Green Ways to save cents

Going Green, When to Go, When Not to

January 25, 2012
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Going Green, When to Go, When Not to

Hi, everyone! Another day, another post. This time I’m going to talk about going green, organic, environment friendly, eco-friendly, or anything else you’d like to call it. I want to discuss about feasibility of going green today. To me, going green means working towards saving environment, as well as going paperless among various other things. I got a different perspective a few days ago, I had lunch with a friend who appeared to be quite forlorn. It turned out his wife bought a lot of shampoos, soaps, and other health care products off a website. Let’s just say she spent a considerable amount of money for those stuffs. I asked him, “What’s with all these products that your wife had to spend that much money?” He replied that she was just trying to be healthy by going green. The he asked, “Why should going green be this expensive?”. Now, if I think through what he said, it all made sense. Going green can rob us money! When going green leaks money The truth is going green can be, sometimes, quite pricey because of the following reasons: Conventional products are cheap Let’s state the obvious: we wouldn’t be calling it cheap if we can’t compare it

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25 Everyday Techniques to Save Environment

January 11, 2012
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25 Everyday Techniques to Save Environment

No, I’ll not be asking you to plant trees around your town. And I will not ask you to go back to the stone-age when there was no pollution. I am going to talk about 25 pretty easy-to-follow ways to help mother earth by saving the environment around you. Charity begins at home, you start today, your neighbor starts tomorrow and the whole city starts doing this by year-end, how about that? No, I can’t be that optimistic; but what’s the harm in throwing the idea around? Are you with me?   Don’t blow it – good planets are hard to find. ~Quoted in Time   Steps to reduce pollution We all pollute the environment we live in, I do, and your dog does too. It’s very much in our control to reduce this pollution. 1. Go paperless, save environment. Sure you can’t stop advertisement leaflets coming in to your mail box (shouldn’t there be an environmental law to ban this practice, or at least, be made it mandatory to use recycled paper?) but, you can control the statements, updates and notices which you get from your financial institutions. Select paperless as the mode of communication. Mostly all of them support this.

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How Use of Alternate Energy Can Save Money

December 16, 2011
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How Use of Alternate Energy Can Save Money

Once in a while, I think about adopting the different forms of alternative energy right here in our home. Though I understand that the cost is quite expensive; solar panels are not cheap at all but, the long-term benefits are far greater. So far, I have only ensured home insulation and bought a few energy star appliances towards my contribution to the green cause. This saga of going green is of one of my colleagues, Cindy, who lives in a single family home. They are slowly transforming their suburban home into a sustainable one: Cindy’s husband is a businessman and owner of a couple of restaurants. They have money to live life they wish for. One of her wishes was to help the environment. They studied, researched and installed solar power modules at their home. Now they are planning even planning for mini wind mill installation. They did study different forms of renewable energy before adopting Solar energy first. As it turns out, they could actually fit a few solar panels in the backyard to power some of the appliances and several solar panels on the roof to sustain for at least 2/3 of the day. She has been using

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Go Green Methods To Save Money

August 27, 2011
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Go Green Methods To Save Money

Hello and welcome to the 10th Yakezie Blog Swap. This time around my fellow bloggers and I were to share our Best Go Green Method To Save Money. As always, I was amazed at what people came up with and shared. Please check out the different tips below on how you too can save money and be green: Nickel by Nickel tells us how they read green using ebooks over at Beating Broke. Everything Finance shares with us his success in growing his own veggies at Retire by 40. Narrow Bridge Finance tells us how going green has saved him some green at Mom’s plans. The 60K Project shares 8 ways she has made her kitchen green at Stock Market Basics. One Cent at a Time shares 23 ways reusing household items can save you money at Sustainable Life Blog. Prairie Eco-Thrifter (me) shares numerous recipes for making your own cleaning products at Financial Success for Young Adults. Debt Eye tells us how to eliminate the paper trail at Little House in the Valley. Sustainable Personal Finance tells us why air sealing your home is a good idea at Financially Consumed. Stock Market Basics shares 5 ways to go green and save natural resources

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Is Your Energy Save Leaking Through The Window?

August 19, 2011
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This post is part of the Yakezie blog swap and was written by Jeff from Sustainable Life Blog. If you enjoyed this article, feel free to visit his blog and subscribe by RSS, join the conversation, like him on Facebook or follow him on twitter for the latest from sustainable life blog.  A lot of times when I’m reading about going green to save money, people suggest things like increasing the temperature of your house in the winter or decreasing the temperature in the summer. The warmer you keep it in the summer and the lower you keep it in the winter, the lesser you’ll have to work your heater or cooling unit, saving you money on electricity, right? Unfortunately, that may not always be the case. You could be patting yourself on the back for lowering your energy and consumption by turning down the air conditioning and turning up the heat, but there’s a possibility it could literally be going out the window. If your house or apartment is poorly insulated, you’ll probably spend quite a bit of money heating or cooling the outside. I’m not sure if you want to be doing this or not, but I haven’t

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Go Paperless, Save Environment, Save Money

July 27, 2011
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Go Paperless, Save Environment, Save Money

A week back I received a letter from T Rowe Price in my mail box telling me about a fee increase which is to be in effect starting September.  T Rowe will assess an annual fee of $20 for mutual fund accounts having balance less than $10,000 I have four mutual fund accounts with them, with none having that kind of balance, so starting from September 1, I would have required to pay $80 per year towards fees (Account service fee, fancy name). Good for me that the ways to avoid the account service fee was also mentioned in the letter. Only one way I could have had avoided the fee was to go paperless on statements, trade confirmations, prospectus and shareholder reports (other way was to make combined balance worth more than $100,000, oops.. so close) Before jumping on to T Rowe price online account to subscribe for the paperless option, I quickly went over the pros and cons of going paperless with them. Pros 1. Avoid service fees, cool, that is $80 a year save 2. Will receive e-mails 2 days before I normally receive paper mails, early document delivery 3. Less clutter at home, I receive almost

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Three Largest Energy Guzzling Appliances And How to Cut Cost On Them

July 4, 2011
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My Mrs. is a Masters in ecology, she has many subscription to green energy, clean energy magazines. She always reminds me to innovate ways to cut costs on our daily energy usage. Recently I came across a few tips on saving energy on household appliances supplied in mailer from our utility company FPL. I had already written three articles related to energy usage How To Save Money by saving water, How I save some money on Earth day and How to save on Gas prices. This is my another green attempt to remind all our readers on the relative ease with which you can control energy usage to generate maximum save. I will only talk about 3 most energy-consuming appliances in your home if you concentrate on controlling energy usage on these three things, you can save up to 40% of your energy bill. This is what I called efficient and most productive way to derive maximum result. Oh, certainly you use energy-efficient bulb, but, did you ever calculate how much you could save by using an energy-efficient bulb in one year? Let me tell you it’s minuscule, rather, I will encourage you to do whatever you can to save the planet and

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Every Day Saving:10 Tips To Save On Gas

May 26, 2011
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Every Day Saving:10 Tips To Save On Gas

The average price of a gallon of  regular gasoline is $4.154 (as of 05/20/2011), More than a dollar compared to 2010. And it may be even higher in the peak driving season of June through September. In my state, Florida, I buy gas at $3.89 – $4.07 range per gallon, but my average spent on gas per month rarely increased compared to last year. Saving money on gas is not a very hard task. Just a few changes in your habits can save a significant on gas bill. Here are some useful ways to spend less on gas: Adjust your driving. fast and aggressive driving consumes more gas. Rapid acceleration and frequent braking leaks gas. Fuel efficiency usually decreases rapidly at speeds above 60 miles per hour. Do not cross speed limit. As per department of driving safety, traveling at 55 mph give you up to 21% better mileage when compared to speed limits of 65 mph and 70 mph. Keep windows closed while driving at high-speed, it reduces air drag. Do not hit breaks and allow your car to gradually slow down at red signals, if traffic permits. Use recommended engine oil. You may improve your fuel economy by

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Conserve Water, Save Money, Save planet

April 26, 2011
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Conserve Water, Save Money, Save planet

US is by far the biggest per-capita water user nation. Daily water consumption in US is 1,600 cubic meters. Yearly, per household water bill ranges from $200 to $1000. Water is a free resource present in abundance. But just shift your focus to some related articles/materials published in recent environmental magazines, this supposedly abundant resource of sweet water is actually scarce. Only 1% of earth’s water is drinkable and usable. “We use up our planet’s fresh water faster than it can naturally be replenished”. Here is how you can help in controlling total water consumption. Of course, you can save some good money too. Extending my earlier Earth day blog post, I am going to write some very useful and ‘not so hard’ techniques which you can practice too, and perhaps start seeing a lesser water bill. Best of all, these tips are easy to implement, from replacing outdated parts in your refrigerator, to simply cutting off the water when doing dishes. These are 10 tips to save water and save money. But first, here is why you should save water When you save water, you are saving earth, the environment. you are saving those species which survive in water When

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10 Tips For Earth Day: Save Some Cents As Well

April 23, 2011
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10 Tips For Earth Day: Save Some Cents As Well

Earth day is celebrated on April 22 each year. This year the day fell on a Friday, which, being a work day did not leave much opportunity to work towards the causes. We still managed to at least something. Here is a list of very small contributions we made towards mother earth. I car pooled my colleague to work, saving his quarter gallon of gas and a lesser carbon dioxide emission. After returning from work, I re planted my potted Bougainvillea on the lawn next to my home, yes they allow residents to grow small plants on landscaped gardens. My Bougainvillea refused to flower for more than one year. May be now it will change its mind and give the area, near our home, a fresh new look. I will watch out for lawn mowers to arrive next week. In case they want to take it out, I will prevent them, got a few neighbors’ support as well. I converted to e-delivery of statements and forms from the only remaining paper mailer, my brokerage account. I wonder why I didn’t convert this one earlier. Was I waiting for earth day? I switched off AC for 2 hours and sat on

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