Lynn Schnurnberger is a writer working on a magazine article for Parade Magazine and would like to speak to a “a family (with at least four children) who is liviing very frugally –on $50,000-$100,000 a year, no mortgage, saving for retirement or college, perhaps they find “treasure” in other people’s trash by restoring a piece of found furniture…”

If that fits you, please contact me and I’ll forward along your information to Lynn.

Incidentally, our set of dining room chairs are “restored treasures” my wife’s parent’s neighbors were going to throw away. My wife and her mom sanded down these four chairs, repainted, re-stained, and then refinished them. I didn’t see what the chairs looked like beforehand but they look absolutely incredible now. There are certainly treasures out there if you’re willing to do some hard work for them, I think our society has become too quick to toss everything.

JD asked his readers today for energy conservation tips after a reader in Juneau wrote in about electricity prices in his state increasing from 11 cents a kilowatt hour to 50 cents a kilowatt hour. Over at the BFP household, we do quite a bit of energy conservation, many of which were documented in a guest by Fred from One Project Closer titled 10 Homeowner Secrets That Save You Money Now!. However, if energy prices were to increase five-fold, I think we need to think out of the box and turn to more drastic measures. That measure… is housepooling.

Simply take the idea of carpooling, where you share a commute to and from work, and extend it to living in the home. Once a week, invite a few friends over for dinner, drinks, board games, and then a slumber party. It allows multiple households to live under one roof, one energy bill for one night. Since the idea would be for everyone to housepool, your friends would reciprocate and you’d get several nights “energy-cost free.” It would cost a little more than usual to cook and entertain, but I suspect the increase would be minimal and you might even find that the heating bill going down with more people milling about your home.

The reader estimated that their new energy bill would be around $750, which is about $25 a day for heating alone. Put in a few housepooling days and you can cut maybe a hundred bucks or two off the cost of your bill, plus you get some time with your friends and have a good old fashioned slumber party!

What do you all think? Feasible when energy prices are 50 cents a kilowatt? Am I off my rocker?

Tomorrow is Earth Day, so why not start off the week with an environmental friendly post? When most people think of being green, their brains immediately jump to organic foods and recycling. Organic foods can be expensive, recycling can be a pain, and many come to the same conclusion as famed philosopher Kermit The Frog, who once sang, “It’s not easy bein’ green.” In all fairness, what Kermit was singing about was entirely different but it perfectly sums up what many people think of environmentally conscious living - it’s not easy. That’s because many focus on the difficult and expensive aspects of going green, because we commonly associate difficulty and expense with impact, rather than the relatively easy things we can do that can still make a difference. In fact, many of the easy things can save the Earth and a few dollars (and even a few pounds!).

Reuse Plastic Containers

Most people think recycle, recycle, recycle - but remember the mantra is actually reduce, reuse, recycle. Reusing plastic containers, when it’s safe to do so, is a great way to reduce the amount of plastic we consume as a whole. When we order take-out food from the local Indian restaurant, our meals come in plastic containers we can then turn into lunch boxes. While it’s great to also recycle, some municipalities don’t take certain types of plastic so reusing is the only option, besides throwing them away. Reusing plastic containers helps your wallet because you don’t have to buy these containers yourself! Plus, I always get the feeling that those Glad or Tupperware containers are overpriced anyway.

No More Bottled Water

I understand it’s convenient, I understand it’s healthy, and I understand you think your tap water tastes like crap. But every single year 29283094293 plastic bottles are thrown out and the poor penguins are choking on them. If you think my random number is an exaggeration, it’s actually not too far off because the Clean Air Council estimates that Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour (that’s 21,900,000,000 a year). Can you imagine that? No, I can’t either.

Want a good reason for your wallet? The cost of tap water, even if you add in a filter, is microscopic compared to the cost of bottled water. Buy a reusable water bottle, a filter, and fill your own each day and you can save yourself some serious money. If you buy a $1 bottle of water each day, that’s $365 a year you can spend on anything else. And you don’t contribute to this ridiculous level of wastefulness.

No Prepackaged or Premade Food

We love convenience right? We love throwing a Healthy Choice or Stouffer’s freezer/TV dinner into the microwave and eating it for our lunch or dinner. The only problem is that you introduce a paper box and a likely non-recycleable plastic container into the trash. Plus, to be honest, it’s really really not good for you. The amount of sodium in a typical meal like that, even if you can get it for a buck when it’s on sale, is ridiculous. If you consume that much sodium on a regular basis, it’ll have significant negative effects on your body (high blood pressure, heart disease) which will definitely impact your wallet in medical costs down the road. Instead of going with the prepackaged or premade foods, check out allrecipes.com and try making your own meals. You’ll find them more fulfilling (who eats only one of those meals anyway?), healthier, and perhaps even cheaper.

Carpool

You can’t have a list about being green and saving green if you didn’t throw in carpooling. The secret to cutting your gasoline bill by 20% is to carpool once a week. Brilliant right? That’s because saving on gasoline is not difficult, people just don’t want to be inconvenienced and the best way to do that is to strategically pick the day you’re going to carpool. By consuming less fuel, you contribute less in greenhouse gases, reduce the demand for petrol, and you save yourself some money each time you hop in a rideshare. Considering how many people complain about fuel prices, it’s amazing there aren’t more carpoolers.

Eat Less Red Meat

How could I, editor of Grill Maestro and lover of red meat, possible endorse the idea that we eat less red meat? I do this because I read in a recent Ode magazine article that stated a single cow produces as much as 132 gallons of methane a day! The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization calculated that the livestock industry accounts for 18 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, compared to 13.5% produced by all of the world’s transportation. That’s downright amazing. And meat is hardly cheap too, chicken on sale is $1.99 around us and beef is far more expensive (obviously depending on the cut). I don’t think I’d ever go vegetarian, ever, but consuming less red meat is something we’ve done accidentally given the rise in prices and changing food preferences.

Bag Your Lunch

Bagging your lunch is better for the environment because you don’t need to drive somewhere to eat and you don’t have all the waste associated with the restaurant. For your wallet, saving yourself that $6-$10 lunch each day is going to translate very nicely to your bottom line and you’ll probably be eating healthier if you cook the food yourself. There’s a reason why so many restaurants are fighting new regulations regarding nutritional information - their food is terrible for you. Super Size Me may have been a gross exaggeration but the point is still clear, fast food restaurants are horrible for you and the fact that they don’t want to list nutritional information on the menu is proof positive they know it too. So, save yourself a few dollars, save yourself the gas, and save your arteries!

Buy Stuff Online

I once gave 8 reasons I do my shopping online and reason #5 was that online shopping meant less driving. Less driving, of course, means less fuel. Now, the trade-off here is that companies will have to ship you the packages, which will mean more driving on their part. I believe that since they are shipping packages anyway and are on optimized schedules and driving routes, their consumption, after you factor in how they won’t need to ship that product to their stores, will be less than yours. I think there will never be a provable answer to this but I’m confident that shopping online is better for the environment.

There you go, seven easy ways you can be green and save green - just try one this week and see how easy is and good it feels!

Cut out the morning coffee at Starbucks!

Bring a bag lunch!

Stop drinking alcoholic beverages!

If you’ve been trying to find areas to cut back on your budget, those are likely one of the first three things you’ll hear suggested, right? The Latte Factor! It’s horrible that you’re wasting money on coffee you can brew at home! It’s a travesty! Okay, except you don’t have a coffee maker at home, have hardly any time in the morning to brew it, and if you don’t have it… oh boy, your office better watch out because you’ll be one cranky man/woman/beast. And bag lunch? Forget it, you don’t have time to make the lunch, let alone lug it to work, stuff it in the fridge and then eat it alone at your desk later! Alcoholic beverages? That’s the high point in the day, you can’t take that away! Plus, people who go to happy hours earn more… and you want to make more money right? Of course!

Of course, all that was tongue in cheek but the “excuses” are legitimate. It’s difficult to restructure large parts of your day just to save a few dollars but sometimes it’s important to do so. So, rather than make wholesale changes that you’re likely going to abandon within a few weeks, if you can even get started, try doing it incrementally.

Brew your own coffee on Friday. Friday is usually the laxest of all days and many people come in later than their usual start time. Take advantage of this by brewing your own coffee. If you don’t have a coffeemaker, you can buy one for around $20 and a hundred pack of filters for around $4. Then, all it takes is some coffee and you’re on your way to brewing your own coffee. If you really want to be efficient, set it all up the night before and set it to brew before you wake up. You can wake up to the wonderful smell of brewing coffee just like in the commercials! So just brew it on Fridays and you can hit Seattle’s Best Coffee the other four days. If you can save yourself the $3 on Friday coffee habit, that’s $150 a year in savings a year.

Resolve to bring in lunch on Monday. You have all weekend to pack, and cook it if you need to, yourself a nice meal so you can’t complain you have no time at night because you’ll have all day. Monday is also the busiest of work days as everyone catches up from the weekend so you can take advantage by eating at your desk and getting more work done. By cutting out one day of $7 lunches and replacing them with $2 lunches, you can save yourself close to $250 a year. You can get something really nice for $250 a year (or save it!) just by eating lunch on Mondays.

Bag lunch on Monday, brew coffee on Friday - get $400 a year that you can use for whatever you want. As for cutting out alcohol, sorry but you’re on your own on that one.

(Photo by Amy March)

I just wanted to give a shout out to all the kind hosts of the Festival of Frugality over the past few years. Without the hard work of all these hosts, the Festival wouldn’t be as popular as it is today. I don’t write much about the Festival on BFP much anymore but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate you all. In fact, you might have thought Blueprint for Financial Prosperity hosted the Festival the most out of any host - you’d be wrong. In fact, BFP has hosted it at least twice as few times as the #1 host (that’s right, BFP has hosted it only 5 times)

Ten Time Host

One person who deserve special mention is Dawn of Frugal For Life. Dawn has hosted the Festival a staggering ten times and, I’ve said on multiple occasions, someone I would consider synonymous with frugal blogging. If you’re a fan of frugality and you don’t know about Frugal for Life, you’re missing out on who many consider the Queen of Frugal Blogging. Oh yeah, she’s on schedule for an 11th hosting on May 6th too! For a complete list of all the Festivals she’s hosted, I published the full list as of the 108th Festival. Thank you so much!

Four Time Hosts

Four hosts have hosted it an equally impressive four times: Free Money Finance, Mighty Bargain Hunter, Lazy Man and Money and No Credit Needed. Hosting it once is hard enough, these gentlemen have done it four times. In fact, Mighty Bargain Hunter hosted the 2nd Festival of Frugality and Free Money Finance hosted the 3rd Festival of Frugality (Lazy Man joined in on the 46th and NCN hopped on board with the 47th) They have truly helped it become one of the premier carnivals in the pfblogosphere.

Three Time Hosts

Only one site can claim to be a three time host of the Festival of Frugality and that is FIRE Finance. Thank you so much for hosting so many carnivals.

Two-timers and One-timers

The following gracious hosts have hosted either once or twice in the lifetime of the Festival and I wanted to thank you all as well for your contributions to the Festival. Thank you to Okdork.com, Clutter2Cash, Canadian Capitalist, Frugal Underground, Boston Gal’s Open Wallet, Retire At 30, Simply Thrifty, Neo’s Nest Egg, Five Cent Nickel, Punny Money, Money Blog Network, Wandering Monk, Tired but Happy, Value Investing and a Few Cigar Butts, Aridni, Financial Reflections, Money and Values, My Financial Journey, Punny Money, MotherLoad: The MomAdvice Blog, Blogging Away Debt, Queer Cents, Get Rich Slowly, My Money Forest, My Open Wallet, Pragmatic Finance, Experiments in Finance, Pocket Change, The Frugal Duchess, Penny Nickel, Money Smart Life, Binary Dollar, Savvy Steward, The Simple Dollar, The Tao of Making Money, Hustler Money Blog, Stingy Students, Getting Green, Festival of Frugality, Debt Hater, Mapgirl’s Fiscal Challenge, The Digerati Life, Millionster, My Two Dollars, Frugal Upstate, Money For The Rest Of Us, Tight Fisted Miser, Ask Mr. Credit Card, Money Walks, Frugal Law Student, Frugal Babe, The Happy Rock, FILAM Personal Finance, Bean Sprouts, Stop The Ride, My Retirement Blog, Natural Family Living Blog, Being Frugal, Paid Twice, Rather Be Shopping Blog, Cheap Healthy Good, Plonkee Money, Moolanomy, Cash Money Life, On Financial Success, Mrs. Micah, Broke Grad Student, Green Panda Treehouse, My Dollar Plan, and Consumerism Commentary. (Names without links refer to blogs that have since been abandoned, re-purposed or unreachable)

Managing & Guest Editors

In the years that the Festival has been running, I’ve had several editors manage the Festival in my absence and I wanted to thank two former editors and the current managing editor. Mapgirl of Mapgirl’s Fiscal Challenge and Pinyo of Moolanomy both did wonderful jobs keeping the ship afloat while I was away and the current managing editor, PaidTwice of I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…, a name that rivals my own in length, is doing a great job today.

Thank you again everyone for your contributions! (and if I have any inaccuracies, please do let me know via email or in the comments, I tried to get it right!)

(Photo by psd)

After spending two and a half weeks in Hawaii, I’ve to appreciate driving slower. The first week was spent on the island of Kauai, an island that, to my knowledge, doesn’t have a road wider than two lanes on each side. The next four days was spent on the Big Island of Hawaii, which to my knowledge doesn’t have a road wider than three lanes. It wasn’t until reaching Oahu did we finally encounter what would be considered a highway (and it was a doozy, HI-1 is four lanes each way, sometimes more I think). On each of the other islands, I think I peaked at 55 MPH and that was only briefly. Part of the reason was because we were on vacation and took scenic routes - there’s no sense flying by at 70 MPH on a scenic drive; part of the reason was that you simply couldn’t drive 70 MPH on many of the winding roads. So that got me thinking, what do you really get out of driving 70 MPH? The answer is - wasted gas and not much time savings.

According to the US Census Bureau, in 2006 the average time to commute from home to work ranges between 15 and 31 minutes. New York had the longest with 31 minutes and North Dakotans won with a mere 15.5 minute commute. The average was 25 miles.

The time you save between driving 55 MPH for the entire 25 miles, unlikely, and driving 75 MPH is seven minutes. It will take you about 27.3 minutes to travel 25 miles going at 55 MPH. At 75 MPH, you finish the trip in 20 minutes - a total savings of seven minutes. If you drive 65 MPH, you save only 4 minutes. So all that speeding, weaving, bobbing, and cutting off that you may do, in order to maintain that 75 MPH cruise, saves you a mere seven minutes. If the minimal time savings isn’t a deterrent (7 minutes out of 27 minutes is over 25%, so it’s relatively large), let us take into account some other factors.

Speeding Ticket

In 2002, the average cost of a speeding ticket was $150 according to CNN Money. Assuming inflation of 4% each year, the average cost can probably be extrapolated to be closer to $190. The time it takes for a ticket to be issued probably takes around 20 minutes, based on nothing but guesstimation. Let us assume that the probability you get a ticket is 0.1%, or one every three years, again also based on guesstimation. That means that the “cost” for speeding is 20 cents and 1.2 seconds each trip. The annual cost, if you assume 50 weeks of weekday travel, is $50 and five minutes. While not substantial, who wouldn’t want an additional $50 in their pocket? (This doesn’t take into account the cost of losing 20 minutes of billable working time, which would take into account your salary, so it’s a little more than $50 a year)

Accidents

I won’t, because it’s too complex a problem that cannot be simplified enough to be of significant value, go into the financial and time cost of accidents the same way I did with speeding tickets. Suffice it to say, accident severity greatly increases when the speed of the vehicles is higher. I don’t know enough about traffic statistics to conclude that accident probability increases with speed but I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case. Even if those could be quantified, I’m not going to try to research how much a life is worth, which is a pivotal calculation for insurance companies, so I’ll leave it up to the experts. Either way, by driving fast, you are risking accidents and accidents cost time and money immediately and in over the long run (increased insurance costs).

Gasoline Consumption

It is generally understood that driving the speed limit is the most fuel efficient speed. According to the US Department of Energy, for each 5 MPH you drive over 55 MPH, you lose 6% of efficiency. That’s a whopping 24% if you drive 75 MPH, as in our earlier example. So, if your gasoline costs you $3.23 per gallon, you’re really paying closer to $4.00 per gallon. To drive this home, let’s compare the fuel cost of your trip to work with the 55 MPH speed versus the 75 MPH speed.

If your car gets you 30 MPG, a very generous assumption, then your 25 mile commute at 55 MPH will cost you 0.83 gallons of gasoline which is $2.69. In other words, it costs you $2.69 to drive to work. If you drove it at 75 MPH, your fuel efficiency drops such that the cost per effective “gallon” increases to $4. Now your trip costs $3.32, or 63 cents more. If you make this trip 250 times, that’s $157.50 extra each year on gasoline just for getting there 7 minutes sooner. (The math here is a little fuzzy in the sense that we’re just increasing the cost of the gasoline rather than keeping that constant and affecting the MPG, the reason for this is just to keep things easier. Ultimately the math isn’t ever going to be this clean so I think it’s a liberty that’s fair to take.)

Summary

By taking into account just gasoline and the potential costs of a speeding ticket, we’ve seen that $200 a year can be cut out of your expenditures just by driving a little bit slower (that’s $200 based on $3.23/gal. for gasoline, it’s ever increasing!). So, if you’re feeling the pinch of fuel prices, consider something as simple as driving slower. If you’re concerned about those seven minutes, just leave home seven minutes earlier!

This guest post comes courtesy of Fred at One Project Closer, a home improvement blog written by one of my friends. As a sign of how good of a friend he is, he still made to my wedding despite his basement being flooded by a burst water heater. And until I read his post, I had no idea he was late!

With rising energy prices, fear of a recession, and the stock market erasing the gains of the last six months, you’re probably looking to save wherever you can right? Well, today I have the opportunity to share ten fantastic tips you can use, many with hardly any up front investment whatsoever, right this very second to save yourself some money.

1. Insulate Your Hot Water Heater ($20.00 investment). Unless you have a newer tankless model, your hot water heater has a large reservoir of water it keeps constantly heated. Traditional hot water heaters are constructed with a relatively small layer of insulation between the inner water reservoir and the outer metal shell, requiring the heater to run frequently to keep the water hot. Manufactures under-insulate hot water heaters to keep the units small enough to fit into tight spaces. For about $20.00, you can find a hot water heater insulation wrap at your local home improvement big box. Upon installation, a typical homeowner will save between $3.00-5.00/month on energy costs.

2. Turn Down Your Hot Water Heater Temperature ($0 investment). Most people are very conscious of raising/lowering the thermostat on their central AC/heating system, but haven’t even considered lowering the temperature on their hot water heater. Your hot water heater should always be set to the lowest temperature that provides your household the hot water you need. Lowering the water temperature from 125 deg. to 115 deg. saves a typical homeowner about $3.00-$10.00.

3. Don’t Let the Water Run While You Wash Dishes ($0 investment). It sounds silly, doesn’t it? But the reality is that nearly all of the cost of running the water is in heating the water. Leaving the water running for 30 minutes could cost you as much as $3. Instead, use your dishwasher (just don’t use the built drying heater or a water heating option like sanitize rinse). Dishwashers use less than half of the water to perform the same task. Or, better yet, fill your sink basin and wash dishes with the water turned off. That method uses less than a quarter of the water of the first method.

4. Don’t Use Your Fireplace on Extremely Cold Nights ($0 investment). Traditional wood fireplaces require an open flu to allow smoke to escape. The air that’s leaving the house with the smoke has to be replaced with air from somewhere else. In most traditional setups, replacement air comes back into the house through pores open to the outside (outlets, leaky windows and doors, attic accesses, etc). On very cold nights, the cold replacement air coming into the house more than offsets any heat gained from the fire itself. As a result, using a fireplace on a cold night could cost $1.00-$3.00 in energy just to replace the lost heat.

5. Caulk Your Attic Access Door ($3.00 investment). Gaps in attic access doors allow heat to escape from the upstairs of your house. Since you don’t go up into the attic much anyway, caulk the rim of the door to prevent your energy from floating away. Estimated savings: $2.00-4.00 / month.

6. Replace Your Light Bulbs with Energy Efficient Models ($20.00-80.00 investment). Compact Fluorescent (CFL) technology has come a long way in the last 5 years. More than ever, CFLs look and behave just like incandescents. These bulbs use about 23% of the energy of their incandescent counterparts and last about 20 times longer. One 100-watt equivalent CFL can save a homeowner more than $60.00 over the course of its life. You shouldn’t wait for your incandescents to burn out either. Every day an incandescent burns, it wastes nearly 80% of the energy it uses. Since you’ll have to replace it when it burns out anyway, you should make the switch today.

7. Consider Replacing Your Refrigerator ($700-1000 investment). Refrigerators that are more than 10 years old use about 50% more energy than their modern counterparts. The older your model, the more inefficient it is. For models that are more than 20 years old, a homeowner can expect to recover the investment in as little as 2.5 years. If you can find a newer model on Craigslist or in the classifieds, you might realize a recovery period of as little as 1 year.

8. Change the Filter on your HVAC every 3-6 months ($5 investment). HVAC filters remove dust and allergens from your house as your HVAC circulates air for heating/cooling. These filters get dirty, eventually restricting air flow. When this happens, your furnace has to work harder to achieve the same temperature change - wasting energy. Changing the filter takes only minutes. If you haven’t changed your filter for more than a year, you can expect a ~$5.00/month savings in months where you run your HVAC the most.

9. Install (and use) a Programmable Thermostat ($50-$100 investment). Programmable thermostats allow you to adjust the temperature in your home based on the time of day, and day of the week. If no one is home during the day, it simply doesn’t make sense to keep the house at the same temperature. Typical homeowners can expect to see $10.00-$40.00 / month savings after installing these nifty little devices. Remember that a programmable thermostat will only save money if it’s programming features are actually used. So, get a programmable thermostat that’s easy to learn.

10. Set Your PC to Auto-hibernate ($0 investment). A computer, monitor, and printer can easily draw 300 watts. With electricity as high as $0.15/KWh, this equates to more than $1.00/day. If you only use your computer for 2 hours a day, setting the system to auto-hibernate (instead of leaving it on) saves as much as $25.00/month.