frugal underground

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Today’s featured blog is not specifically about financial frugality, but I think you’ll enjoy it. Neat Living is Ariane Benefit’s contribution to a simpler home and lifestyle. Here’s how she describes her blog:

Neat Living is about simplifying, letting go of clutter, organizing, “ThinkBuying,” resisting consumerism, getting healthy, working with passion, charity, ethics, and having time to enjoy your life.

The great thing for you and me is that she provides a ton of great information on her blog that can save your money and your sanity. Like I said, it’s not always about financial frugality, but there’s definitely an element of that (particularly when it comes to over-consumption and clutter).

The bigger picture here is of frugality as a way of life. When applied to the kitchen, it might mean clearing out the gadgets you don’t use anymore and donating them to someone who will love them. When applied to exercise, it might mean finding something you can do simply and close-to-home rather than spending a ton of money on a gym membership you won’t use. When applied to gift giving, it might mean giving a gift of time or an experience rather than a trinket which will add to the clutter.

Ariane has loads of good ideas, and posts fairly regularly (more regularly than me lately!), so check her site out and see if it’s something you’d like to subscribe to.

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Have credit card debt?  Almost everyone does.  The Credit Card Blog has a great list of 33 Tips to Dig Yourself Out of Credit Card Debt (some of them are obvious, but honestly, this would be ideal as a checklist—seriously, print it out and cross off items).

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Last year, we turned on our air conditioner twice.  At times it was a little hot and sticky (here in the Boise, Idaho area it tops 95° pretty much every day in full-on summer), but in general, Daniel and I acclimated to it pretty well and didn’t mind much.

Other people… well, that is a bit trickier.  My sister lives with us, and her boyfriend often spends Friday and Saturday nights here (on the couch!), and they were both extremely uncomfortable last summer.  I felt kind of bad about it, but we offered to let them run the A/C and pay for the additional cost, and that didn’t go over so well.

This year, I’m working from home (not in a building air-conditioned to about “frigid”), and I’d like to figure out a happy medium—something that will keep the fam happy and still keep the bills reasonable.  I think that a big part of this will just be to actually get up and close the windows when it gets hotter outside than inside (I love fresh air, but it’s sensible to keep the fresh air limited to the night and morning hours in this case).

What I’m really wondering about is air conditioner efficiency.  For instance, right now it’s 87° outside and 82° inside, so only a 5° spread.  I can’t image it would cost much to keep it 5° cooler inside (vs. outside).  But what about days when it’s 100°?  I’d like to know what kind of curve the air conditioner efficiency has as related to inside-outside temperature differences.  For instance, if it costs, say, a dollar per hour to cool the house to 10° below the outside temperature, but $2/hour to get °15 lower, that would be worth knowing.  (I’m sure those per-hour numbers are way off, but you get what I’m saying, right?)

Another thing is that I saw this “Cool-n-Save” gizmo.  It seems pretty smart; it cools the A/C unit itself with evaporation.  A study showed it cut the cost of air conditioning by up to 30%.  However, I don’t know how much the air conditioner costs to operate, so I’m not sure whether the Cool-n-Save is worth $80—the break-even point would be when the air conditioner has accrued a cost of $267.  I’d be surprised if we use that much, just because if we get next month’s bill and it’s about $80 (and the others who benefit from A/C opt not to contribute), I’d expect it to pretty well stop.

The truly aggravating thing about this is that I feel completely uninformed.  I don’t know the best way to use my air conditioner, and that annoys me.  So please, by all means, enlighten me!  If you don’t know anything about air conditioner efficiency, no worries: I mostly want to know how other people handle the cost/comfort balance.  What do you do in the summer?

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Woohoo!  Just got an email from HSBC saying the interest rate has just been raised to 4.65% APY.  We just plunked some more savings in there a week ago, so good timing.  We’re planning on keeping half of our savings in there, and also a chunk of money (don’t have it yet) that will be in reserve for the day our Mazda dies.  I am so pleased to live at a time where I am regularly just given free money!

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I was making a pasta salad yesterday and decided to go all out… I bought sun-dried red bell peppers.  (I know, I’m really living large here!)  The salad was quite tasty, and the peppers were a delicious touch, so this morning I was thinking about the logistic of the peppers.

I have a dehydrator that doesn’t get used as much as it could, and while I imagine it wouldn’t be exactly the same as sun-drying, it seems like it would be a passable imitation.  “Think how much money I’ll save by doing it myself!” I thought gleefully.  Until I actually double-checked my receipt, that is!

Turns out that for me (at this time of year, at the store where I do most of my shopping), buying the sun-dried peppers is less expensive than buying fresh bell peppers and dehydrating them myself (not to mention the extra labor involved!).  The sun-dried peppers were $1.50 for what appears to be about two peppers; the fresh were the same cost per pepper!  Later in the season I expect that the fresh peppers will drop to about $.88 each, but it’s still cheaper to buy them already dried.

Just goes to show that the pricebook can reveal even the surprising deals!

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