Ten Ways to Greenify Your Home Right Now - Bargaineering

Ten Ways to Greenify Your Home Right Now

Posted: 09 Aug 2010 09:02 AM PDT

Green Historic Home When you look at the U.S. Green Building Council’s checklist for what makes a Green Home, you see a lot of things you can’t change after you’ve bought a home. Location? Can’t really move your house very easily, now can you? Size? Sorry, that’s pretty much set for us. And building design? It is what it is and unless you’re willing to do some major renovations, your design is set too.

However, there are plenty of things you can do right now to make your home a little nicer on the environment and cheaper on your wallet. They don’t require huge renovations or wholesale changes to your home, just little tweaks here or there that you probably won’t even notice… until you open your energy bill.

Use compact fluorescent light bulbs. CFLs save you money by using less electricity and they save you time because they last longer. They are more expensive, per bulb, than incandescents but many of their other downsides have been fixed (you can get a dimmable CFL now!). One that still persists is the presence of mercury. CFLs use a small amount of mercury so proper disposal is very important.
Trade in that old refrigerator. This is a classic greenification tip because refrigerator efficiency has really improved in the last ten years. The rule of thumb is that if the fridge is over ten years old, replace it because it’s killing you on the electricity bill. This same rule applies to freezers as well.
Check for and plug air leaks. Whether it’s summer or winter, it’s important to check your home for air leaks around windows and doors. That’s valuable air conditioning and heating going through those cracks, you don’t want to cool down the entire neighborhood right?
Unplug devices you don’t use. Various appliances, especially those with an “instant on” button, use electricity even when they’re off. If you don’t need something, unplug it if it doesn’t have a hard switch. You can save yourself a bundle by not paying to power things you aren’t even using. A protip is to put similarly used devices on one power strip and unplugging that (to save you some time).
Eat cold foods, cook less using the range or oven. This falls under the category of keeping yourself and keeping your home cool at the same time. The more you cook inside, the more heat it generates. If you have to cook, try using the grill outside or sticking with colder foods. It’s time to take a look at that cookbook on your shelf… you know, the one with the pretty pictures that you never use (we have a bunch of those!).
Use your window blinds effectively. The only difference between a greenhouse and your house is that a greenhouse is made up entirely of windows. You only have a few of them but you can use window blinds to effectively trap or deflect the sun’s rays from penetrating your home. In the winter, open up the shades and let the light in to warm your home. In the summer, draw the blinds to reflect some of that light away from your home.
Use a programmable thermostat. We recently signed up for BGE’s Peak Rewards program, which replaced our previous programmable thermostat with one that includes a touchscreen interface and is accessible from the internet. Best part of it all was that it’s free and I get up to bill credits for using it! If your electricity company doesn’t offer something similar, using a programmable thermostat still saves you money by only cooling or heating your home when you want it to.
Install a two-stage flusher on toilets. This particular tip won’t save you that much money but it’ll help the environment by cutting down on how much water you use. You can pick up a $20 conversion kit from Home Depot and retrofit your existing toilets into a two-stage flush in about five minutes (ten minutes the first time you do it). At $20 a pop, it won’t save you money for a couple years (we pay $50 a quarter for water) but every bit counts.
Buy a Kill-A-Watt and educate yourself on your appliance’s energy usage. We’ve had one for quite some time and every so often I use it to see how much energy certain appliances were using up. Sometimes it’s important to do this just to be educated, like when I learned it cost us about a dollar a night to use our in-room air conditioner (totally worth it).

And here’s a bonus tip, if you do the laundry, line dry them instead of using the dryer in the summer. The dryer will generate heat, which your A/C will have to fight against, and consume quite a bit of electricity. In the winter, you can still line dry to save on electricity but less so because the dryer does help warm up your house a little bit.

Outside of these elevent tips, anything you can do to reduce the consumption of natural resources and electricity will be good. What are your quick tips to greenify your home?

(Photo: minds-eye)

Ten Ways to Greenify Your Home Right Now from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

How to Prepare for Losing Your Job

Posted: 09 Aug 2010 04:35 AM PDT

Find Employment! One of the most traumatic financial disasters you can face, and millions of Americans have in the last two years, is losing your job. The key to bouncing back on your feet is to prepare for it ahead of time. There are plenty of things you can do that will soften the blow of being fired, though nothing will completely dampen it, and as long as you put some things in place you can make your life a little easier for the next few months.

The general idea behind the tips in the “While You Have a Job” is to setup a scenario where you don’t feel like you’ve been thrown into the middle of the Pacific Ocean without a life preserver. You want to set things up so that if you are fired, you can bounce back as quickly as possible and those tips, hopefully, put you on that path. The tips in the “When You Are Fired” are a little less novel because the general strategy for finding a new job is pretty well laid out.

I hope this latest edition of the Financial Contingency Plan series helps you out!

While You Have a Job

Build up a Network
With the exception of my first job, all of my subsequent careers started with a referral from an existing employee. If you’ve been working for quite some time, you’ve probably developed a network of friends and associates you can call on in the event you are let go. The economy isn’t in the best of shape at the moment so employers are not eager to hire on new employees before knowing their future business prospects. If they are, they will likely turn to their existing employees for help since a referral is better than a random person off the street (or screen).

It’s important to build up and cultivate your network so that you can feel comfortable asking them if they have any openings.

Refresh Your Resume
I recommend updating your resume every three months (or six, depending on how busy you are). By refreshing your resume often, especially when you don’t need to, you don’t feel any pressure. You also get to do it on a clear mind with a good memory of what you’ve accomplished over the last three or six months. If you are forced to recall several years of work at a moment of crisis, you will probably forget something important or remember it imperfectly.

Build up an Emergency Fund
Since you currently have a job, make sure you are saving towards an emergency fund. If you are fired, you need confidence that a six or twelve month financial safety net will give you. You will get unemployment benefits, which will soften the blow and strength out that emergency fund a little more, but its your emergency fund that will supply the bulk of your spending until you find a new employer. Start saving now.

When You Are Fired

OK, it seems a little fatalistic to title this section like that but it’s the truth (and hopefully you’ll never have to use this advice!), this is what you need to do if you’re fired:

Take a day (or week) off. Do something fun, do something you’ve always wanted to do, volunteer, and pretty much just unwind and relax. Let the shock of being fired subside, so you can find a job without the specter of “failure” (there are plenty of reasons unrelated to you as to why you were let go). Heck, pretend the company went out of business even if it didn’t, just do whatever you need to get you in the right frame of mind.
Apply for unemployment benefits, you do so with the Labor Department of your state. This can take some time to process so do so as quickly as possible.
Keep busy outside of applying by doing some more volunteering, consulting, or having fun. You may discover a job out of it but mostly it’ll keep you busy and less crazy.
Sign up to online job boards and start finding headhunters who can search on your behalf.
Send out resumes and cover letters, tracking what happens to each. Set goals for yourself to help motivate you (send out 5 tailored resumes and letters per week).
Review Bargaineering’s Career Week for additional tips.

Losing a job can be very traumatic, but if you prepare for it and enter it in a good frame of mine, you’re much more likely to find success sooner. Don’t worry if you don’t “bounce back” quickly, no one expects you to, but regaining your confidence and your composure is absolutely crucial.

(Photo: theclevelandkid24)

How to Prepare for Losing Your Job from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

Ten Ways to Greenify Your Home Right Now - Bargaineering, Here you can watch Ten Ways to Greenify Your Home Right Now - Bargaineering online. Recently it is the latest update serial play for the Ten Ways to Greenify Your Home Right Now - Bargaineering.Ten Ways to Greenify Your Home Right Now - Bargaineering is fully Eng Subbed, and avail in eng sub. Now it is availab le to watch online. you can watch Ten Ways to Greenify Your Home Right Now - Bargaineering by the given links below, click on Ten Ways to Greenify Your Home Right Now - Bargaineering Parts below to watch online. Ten Ways to Greenify Your Home Right Now - Bargaineering Vidoe is source of Mega Video, Youtube etc, so you can watch Ten Ways to Greenify Your Home Right Now - Bargaineering without any issue.

Ten Ways to Greenify Your Home Right Now - Bargaineering Part 1

Ten Ways to Greenify Your Home Right Now - Bargaineering Part 1

Ten Ways to Greenify Your Home Right Now - Bargaineering Part 1

Tags: Ten Ways to Greenify Your Home Right Now - Bargaineering, Ten Ways to Greenify Your Home Right Now - Bargaineering watch online, full Ten Ways to Greenify Your Home Right Now - Bargaineering video, Ten Ways to Greenify Your Home Right Now - Bargaineering download, Ten Ways to Greenify Your Home Right Now - Bargaineering torrent, free Ten Ways to Greenify Your Home Right Now - Bargaineering, Ten Ways to Greenify Your Home Right Now - Bargaineering megavideo, Ten Ways to Greenify Your Home Right Now - Bargaineering full, Ten Ways to Greenify Your Home Right Now - Bargaineering eng sub

News INT.

Monday, August 9, 2010