have the same problem.

That being said, blogging is easy to get into. Visit www.blogger.com and you can get rolling in a few minutes. Also, for a few other practical tips, check this out... Good luck, blogger!

The Simplest Way to Improve Your Gas Mileage

There have been many newspaper articles, spirited discussions and television stories on the future of energy and the automobile. I have heard about hybrid cars, fuel cells, solar powered vehicles, light rail systems, biodiesel and power beamed by lasers. And yet how much of this has practical use right now?

You can improve your mileage significantly by following two simple rules. First, obey the speed limit! The faster your car goes, the more work the engine has to do. Second, watch for stop signs and speed limit changes so that you can slow down a little bit before you have to. By not leaning so heavily on the brakes, you also improve your gas mileage by up to 5 miles per hour.

How to Cut Your Water Use by 40%

1. Buy low-flow aerators for all of your bathroom and kitchen faucets.

2. While you're at it buy a low-flow shower head.



3. Your dishwasher (probably) uses 7 gallons of water per wash. Do your dishes by hand instead.

4. Buy yourself a brick or two. Place them in your toilet to displace water.




5. This one's simple: when you wash your clothes, fill the washing machine up. If you can adjust the size of the load, never wash for a larger load than you actually have.

6. Try to use all your hot water in one shot. If you need to wash your whites, try to time it so that you can do your dishes first, then shower and turn on the washing machine. This prevents warm water from filling the pipes and cooling down more than once. It also reduces the amount of water you waste in the shower waiting for warmer agua.

7. Consider saving your dishwater and using to to water your plants or garden, at least in the summertime.

Your Dishwasher Is Running-Stop It!

How much is your dishwasher costing you?

After doing some research, I realized that my dishwasher constitutes over 10% of my monthly electricity bill.

I do about 3 loads of dishes per week. At 7 gallons for a normal cycle, that's 21 gallons of heated water. Considering that I have low flow aerators installed on all my faucets, I can get by with less than 3 gallons by handwashing.

I checked this website to get some idea of the cost of electricity and, after finding some basic data on my washer's specs, determined that it cost $3.41 per month.

Switch to Fluorescent

I recently completed the switch to all-fluorescent light bulbs. They use significantly less electricity and each bulb saves you something like $20 over its lifetime. The only problem is that they are relatively expensive when compared to cheap incandescents. So I compromised: rather than plunking down $70 on light bulbs, I've been buying one or two at a time over a year's time. My electricity costs have been gradually falling and I didn't have to devote a significant amount of cash toward bulbs.

As a side benefit, I have only changed one bulb in the last six months! Since they last a lot longer than traditional bulbs, I hope to be able to go a year at a time without having to futz with swapping bulbs from now on.

Ways to Make Money Online: If MTurk is the Paymaster, Does that Make Me a Janissary?

Once upon a time, a web browser stumbled on mturk.com. It promised a slightly different way to make money. Run by those nice folks at Amazon, mturk is a sophisticated way to loosely organize a large number of people to do many different kinds of tasks and get paid for it.

It's simple:  businesses post rewards for the completion of tasks.  Perform the task to the bidder's satisfaction and you get paid.  Amazon handles the details.

Does it work? More important for our purposes: is there money in it?

The answer is, maybe. There are opportunities to earn real money. For example, amazon has partnered with cellular companies (somehow). A subscriber will type into his or her phone a question; say, 'good pizza in raleigh NC'. That request will go out to the mturk website where folks have a chance to accept the challange and find an answer. While those types of questions are worth, literally, pennies, by answering enough questions correctly, turkers can earn anywhere between a $5 and $50 payout each week.

Other business work through mturk also. For example, www.castingwords.com is a podcast transcription company that posts transcription tasks. Successfully complete the transcription and you'll earn a payout. Jobs work out to be about $10 - $12 per hour.

Oh, if you're wondering about quality assurance, mturk uses a simple feedback tool - post a good answer, transcript, etc and your score goes up. Higher-level tasks require higher ratings; conversely, provide too much junk and soon you won't be able to bid on projects anymore.

The First Rule of Personal Finance

It's easier to save $100 ten times than $1,000 once.

I first tried to save money by started with the biggest expenses.  And I did save money, actually, but that well quickly ran out. For most people, the biggest monthly expenses like rent/mortgage, taxes, car payments are hard to control without draconian measures.

But all hope is not lost!  In my case, I discovered that 30% of my income was spent on "small ticket" items of less than $100 per month. Yet these expenses added up to more than $15,000 per year.

This leads me to my first rule of personal finance: it's easier to save $100 ten times than $1,000 once. 

Becoming wealthy, or even free of debt, isn't a matter of winning the lottery or picking the right stock. It's the result of the hundreds or thousands of small decisions that we make day by day, every month. Unfortunately, this probably sounds a lot like work; then again nothing worth doing was ever achieved without effort.

The Easiest Way to Clip Coupons - Ever!

Check out www.coupons.com.  Sign-up or browse as a guest, you can enjoy the hassle free benefits of saving money without flipping through a million ad inserts every day.  

Not only can you browse different categories of offers, but you can enter your own zip code for customized savings available only in your area!

Grab the coupons you want, print them out and use them in any store that accepts manufacturer's coupons.

As an added bonus, if you can't find the offer you're looking for at coupons.com, check out the manufacturer's website. A lot of times they will have additional special offers and promotions.

As a final note - you'll need Internet Explorer if you'd like to use these websites. I have tried other popular browsers (Firefox, Opera, Chrome) and have had some problems.  IE, on the other hand, has worked every time.

Life is good!

How To Lower Your Bills - For Free!

A great article from the New York Times:

IF someone said that you could reduce your bills by a significant amount by taking one simple step — and this step would be neither time-consuming nor embarrassing — wouldn’t you want to know what it was? It’s as simple as this: Just call and ask.

I'm a militant believer in this. Over the past four years, I've switched car insurance 6 times (saving $1,500 per year), phone service 3 times ($80 per year) and cut back on cable ($100 per year). I've also switched credit cards twice (better rates and bonus plans) and set up four or five different bank accounts for better rates.

It's been some work but I've saved literally thousands of dollars per year.

Cheap Movies at Kerasotes or AMC Theaters!

Interested in cheap movies?

If you live near a Kerasotes movie theater, sign up for their "Five Buck Club".  Every Thursday you'll get a emailed list of their movies that you can go see for only $5. Generally you'll have to wait a week or three after premiere, so if that's not a big deal check it out.  Best of all, it's free!

AMC Theaters have a similar program called The Moviewatcher Club.  Watch movies, get stuff.  Again, there's no cost to join.

Don't live near an AMC or Kerasotes theater?  Check out your local chain - they may offer similar programs, if you ask.

Be Gourmet With Less: 12 Ingredients that Add Zest to any Meal

From Wisebread.com, 

My personal favorite:

"Toasted nuts – Just about any nut can add some crunch and depth to your recipes. Julie Languille, of Dinners in a Flash, favors toasted hazelnuts, pinenuts, and almonds. She suggests adding a few tablespoons to salad and pasta for an extra special treat! "

Check out the rest of the article here.

Watch All Your Favorite TV Shows On Demand Using An EEE PC

I recently bought an Asus EEE netbook (4 G version) and it's great! Here's what CNet had to say:

For less than $400, the Asus Eee PC 4G offers an impressive package for portable Web surfing and basic productivity, as long as you keep expectations tempered. The incredibly approachable price outweighs any shortcomings; it's a near perfect choice for a highly portable second or backup laptop.

I bought mine for less than $300 and I use it not only as a laptop, but I've connected it to my kitchen flat panel television for use as a streaming media device. It's great! I can go to YouTube, Hulu.com or any of the major broadcasters and get virtually every television show on broadcast or cable - for free and on demand.

Hulu especially has thousands of episodes of the latest shows , and the average episode contains less than two minutes of commercials. Why pay for cable tv?

Comed (Exelon) Customers: Save an Easy $40! Off Your Utility Bill

Sign up for Comed's air conditioner cycling program and save $10 off your electricity bill every month from June - September.  The catch?  On the absolute hottest days, Comed might turn off your air conditioner for up to 3 hours on weekdays between 11am and 8pm.

Hot tip: this summer, my air conditioner never shut down - it simply didn't get hot enough to drive electricity prices that high.

A chance to reduce energy, reduce pollution (because it prevents backline, dirty coal-fired plants from starting up) and save money!

Interested in other ways to cut your electricity bill?  Check out Comed's Smart Ideas page for more tips and resources!

Skype and Virgin Mobile: Save 20% On Phone Bills!

Two years ago, I dropped my landline in favor of Skype ($.02 / minute) and a pay as you go cellphone through Virgin Mobile USA ($.25 / minute - no monthly charges).

In the last 12 months, I've spent $125.45 on phone bills. Reviewing VMUsa for some options, I noticed that they had adjusted one of the tiers: $.20 per minute with no fixed monthly fees. Moving to the new plan will save me 20% off the top!

Virgin Mobile also has a program where you can watch and rate web ads to "earn airtime in your spare time". And since I've been earning about 25 minutes of free airtime a week, I'm pretty sure that I'll be able to cut my overall expenses in half over the next 12 months.

Check out their website - Virgin Mobile has several different plan options.  If you do decide to get a phone, enter code X6MVqMNp when you activate it online. We'll both get a free $20 in airtime.  You can also pick up Virgin Mobile phones at Best Buy or Walmart, I think.

15 Ways to Save Money On Gas

Here are more ways to save on gas.

Car maintenance
1. Keep the tires inflated properly. This one is simple and a potential lifesaver. Underinflated tires waste fuel and wear out the tire tread. Also, check tires regularly for alignment and balance.

2. A well-tuned engine burns less gas. Get regular tuneups and follow through with routine maintenance. The right parts and fresh oil keep your engine happy and less thirsty for gas.

3. Get the junk out of the trunk. A weighed-down car uses more fuel. For every extra 250 pounds your engine hauls, the car loses about one mile per gallon in fuel economy. Carry only the basic emergency equipment and items you really need.

Gas shopping
4. Buy the lowest grade (octane) of gasoline that is appropriate for your car. Check your owner's manual for this information. As long as your engine doesn't knock or ping, the fuel you're using is fine. You can save hundreds of dollars a year.

5. Pay cash at stations that charge extra for credit cards.

6. Don't top off the gas tank. Too much gas will just slosh or seep out. Why waste those extra pennies?

Driving
7. Drive intelligently; don't make fast starts or sudden stops. You're just overexerting your engine and burning extra fuel. Gradual acceleration also helps automatic transmissions run better. Engine-revving wastes fuel, too.

“The faster you drive, the more gas you use.”

8. Lighten up on the accelerator. The faster you drive, the more gas you use. Speed limits have gone up around most of the nation, but you don't have to see your fuel consumption go up drastically as well. For example, driving at 55 mph rather than 65 mph can improve your fuel economy by two miles per gallon.

9. Avoid long warm-ups. Even on cold winter mornings, your car doesn't need more than a minute to get ready to go. Anything more and you're just burning up that expensive fuel.

10. Combine errands into one trip and plan your stops for the most efficient route. You'll save yourself time and money.

11. Do not rest your left foot on the brake. The slightest pressure could cause a drag that will demand additional gas use -- and wear out the brakes sooner.

Other good habits
12. Tighten up that gas cap. Make sure it's on securely. Buy a new one if your current cap doesn't fit snugly. Gas easily evaporates from the tank if it has an escape.

13. Buy a fuel-efficient car. When pricing cars, factor in long-term fuel costs. Keep in mind that sunroofs add to wind resistance, lowering the mileage per gallon.

14. Be smart with the air conditioning. On the highway, closed windows decrease air resistance, so run the air conditioner. But in stop-and-go traffic, shutting off the air conditioning and opening the windows can lighten your fuel use. Air conditioning can lower your fuel economy by 10 percent to 20 percent.

15. Remove snow tires in good weather. Deep tread and big tires use more fuel.