Posted on: May 12, 2009 by Matt
Today I am going a little off topic and touching on another issue that I find increasingly important: saving our planet. Last night my girlfriend and I watched Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth. I had not seen the film before but had always had an interest in watching it due to the critical acclaim and the subject content. What I discovered was that our planet is in much worse shape than I had originally thought (and I had a pretty negative view to begin with).
If you have not seen the film yet please stop reading and head out to get a copy. Order it online, rent it, get it from Netflix, download the audio book from iTunes – just get a copy and try watching it with an open mind. You can also get more information from the web site www.climatecrisis.net in order to take action to reduce your carbon footprint.
Overall – I think it is important for everyone to learn at least a little bit more about our current environmental situation. If we do not take steps to save our planet we could be in for a nasty awakening. In addition – a lot of the steps you can take will also help save you money in the long run as well (hey a little frugal after all). That said here is a short list of my goals to help do my part:
- Replace standard light bulbs in the house with CFL’s: They use 60% less energy than a standard light bulb – enough said.
- Use less hot water: I am going to try to shorten my showers by 5 minutes each day. I am not sure what the current baseline is but I plan to time myself at a normal speed and then see what I can do to reduce that time. We already wash our clothes in cold water.
- Power off electronics when not in use and unplug: This may be a little tricky but I am going to see what we can do to turn off and unplug electronics while they are not in use. I can easily make this change at work without impacting anyone but myself so I will start in the office.
- Walk or bike to work: I live about 1.25 miles from the office I work from. I often am lazy and drive in to work. Follow that with a trip home and back for lunch and the end of day trip home and I am at about 5 miles a day. Walking or biking that would not only help the environment but also help my health!
- Recycle: Our town has a pretty weak recycling program: you actually have to pay to recycle. However my office has a big old dumpster for all-in-one recycling that we can add to. I have set out a paper bag in our kitchen to collect recyclable materials in and will continue to bring them in to be recycled.
- Use the local farmer’s market: I like to support local business and have been pretty bad about practicing lately. However – the local farmer’s market will be starting back up soon and I hope to start picking up some of our produce there. We also have a local grocery store that buys from local farmers as well that I have been shopping at more frequently.
So it is a fairly long list of steps I hope to take and I am sure that I will think of more along the way but I do believe that too often people get caught up in the “but I’m just one person, what can I possibly do?” mindset. For those of you personal finance nuts out there: Think of saving our environment like you think about passive income streams. Each of us can be a “passive income source” for the planet by making just a few changes to our every day habits. Each individual that makes a change adds to the overall total and with enough individuals the change will be massive. Plus – all of the steps suggested should save you some cash as well! I think we have a big win-win situation going here!
Posted on: April 9, 2009 by Matt
The area that I live in is cluttered with small antique shops and many of them offer a range of items from inexpensive to higher priced rare items. I tend to like to find time to browse through the shops and see what kind of deals I can muster up. Most recently on Sunday I was helping my sister move into an apartment over a small antique shop and I took a stroll through.
I was not looking for anything in particular but when I walked by the jewelry case I noticed a decent looking silver ring with multiple colored stones in it. The price tag was set to $9.90. I figured it was probably glass or plastic set into the ring but upon further inspection noted that it was not plastic and was probably a material worth more the $10 they were asking (the silver in the ring was 925 sterling, easily worth more than $10). I asked them to hold it and opted to take the ring as a surprise gift for my girlfriend as she has been looking for a multi gem stoned ring.
She was pretty excited when I gave her the surprise gift and even more surprised at the cost. She is a bit of a jewelry nut (makes her own and such) and immediately began inspecting. She was not certain of the exact make up but noted that the “stones” looked like they were probably crystals of some sort if not the actual gem stones they appeared to be. All said and done – I was pretty happy with my surprise find.
I used to associate antique shops with over priced junk from another era but really enjoy walking through and finding what kind of deals I can find (occasionally leaving pleasantly surprised). Have any of you had any surprising finds at antique shops? What kind of deals have you picked up?
Posted on: March 11, 2009 by Matt
Every once in a while my girlfriend will randomly come up with some new method of using leftovers or a method of doing something frugally that I am not aware of. Last night she opted to make spaghetti pie out of left over spaghetti noodles we had saved from the night before. I have to admit that I was a bit skiddish about the dish just from the description: “It’s like all your left over spaghetti mixed with a bunch of eggs and you cook it kind of like a big spaghetti omelette”.
However – given that it was a new and created use of leftovers that I had never even heard of before I figured why not? The result was surprising – I really enjoyed the meal! It turned out looking something like the picture to the right here and tasted just excellent. We had it with some left over garlic bread, sausage and leftover veggies as well.
If you are interested in giving it a shot here was the process from my observation:
- Put leftover spaghetti noodles (we had about half a pound) in a large bowl.
- Add a lot of eggs. We used 7 eggs but my girlfriend noted it would have been better if we had used a dozen.
- Heat a large skillet on the stove, add some light cooking oil (just enough to cover the bottom of the pan).
- Add the spaghetti and egg mixture.
- Cook until eggs start to firm up and brown on the bottom (like an omelette).
- Flip over and cook on other side to match.
- Remove from pan and cut into wedges.
- Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and top with your favorite sauce.
It may not suit everyone’s taste but we tend to have leftover noodles around fairly often and I am pretty excited to have a new way of using them up. As an additional note: my girlfriend also said that the dish tastes really good cold with sauce. I have not tried yet but hope that next time we might have some leftovers so I can.
Posted on: November 11, 2008 by Matt
It seems that the holidays are coming up really quickly this year and I have not prepared. I do have some money available for purchasing gifts but would like to find ways to stretch the money I am spending. I know that my girlfriend shares the same situation and has been already browsing around online trying to find some decent deals on gifts.
We also just recently came up with a method to give out personalized gifts at very low cost. Over the past couple months I have been dabbling around with woodburning (otherwise known as pyrography). I had not attempted any significant full sized burns until last Saturday night when I worked on a burn for my girlfriend. My girlfriend is particularly fond of fairies and I happened to track down a pattern that I thought she would like online. I traced it out and showed her the pattern – she liked it but was not too excited so I set it aside for about a month. On Saturday night I opted to pick it back up and burn the pattern into the wood.
I finished the burning and handed it over to her as a gift. She seemed pretty excited by it and asked if she could color it in. I told her it was hers and she could do as she liked. She spent a couple of hours coloring the burning in with colored pencils and nail polish of all things. Then added some form of glitter to various regions of the pattern. The final result was impressive enough that we decided to make a few more burnings together to hand out as holiday gifts to our families. I am really excited about this for a handful of reasons like:
- I am going to be burning anyway: I really enjoy woodburning and am learing a lot as I go. If I am going to be burning anyway, why not put it to good use?
- We can both enjoy the craft: It is a lot of fun for us to work on a craft like this together. There is not pressure and we can each do the parts of the craft that we enjoy.
- The whole family can get involved: We also burned a few small stencil outlines of Christmas themed patterns for the kids to color. We can let the kids turn them into hand made ornaments to give out as gifts or to hang up around the house.
- The gift is personal: I suppose a lot can be said for fancy, expensive, commercial, mass-produced gifts that tend to break within a month but I prefer something with a bit of meaning. I think that a gift that we put our time and thoughts into means so much more than some commercial junk.
- The price is right: It really does not cost us all that much in materials to make a burning. I currently only have a single temperature wood burner that cost about $30. While I would love a fancy variable temperature tool we can still get by with the tools we have. Basically – we have all the material available and the cost is already sunk as we purchased the wood and burning tool months ago.
In addition to various wood burnings we have also discussed putting together some form of holiday mix in fancy jars for people and doing a mostly hand and home made Christmas for our extended families. We will see how it goes and I look forward to keeping everyone posted on how it turns out. Have any of you had any success with home made Christmas gifts?
Posted on: October 22, 2008 by Matt
I have been reading a lot lately about the number of people that use pharmacy shopping to get some really good deals including a number of free after rebate (FAR) items. My girlfriend loves shopping at Walgreens due to the selection of interesting and fun cosmetic products and the politeness of the people that work there (at the Walgreen we visit everyone is really polite and friendly). We also find that the store is generally cleaner and easier to navigate than other pharmacy stores in the area. The only problem I have been able to identify so far is that the nearest Walgreens for us is about 15 or 20 miles away in New Hampshire; we generally stop in when we are headed in that direction.
Normally our little shopping trips to Walgreens involve getting a handful of items that are needed around the house and browsing. However our last trip may have changed the way that we shop at Walgreens a bit and may have also addicted us to the monthly sale and rebate items.
Our trip started out normally, I followed my girlfriend around so we could talk and joke while looking at all the cosmetics. I then decided to go up and grab a weekly sale flyer and the monthly rebate booklet. I proceeded to go compare prices on batteries that we needed and peruse the ads. When I caught back up with my girlfriend and asked her “How would you like to get some free foundation?” she looked back at me with curiosity. I opened the rebate booklet and reviewed the details of the FAR items and informed her that I had read online that we could actually make a little money on these items by getting the rebate on a gift card.
She was sold and pretty darn excited about the prospect of having a Walgreens gift card and some free (actually paid to get) some of the stuff on a monthly basis! We spent a good portion of the car ride home discussing how the program works and deciding that the gift card would be hers to spend on a monthly basis while I would keep up on the monthly ads and rebates and file for the rebates.
While my little shopping trip may seem like old news to a number of readers I am excited and view the trip as a success for several reasons:
- My girlfriend has questioned rebate items in the past: On a previous trip to Walgreens I noted some body wash that was free after rebate. When I pointed it out she commented “Who really sends those in anyway.” I replied that I did and she shrugged and commented on how it seems like a waste of time and the company always finds something wrong with the rebate anyway. After this trip and explaining how we can process them online I think that she has changed her tune.
- A number of the free after rebate products she will use: Not only are we making a small profit by purchasing some of the FAR items but they can also replace otherwise costly alternative brands.
- The gift cards will offset some cost of future trips: Like I said, she loves shopping at Walgreens. An free extra $20 per month will help us out financially.
- She is now excited about checking out rebate items: With her looking forward to the next month’s worth for FAR items from Walgreens (along with normal rebate items) I am hopeful that she will start to look at rebates for other items while shopping as well. I also think that knowing I will take the time to submit the rebates will encourage her to keep rebates as a viable saving method in mind.
Finally – the best part is that since our nearest Walgreens is in New Hampshire we do not have any sales tax on the purchases.
