Lowering Your Telephone Bill With Alternative Plans

In response to the growing number of people who have cell phones as their primary phone, but still need dsl service, most phone companies have come up with alternative plan options to appeal to most users.

For example, I don't have a cell phone, so I need my home phone, but I don't actually use it much. Sometimes I can go for days without making an outgoing call. I was able to get a plan that gives me unlimited incoming calls, but only 30 outgoing calls a month for about $4 less than my regular line charge. If I make more than 30 calls a month, I pay only .10 a call.

Some other options are:

Incoming calls only with pay as you go outgoing calls at .25 a call
Internet Only, for those with cell phones who do not need phone service at all.

Some things to think about when choosing a service:

I live in Florida, so the "Internet Only" option would not work for me, simply because of hurricanes. When the cell towers are down, and power is out, land lines usually still work, since most of these are run on underground cable. If you live in a place where power and cell phone outages are a real possibility, you should think twice before giving up your land line.

I also have an elderly parent in another state, so I need to have a reliable way for my family to contact me. Cell phone service is nice, but it isn't the most reliable service around. Plus, that entails leaving your cell phone on 24/7, which can really eat up your batteries. This could cost you more than one of the low usage plans.

911 cannot locate you from a cell phone call from your house. If you are unable to speak, a land line can be traced, and EMS dispatched to your home. Better safe than sorry, I always say.

Cell phones go dead at the worst possible times. A land line can be a lifesaver if you need to make an emergency call.

So do what works best for you. There are options available. Call your phone company today and see what they have.

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Recipe - Texas Caviar

I got this recipe from a friend when she brought some to a party. It's so addictive, if you serve it, you'll have everyone asking for the recipe, so make sure you print out some recipes to give away. I think this is one of the best and healthiest party dips around, and will be a real hit with your vegetarian and natural foods friends, when served with all natural corn chips or tortilla chips. It's even good all by itself, or on crackers. Enjoy!

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Is A Heat Pump An Efficient Way To Heat Your Home?

In warmer climates, such as the lower south, a heat pump is an extremely efficient way to heat and cool your home. I have a heat pump in S. Florida, and although it takes awhile to get used to the "cold heat" that a heat pump puts out, it is a better alternative economically for me than a conventional electric furnace. In colder climates, it can be expensive, and is usually not your best choice.

Heat pumps work by pulling the warm air out of the cold air outside. Because of this, the air that comes out of your vents, while warmer than the inside air, may seem cold to someone used to an electric, gas, or oil furnace.

A heat pump is an air conditioner that contains a valve that lets it switch between "air conditioner" and "heater." When the valve is switched one way, the heat pump acts like an air conditioner, and when it is switched the other way it reverses the flow of Freon and acts like a heater.

Heat pumps can be extremely efficient in their use of energy. But one problem with most heat pumps is that the coils in the outside air collect ice. The heat pump has to melt this ice periodically, so it switches itself back to air conditioner mode to heat up the coils. To avoid pumping cold air into the house in air conditioner mode, the heat pump also lights up burners or electric strip heaters to heat the cold air that the air conditioner is pumping out. Once the ice is melted, the heat pump switches back to heating mode and turns off the burners.

On really cold days, a heat pump must work especially hard to collect heat—that's when the supplemental heater switches on to boost warmth.

Some heat pumps can heat a home's water, too. The Hydrotech 2000 Heat Pump by Carrier is a system that utilizes the warm air that a heat pump gives off to help heat water, as well. Adding to its performance is a built-in microprocessor that varies fan speeds and output depending on need. This greatly improves a heat pump's efficiency.

EFFICIENCY

Heat pumps are most effective at saving energy when in the heating mode. The problem with an air-source heat pump in a cold climate, however, is that your household needs more heat as the temperature outside goes down, but the heat pump works less efficiently at lower outdoor temperatures.

Below a temperature known as the "balance point," normally 30 to 45 degrees Fahrenheit, supplementary heat is required--and that means expensive electrical-resistance heating kicks in. In my experience, this is why heat pumps are not good for cold climates, as electric heat can be very expensive. When I lived in SC, even keeping my thermostat on 65, I had $200 heat bills in the winter (this was in the late 70's. It would be more like $400 today).

Read more about heat pumps here.

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Computer Maintenance Day - Once a Week Tonic For Your Machine

Computers are cheaper than they used to be, no doubt, but a good one is still pretty expensive, so it's important to keep them running well for as long as you can. It's quite easy to keep your computer in good running order with freeware programs. The paid programs by and large aren't so much better that you need to put out money for them.

Just as you need to detox your body from time to time, so you need to detox your computer. What do I mean by detox? I mean, scan and defrag.

I always start out by cleaning everything with CCleaner, a nifty little computer cleaning freeware program. It basically takes out all your "crap" files (It used to be called Crap Cleaner as a matter of fact), like cache, cookies, temp files, things like that. Why can't you just do that through the functions your computer has on it? Well, you can, but the thing is, the Windows Disk Cleaner takes out too much sometimes, and then you have problems. If you only delete the cookies and files, as windows wants you to do, you miss the those nasty little secret files IE caches so it can know what you're browsing habits are, called index.dat files.

It takes a very long time to do all these things individually, because you have to open all browsers on your machine (I have Firefox, IE, and Opera) to clean their caches, and use a special technique to delete the hidden files. CCleaner does it all at once, no muss, no fuss, and it only takes about half a minute on a normal day. In fact, I use it several times a day, since I work online and am continually creating garbage. When I don't clean for a day or two, it can take up to five minutes for it to clean all the crap off, so this is best done at least once a day. I like to do mine when I first turn my machine on in the morning.

The next program I run is my virus scan, which takes a couple of hours usually. I've just switched from AVG Free to Avira AntiVir, and today will be my first scan. You should really run a virus scan at least once a week, and more if you visit more dangerous sites, such as porn sites or even the Chinese sites that play videos.

Then it's spyware scan time. I run both AdAware Free and SpyBot Free. I find that they are just different enough to have to be run individually. In my opinion, SpyBot is the better of the two programs, so I run that first, then AdAware to pick up whatever SpyBot misses, but to be honest, it hardly misses anything.

After that, I run A squared or A² Trojan Remover. Why run a separate trojan remover? Because many anti-virus and spyware programs do not detect trojans well, therefore you need a separate program to be extra safe.

After that I run Panda Anti-rootkit. Rootkits are very specialized programs, and other scanning software won't pick them up, so this is a quick and easy mode of protection.

That will take the better part of the day. After I've made sure my computer is safe, I will run a defrag. I use Auslogics Disk Defrag, which is the fastest and best defrag I've ever used.

Since that will take the better of 8 hours to do, I will probably not run the Windows Update today, simply because I know I have not updated in awhile, so I need to download SP3, and that alone can take two hours.

Time consuming? Yes, but if you make your living with your computer, very much a necessity. Besides which, it keep me off the computer for the day, except to check back in occasionally and see if there are any error messages that have stopped the scans that I need t0 deal with. Oh yes, did I tell you that you need to be around to do all of this? Wouldn't it be nice if it could be done while you're asleep? I tried that, and I got up in the morning to find that virus scan had stopped about 1/3 of the way through, so I had to do it all over anyway.

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Eating What You Have Onhand

One thing that is very important to being frugal is to eat at home, and to learn to make do with what you have.

Today, I wanted to use up my half head of lettuce before it went bad. I don't have a lot of fresh veggies in the frig, because I'm trying to use them up before I go on my Master Cleanse routine. So what I had on hand fresh wasn't enough to really make any decent sort of salad, just lettuce and carrots.

I started looking through my canned goods. We who live in Florida have lots of canned goods on hand during hurricane season. I found some petite diced tomatoes, corn, and water chestnuts. I drained all of them to freeze and use as soup stock later, and put them into the salad. It still seemed to be lacking something. When I went to put the leftover veggies into the fridge, I spied some raw sesame seed I had taken out of the freezer to make space. Perfect! A couple of handfuls of sesame seed, some Rasberry-Walnut vinaigrette dressing, and a few bacon bits on top, and I had a wonderful salad.

Now excuse me, while I eat, then I'll get back to this post.

O.K., back. That was a tasty salad! Now, more about eating what you have onhand.

You can make some very yummy meals from things you would never think of putting together. You should make sure you always keep rice and beans in the house. Canned beans are the fastest, but if you are on a very tight budget, you can cook beans and freeze them in quart sized bags.

Seasonings are also very important

I love Nature's Seasons, but if you don't have it, and don't have the money to get it, mix pepper, garlic powder, celery seed powder, onion powder, and ground oregano together. You can salt to taste. I like to buy those 2/$1 seasonings, and always have tons of them on hand. I also just bought a large jar of bbq seasoning for $1 at the Dollar Tree, which I'll use on some turkey I have in the freezer. Many times, the name brand seasonings can be found at BOGO sales (Publix does this quite often) and at stores like Big Lots at deep discounts.

Health food stores that sell seasonings in bulk are a great place to buy just what you need, or to stock up. Save your empty seasoning containers to use for these.

Potatoes as a Meal

I remember times when the only fresh veggies I had, or could afford, was a five pound bag of potatoes. Thankfully, I like potatoes, and can always find ways to make them into a decent meal.

Potato Soup is one alternative. Of course, I like carrots and bacon bits in my potato soup, so if I have them around, that's what I make. Milk is good, but powdered milk is just as good.

You know those expensive potato skins they serve at places like TGIFridays? You can make them yourself for next to nothing! Bake the potato, cut it in quarters and scoop out the insides. Put a little picante sauce on the skins, cover with grated cheese, and bake until the cheese is melted. Yummy! I usually make these when I'm going to make potato soup, because otherwise, you just peel the potatoes and toss out the skins, right?

Now you have all that baked potato to do something with, right? I like to just mix it with some butter and eat, but you can add all sorts of good things to it. Like I said, I usually use it for potato soup, but you can also make potato pancakes, latkes, or many other tasty potato dishes with it.

Grate some potatoes and fry them as hash browns, serve with thinly sliced and fried pieces of SPAM, and a couple of scrambled eggs, and you have a great meal. Yeah, it sounds like breakfast, but it can be eaten anytime.

My point is, if you're willing to eat what you have and be satisfied with it, you can save a lot of money. Heck, I've had a can of pork and beans for dinner, and been thankful for it. How many students have lived on ramen noodles for days at a time? Lots of them, and they didn't suffer for it.

You just have to do what you have to do, and be thankful you have anything to eat. A lot of people right here in this rich country go to bed hungry at night.

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Fixing a Hole in Your Bathtub for Less Than $5

Credit: Fieryn / Morguefile.com

I have an old ceramic/iron bathtub. When it got a small rust hole in it, I searched everywhere for solutions, and finally, I ended up in the paint department of Home Depot. There I found something that comes in a little round tube called "Plumber's Epoxy".

This stuff is awesome! You pinch off a little piece, play with it a little while to soften it and shape it, then just put it over the hole, smooth out the edges, and voila! Hole fixed. After it sets, which is lightning fast - but they recommend you wait 24 hours - you sand it and put some of that ceramic patch paint on it. You can hardly tell there was a hole, honest!

Well, it isn't really that simple, but just about. I've used it for a lot of stuff, like plugging the hole in a clay bowl so I could turn it into a birdbath, and fixing some cracks in my refrigerator wall. Now, if looks bother you, you won't want to put it in the frig, because it's gray, and it isn't gonna turn white, no matter what you do. But if you're just looking for a quick fix, at a great price, a tube of this stuff cost less than $10 and it keeps virtually forever.

Just wanted to let you know that there IS a cheaper way than to call a professional to patch a tiny hole in your bathtub, or buying a new refrigerator.

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When the Walls Come Tumbling Down - Losing Your Job

I have a decent job, full time, good benefits, that is..until yesterday. Sometimes, you have to just walk away from a very, very bad situation, and that's the situation I was in.

When things like this happen, you have to sometimes just pull yourself together and make the best of it. You have to take inventory of what you have, and how you can get what you need.

My Inventory:

Assets:

• I have two weeks more to work, and I have almost a week of vacation pay coming.
• I have a cupboard full of food, thanks to my frugal shopping ways.
• I have been trying to get started selling off some items to declutter, so this is a good time to kick that into full gear.
• I have been working toward getting licensed for a backyard nursery, and have a lot of plants I could already be selling, so again, time to kick that into full gear.
• I have been planning to plant a vegetable garden, but didn't have time. Now I do.
• I have knowledge and expertise about growing plants that I can sell. I've already put an ad on Craigslist to do landscape work and consulting.

So those are my assets. These are my liabilities:

• I have a house payment that has to be made
• I have utility payments that need to be made
• I have insurances and taxes that have to be paid by the end of this month
• I have no credit cards to fall back on in an emergency
• I will now have no health insurance or retirement
• I have a back tax bill that needs to be paid by next April
• I have a 16 year old car that is going to break down and need repairs anytime now

No doubt, I'm afraid at this time, but at the same time, I'm excited to be able to pursue a life that is more to my liking. In reality, I will probably get at least a part time job somewhere to supplement what I can make by selling off my life and running my nursery. Of course, the insurance problem is worrisome, but that's just something I will have to deal with. I had no insurance for many years, and somehow I survived.

I'm sure that many of you are in the same boat that I am, even worse. Share with us some of what you did to survive a hard economic time, so that we can get ideas that may help us.

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