Personal Finance Advice

Last week, Sadie wrote about how debt free living means not being a slave to a FICO score. In the article, she pointed out that FICO has become such an integral part of our lives that even the debt free can’t ignore the score completely, which is annoying, at best. But I’ve been giving it [...]

I’ve never been much of a follower. Even as a youngster, I had to find my own way to do things, even if they didn’t measure up to what everyone else was doing. As a single parent for many years, I learned a few things the hard way. I learned not to follow common financial [...]

Whether your furnace is broken or you’re just looking to save a buck, you might be surprised at how well you can get along without heat. Here are some simple and inexpensive ways to make cold days and nights more comfortable without touching the thermostat.
Wear layers: I’m not just talking about wearing a long-sleeved [...]

My wife and I have a fair distribution of labor in our home. Among other things, I wash and fold the laundry, and my wife puts it all away. Part of the reason that we arrived at this model for the laundry lies in our fundamental disagreement with respect to what needs to [...]

I tend to be a bit bullheaded at times. Well, maybe more than a bit, but just because everyone else is doing something doesn’t mean it’s the best thing to do.
Take the advice that you hear everywhere about turning down your thermostat. Many people turn down the thermostat when they leave for work or are [...]

It has been unseasonably cold in Orlando for the past couple of weeks. Nights have dropped into the thirties and days have rarely made it past 75 degrees. While that may seem balmy to anyone living north of Florida, trust me when I tell you that I am not used to this kind [...]

As the child of people who lived through the Great Depression, I grew up on an “energy diet.” My parents encouraged us to turn off the lights when leaving the room, put on a sweater instead of turn up the heat, and walk to the store instead of drive.
My parents ingrained these habits into their [...]

My mom likes to show my friends an embarrassing picture of me. I’m 3 years old, hanging on to my favorite blanket as it’s drying on the line.
Laundry hanging on the line, drying in the breeze, was a frequent part of my childhood, and probably yours too. I didn’t even think about it. It [...]

I received a letter from my electric power company recently encouraging me to sign up for the company’s “Green Generation” program. If I joined the “Green Team”, I could purchase energy generated from wind power and landfill gas for a mere .01667 cents per kilowatt hour. I could also purchase Green Blocks instead at $2.50 [...]

In October, I wrote an article entitled “25 Ways to Avoid Turning on Your Heat This Winter.” I included some helpful advice and some silly ones just for laughs. Well, springtime is here and I can say that we actually avoided turning our heat on this winter. Our lowest temperature this winter [...]

It falls, taunting you, flake after flake, coating everything you see with white wet and cold crystals. It piles up in the corners, and in its complete blinding whiteness, all you can do is fork over your wallet. It’s a beautiful thief.
You must turn on your heat. The blanket of whiteness is on [...]

This is my project for the weekend – to build a solar window heater (shown in the video below). It’s been a fairly mild winter here in Japan thus far and I have managed not to take out the space heater, but it’s been getting colder and it is just a matter of time. With [...]

I am one of the first to admit that television, video games, the Internet, and cell phones add fun and convenience to our lives. But this past April I took the challenge presented by TVTurnOff.org and shut the television off for the week. For good measure, I also shut off the video games, and the [...]

With heating costs on the rise, it’s tempting to avoid turning your heat on all together in order to save money on heating bills, but who wants to be a human Popsicle in their own house? Here are some creative (and some practical) ways to avoid or delay turning on your heat this winter. [...]

I never pay any of our bills. Neither does my husband. But they get paid. Every month and on time.
Now I’m not advocating ignoring your bills and racking up a ton of debt. That would be stupid and begging for bankruptcy. What I am advocating is never physically going through [...]

When the Electric Choice program first allowed consumers to choose their electricity providers, the media made a big deal about the potential savings for consumers. I called around to several companies but found very little difference in rates. A short time later, I discovered another, less well known method of saving on electricity [...]

It’s that time of year again when the weather starts to get to a hotter and you need to find ways to stay cool. Here’s a question from a reader that is looking for inexpensive ways to beat the summer heat:
We live in the Southwest which gets very hot during the summer and [...]

There is nothing like a good debate between friends to get to the bottom of some of those questions that everybody wonders about. I received one of those questions by e-mail the other day and thought I would give it to all of you to come up with the best answer.
A co-worker and [...]

So you want to help the environment, but you don’t think that you have enough time? Here are 10 simple things that you can do in under a minute that will help the environment and save you money at the same time:
1. Use Half The Amount (time: none): Try using half the amount of [...]

As home energy costs rise, so does awareness. Even those who have never before paid attention to their electrical usage are taking note as their monthly bills climb higher and higher. For those that would like to more closely monitor the power being used in their home, Blue Line Innovations of Canada offers an small [...]