Archive for January 3rd, 2008

Save Money On Energy Bills

Are you concerned about the upcoming large increase in your electric or oil bill? If so, here is a great equalizer. One of the largest components of your annual utility bill is the cost of heating your water. Most people leave their water heaters set whatever the plumber or manufacture recommends, and this is usually in the 140 to 150 degree range. However, our body is uncomfortable with a temperature above 102 degrees, the temperature the typical hot tub is set at. Therefore every time we wash our hands or take a shower we are forced to add cold water to reduce the temperature to a tolerable level. This, my friends, is crazy. Reset your water heater thermostat to approximately 100 degrees and start saving up to 1/3 of your annual hot water bill immediately! When you step into the shower turn on the hot valve only. Stop paying to keep 52 gallons of water 40 degrees hotter than you ever need, 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. A family of five, even if they took long showers and did a load of laundry daily would use less than 2 hours of hot water per day. The other 22 hours of each day you are paying up to 50 % more to keep the water hotter than necessary!

Try it and I guarantee you will love it.

Boost Your Savings Account …Without Even Trying

Annual income aside, there’s not a person among us who wouldn’t welcome the idea of having more money in their savings account. This is the money we use on everything from yearly vacations to family presents. Come holiday time, wouldn’t it be nice to have an extra thousand or so dollars at your disposal? Here are a few ideas that can help to make that possible. The best part is you’ll hardly feel it!

Bring Your Lunch to Work – The average person spends when they buy their lunch yet only when they pack it themselves. That’s a potential savings of a week or textarea,040 dollars a year.
Durable over Disposable – Using products like Handi-Wipes (semi-disposable rags) as opposed to paper towels, and a rechargeable razor rather than the disposable kind, can save you up to 0 per year.
Hold an Annual Yard Sale – You should have no problem making at least a hundred bucks. Besides, you’ll get rid of all that household clutter in the process. Whatever you don’t sell can be donated to charity and used as a tax write-off.
Ask for Discounts – From buying airline tickets to paying a medical bill, always ask if there’s a discount to be had. The worst that can happen is you’ll be told no.
Get a Library Card – As opposed to buying a book for , or instead of renting a DVD for , get it for free. If you average 3 movie rentals a month, you’ll save yourself over 0 a year.
Watch Those Utilities – Changing over to energy saving light bulbs and low flow showerheads is a great start. Also, most utility companies offer a home audit you can complete online. If not, go to http://hes.lbl.gov for a virtual inspection of your home. You may be surprised to learn how much energy (and money) you could be saving.

Lost Toolbars

Are you one of the many who have a toolbar installed on your computer along with your Web browser? For example, along with my Internet Explorer browser, I always use the Google toolbar. Maybe you do the same or perhaps you use another toolbar, such as the versions from Yahoo! or AOL. Either way, if you’re like me, you probably use those toolbars on a very regular basis, right? So, what if you were to lose it? What would you do? Well, let’s check out some of your options!

First, I hope you would work on getting it back! I know my Google toolbar has disappeared before, but luckily, I knew just how to get it back up and running. Do you want in on my little secret too? If you ever lose one of your toolbars, all you have to do (in Internet Explorer) is go to View, Toolbars and make sure the one you want to use is check marked. You can do the exact same thing in Firefox, if that happens to be the browser you use. Once your toolbar of choice is selected, it will pop right back up for you.

Now, when it comes back, it might look a little different than you remember it being. If that happens, don’t worry yourself too much. With the Google toolbar, just look for the Settings link and click on that. From there, you can go through everything and reset it back to the way you had it before. With the Yahoo! toolbar, look for the big red Yahoo! icon (it’s a Y with an exclamation point after it), right click on it and choose Change Toolbar Layout or whatever you’d like to do. You can do the same for any other toolbars you may use. When you’re all finished, you’ll have your toolbar back and as a bonus, you’ll know how to find it in case you ever lose it again. Oh yeah!