Saving Money

Compact Fluorescent Bulbs by 2012 - or Else!

If you haven’t heard, President Bush signed a new energy bill into law. FiveCentNickel has a pretty good summary here (although a bit critical).

The biggest change is that traditional incandescent bulbs will be outlawed, starting with 100 watt bulbs by 2010.

If you recall, I announced that I would switch my entire home to compact fluorescent bulbs (CFL’s) in February of 2007. As of now, I’ve had all CFL’s for about 10 months. I have not replaced a single bulb since then. I used to replace at least one incandescent bulb per month.

Solo Income Up and Running

I’m excited to announce a project I’ve been working on for a long time. I came up with a way for the average person (uh, that’s probably you) to make some extra money, working at home, with very little investment of time and money.

The best part about it is that anyone can do it - if you can type an email you can do this. And you only have to do the work once (about 40 hours worth) to make a monthly income for years.

Change a Bulb. Change Everything.

I recently discovered a new Yahoo site called “18 Seconds.Org“, but it is probably easier to get there by going to http://green.yahoo.com. The site is designed to encourage people to switch their incandescent bulbs compact fluorescent bulbs to save energy and money.

Thanks to Paul Stamatiou for pointing this out. As a right-wing conservative, you might already think I’m betraying the cause by pointing this out, but I don’t think so. Here’s why.

More Lies from Delta Airlines

Just got an email from Lee Macenczak, Executive Vice President of Sales and Customer Service. Delta seems bent on insulting my intelligence. Maybe everyone’s intelligence. With a title like that, Mr. Macenczak’s email smells full of spin and farce. They can always fire him, so I imagine that is why no real operatives at Delta signed their name to this public relations workhorse.

Delta SkyMiles Doesn’t Play Well With Others

You gotta wonder about Delta SkyMiles. LifeHacker recently turned me on to a great new site called Points.Com. It allows you to easily swap and redeem points earned from one program to another. The site has garnered the cooperation of every major airline, and lots of major retailers, like Best Buy, Amazon, Target, and many others.

Ideally, when your crazy uncle gives you a gift card to a store that isn’t even in your town, you can now go online and swap that card for something you might more readily use. There are lots of online points earning programs that are exchangeable at Points.Com as well. I’m surprised no one has done this earlier.

Portfolio Link is Great

I recently discovered a great little website called Portfolio Link. It allows you to very easily create a fictitious stock portfolio to see how good of an investor (or day trader) you might be. However, it is unique from other similar sites in some ways.

I initially had my fake portfolio on Yahoo’s Finance. However, there is no way to prove your merit to others with such a portfolio, because, for ease and convenience, Yahoo, like many other sites, allows you to go back in time and make changes to your portfolio. Thus, I could go back to Google’s IPO date and make a large purchase of its stock and then claim I’m a financial genius.

How to Save Money at a Car Dealership - From an Ex-Car Salesman (Part 2.5)

I thought I’d take a quick break from the series to review a few things about car dealerships before we get into Part III - The Test Drive.

Let’s review how you might have wound up at a particular dealership in the first place. As you know, car dealers spend an enormous amount of money on advertising - radio, television, and newspaper. They also use a lot of billboards and online advertising. Under “newspaper”, I’m including the little auto trade magazines you see at fast food restaurants, Walmart, etc.

How to Save Money at a Car Dealership - From an Ex-Car Salesman (Part 2)

I’ve been meaning to get back to this series since Obadiah’s death, but just haven’t had it in me. But, I know a lot of people seem to have found this helpful and have been looking forward to the next part. I’m going to try and get through Part 2 of it today.

Today, I’m going to try and cover Step 2 - The First Ten Minutes on the Lot.

How to Save Money at a Car Dealership - From an Ex-Car Salesman (Part 1)

I was going to create a seminar and charge a lot of money for this information, but I changed my mind and thought I could give back to the community by giving away this information - for free. It will be the last free thing you get before you set foot in the showroom of the car dealership. This is going to be part one of what will likely be a four or five part series.

A Few Disclaimers

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