As many bloggers do, I read other blogs on the topics of interest to me. In the category of Frugal, I’m always interested to see how others are suggesting their readers save money and how they live the frugal life. Just a few weeks back, I ran across 25 ways I save money, the compilation of a five part series of money saving ideas. I think the list is great, it includes things I’ve mentioned in this new series such as using the library, buying in bulk (Costco), and using coupons.
But a few good ideas I’ve not mentioned here;
Cooking for multiple days, I’ve posted on this on my daughter’s site Another Fine Meal.com along with a number of recipes that freeze well so you can cook up a storm and then have a number of meals ready when you need them. A good way to avoid take out food.
Using a water filter. I wish our town’s water tasted good enough to drink, but it doesn’t. A Brita filter was the answer. From the 89 cents per gallon for the store brand spring water, to the 40 gallons of filtered water for the $4 or so filter cost, a savings of over $30. Not to mention the saved time not having to make the extra stop to grab the case of gallons.
Last, today, I’ll mention the compact fluorescent bulbs, 100W worth of brightness (actually about 1700 lumens, the correct term for light intensity) for 23W. A bit of math, I have rooms with 4 ceiling lights, by using CF I save just under 300W, or about 6 cent for every hour anyone is in that room with the lights on (calculated at about 20 cents per KWH.)
Regular reader Augustine points out a better way to view these savings. Countrywide, the average cost is 10 cents per KWh. So one bulb will save you about .77 cents per hour of use. At $2.50 (I just bought a 2 pack for $5), the breakeven is just 325 hrs of use. (I think we may both need to double check our math.) These bulbs claim a 10,000 hour life, so quite a bit of savings to be had.
Take a look at the full list of 25 and see how many ideas you can start to add to your daily routine.
Joe
{ }
“The market has averaged 10.4%, long term.” Well, that may be, but for any period shorter than “long term,” we need to be careful how we make our projections. Let’s look at what happens when we ignore that lesson.
(A right click will open the chart for better viewing) From this chart of the S&P, you can see that from 1980 to 1990 if you simply drew a straight line, and continued that line through 2000, stocks continued on an amazing return path. Note, the graph is semi-log, which means that a straight line represents constant annual growth. So if the S&P grew at exactly the same rate from 1990 to 2000 as the decade prior, the graph would follow the straight line. From 1990-1995 it underperformed a bit, but then accelerated and grew above the trend line I drew. Now, if instead of adjusting the line to a higher growth rate we simply continues to extend it, the S&P would have a present value of 3600, nearly 4 times where we are today. 9 years ago, 3600 was just an extension of a 20 year long trend, now it seems like a lifetime away.
{ }
Not long ago, I used the expression “sounds like a broken record” regarding a classmate of my 10 yr old. He had been repeating the same issue over and over in class, and that simile seemed accurate. But my daughter, never having seen a record asked what that expression even meant. Hmmm.
I call a business associate and her voice mail greeting suggests that to have the call transferred, I can “dial zero” to get the operator, but to my younger coworkers, who may have never seen a rotary phone, what does ‘dial’ even mean?
Two years or so ago, when the higher definition DVDs were either HD or BlueRay, I remarked that this reminded me of the Beta/VHS war. That sure did separate those of us over 30 or so from those younger.
On the subject of video tape, I bought my first VCR in 1981, so I was used to saying “tape a show” to mean I was recording it. But for the last few years, it’s a DVR (a TiVo digital video recorder) and there is no tape involved.
I can list a great number of these, expressions that came into the language, and some which are slipping away. So when I heard Brooke Gladstone (Host of On The Media) interview the author of I Love It When You Talk Retro, Ralph Keys, I knew this was a book I had to pick up.
Retro offers us not only the examples that I mention above, but goes further back in time to offer the origins of a wealth of expression that we use, or often hear, but may not know where or how they came to be. I knew the current use of the expression “Drink the Kool-Aid” (a phrase meaning blind allegiance), but I hadn’t known that the drink in Jonestown wasn’t Kool-Aid, but Flavor Aid, a knockoff beverage. Keyes offers chapter by chapter, retroterms from law enforcement, movies, politics, and many other areas of life. Toward the end of the book, you realize there are so many expressions, that one book just scratches the surface, a comprehensive discussion would take an encyclopedia (uh, wikipedia for you under 30 readers) to organize.
I often find myself offering up a word or phrase origin when the conversation permits. For example, we all know what paparazzi are, but did you know that the term came from the 1960 film La Dolce Vita by Frederico Fellini? In that film appears a news photographer named Paparazzo, and thus the word made it into the language. (This is my own offering here, it did not make its way into the book.) If you have any interest in “the forgotten origins of American speech” this is a book worth reserving at your library.
Joe
{ }
Mrs Micah offers up an interesting spin on the John and Kate breakup. asking Would You Give Up a Job for Your Marriage?
On ChristianPF, Brandon Johnson review’s the book Nobody Wants a Million Dollars. Part of the review discusses the things that one would give up in the pursuit of that million, so I think I understand that angle the book’s author takes. Life is a matter of balance, and the singular goal of a certain sum of money may also result in life passing us by.
Jeff Rose authored a guest post at Bargaineering titled Why Naming Beneficiaries Is Important. No doubt, I completely agree. I did go on to comment, “Related directly to this, I wrote an article On My Death, Please Take a Breath in which I discussed how a woman passes, leaves her brother properly designated as beneficiary, but he withdraws the money for the IRA and gets a $40,000 tax hit. I suggest that a good plan leaves specific directions for the beneficiary.
Last, Moment on Money posts “Monte Carlo Simulations are Not Perfect.” Agreed, Nassim Taleb’s The Black Swan reminds us of that. I hope you all find some good reading this coming week.
Joe
{ }
Enjoy the weekend, the first one with no rain in the northeast in quite some time.
Joe
{ }
