Make up is overrated! How many make up brands are out there? I don’t know, probably hundreds.
In my earlier age I experimented with Prescriptives, Clinique, Cover Girl, Lancome, L’Oreal… Prescriptives, Clinique and Lancome are on the pricier side and are usually found at department stores. Brands like Cover Girl and L’Oreal are more affordable and are being sold at drug stores.
So what is my conclusion?
Water Heater is the second largest contributor to the energy bill after the air conditioner/central heat. Water has high heat capacity, so it takes a lot of energy to warm up. For example, it takes one kilowatt-hour to warm up about 10 gallons of water from 80F to 120F. Your electric or gas bill is noticeably affected by how much hot water you use in your house. That includes showering, clothes washer, dishwasher. Here are some general guidelines for how you can reduce your water heater energy use:
Same as with the air conditioner, heating your house can take up a significant chunk of your energy bill. It is not easy to estimate the energy use by your heater, it depends on the size of your house, how well the house is insulated, the temperature outside and the efficiency of the heating unit. Following these guidelines will help reduce your energy use to heat your house:
Energy spent on the air conditioner can take up a significant chunk of your energy bill. It is not easy to calculate the energy use by the central air conditioner, because it depends on the climate you live in, the thermal insulation of your house, the air conditioner type and its efficiency. But, nevertheless following these guidelines will help reduce your air conditioner’s energy use:
Guess what I’m talking about, my energy bill!
Can you imagine living without electricity? I can’t. It powers my alarm clock to which I wake up in the morning, makes my shower water hot before I go to bed and everything in between. Electricity, you are my savior! But it doesn’t come cheap, every month energy company sends me a bill for the luxury of having electricity. For some people the bill amount is surprising, for others it’s expected. But wouldn’t it be nicer to understand how this figure gets to be, so you can have a better control over your energy bill?
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You can calculate power usage of any appliance by finding a label that shows how much current (in amps or A) and the voltage (in volts or V) it uses. The amount of voltage appliance draws can vary, depending on the appliance. Maximum voltage is what you usually find on the appliance’s info panel. For example, a clothes dryer has multiple power settings, depending on the temperature setting for a given load of clothes. So voltage draw depends on the dryer’s operating temperature. Higher voltage draw is required with higher temperature.
In some cases the label tells you how many watts (W) an appliance uses to operate. A watt is a product of amp and volt (W = A * V). In this case you don’t need to look for volts or amps. Such labels are usually found on the door or the door opening of the dishwasher, clothes dryer, on the back side of the iron… In case you are having a hard time finding it on the appliance itself, you can find it in the appliance’s operation manual. Use this formula to calculate how much power it uses in kilowatt-hours (KWHRs). One kilowatt-hour equals to 1000 watt-hours. For your estimation you will need to know how many hours (HRs) per month the appliance is running.
KWHRs = A * V / 1000 * HRs or
KWHRs = W / 1000 * HRs
Keep in mind that even if the appliance’s ON switch is on, it doesn’t mean that it draws the same amount of power all the time it stays on. For example, even though refrigerator is plugged into the wall all the time, it turns on and off automatically. So, when it is ‘ON’ (you hear a light buzzing sound coming from it), it draws the power according to its label, and when it is ‘OFF’, it draws a very insignificant amount of power.
Calculations for estimating power use by the water heater are more complicated, but if you are curious enough, then read on.
To find out how much power appliance is using due to its hot water use, you need to know how many gallons of water your appliance uses, the temperature of your water heater’s thermostat setting and the temperature of cold water in your house.
Use following calculation:
(# of gallons of water) * 8.33 * (hot water temp F – cold water temp F) / 3413 = #KWHRs used
To estimate how much money it costs to operate, find out how much your electric company charges per kilowatt-hour from your energy bill.
# KWHRs * $/KWHR = $
Example:
According to the label, my dishwasher uses 120 volts and 2.7 amps and say it takes approximately 1 hour to complete the wash cycle. My dishwasher is Energy Star, so it uses 4 gallons of hot water per cycle. Since I live in Florida, I’m assuming my cold water is 80 F and my water heater’s thermostat is set at 125 F. My electric company charges 10.5 cents per kilowatt-hour. So a load of washing dishes in my dishwasher costs me:
120 volts * 2.7 amps / 1000 * 1 hour = 0.324 KWHRs
(4 of gallons of water) * 8.33 * (125 F – 80 F) / 3413 = 0.439 KWHRs
(0.324 + 0.439) KWHRs * $0.105 = $0.08
It seems like we would do anything for our little miracles that we are about to bring into this world. Baby paraphernalia that people used to do fine without (and still do in most of the world) is now considered to be a necessity. Hats off to the baby industry marketers! They know exactly how to get into the wallets of the emotional, hormone-filled expectant mothers and the nervous and excited fathers-to-be. New parents can easily blow thousands of dollars on baby items, anything from designer bibs and cute little socks to dressers, cribs and changing tables.
When it comes down to the core of it all, do babies really care whether they are wearing a new Disney onsie or the one that was worn by their older cousins? Do they care whether the crib they are sleeping in, cost you an arm and a leg at Babies’r'Us, or if you bought it at a garage sale for a fraction of the cost. You know the answer, babies don’t care! As long as the baby industry has you convinced that you “need”, “can’t live without” everything that they are so successfully pushing on you, they will stay very successful.
I guess the difference between me and many other parents is that I draw a more defined line between “want” and “need”, “necessary” and “optional”. So anyways, here is the story of how I decorated my nursery.
Sounds cheesy, but I love to cook from my little red Betty Crocker’s Cookbook. Promise, they’re not paying me. I like it because most meals are easy to cook and the preparation time is usually under 20 minutes. Most stuff I made turned out really well. Keeps my hubby happy.
I am currently a stay-at-home mom and a wife of an online entrepreneur, David Risley. He really loves what he does and he is good at it. I am happy that I can be home with my baby to take care of her and the household. And I can’t complain right now, we do have enough money to support our lifestyle. Though the thought about having financial security still crosses my mind, working for yourself is not the same as having a consistent paycheck, group insurance and 401k.
Even though entrepreneurship is becoming more and more accepted by our society, most folks still can’t let go of the fact that it’s not as secure as working for someone else. Even banks are so much more likely to loan money to someone with a ‘stable job’ rather than (what??) self-employed. And yea, I used to be part of the template too. I did work for a big company, making pretty decent money, had great health insurance (not like I ever used it) and my company was matching 4.5% of my pay to my 401k plan. When I went to apply for a mortgage, I had no problems at all getting a loan, even though it was a bit on a high side of what I could afford. They didn’t care whether I worked for a company with a stable reputation, if it was large or small, if it was about to go under or prospering… All they cared about for my loan approval is the last two stubs of my paycheck.
But when my husband told me what he had to go through to get his little house as a small business owner (that was before we met), the process seemed to be much more involved. O-o-oh, that’s right, he didn’t have the last two pay stubs of his paycheck. No one gives him a paycheck, he owns the company!
So I guess part of me does feel somewhat insecure about having a blogger for a husband. I do think about what it will be like when we get old and have no 401k or any other income to fall on, I think about the $2500 we have to shell out of our pocket before the health insurance kicks in if any of us gets sick. I think about the economy and how it is going to affect our small business.
Sounds depressing? It depends on how one looks at it. I trust my husband enough to think that we will never get to the point of being in a financial hole, and if we ever did end up there, I am ready to jump right in to help. Whether it’s getting a regular 9 to 5 job or helping out with the business.
It’s really not all that bad, there are definite upsides to having a self-employed hubby. He is his own boss and he sets his own schedule. Sometimes it’s nice to take a day off during the week and go to the amusement park. They are definitely less crowded on the weekdays! He is in control of his income, so if we need extra money, he can usually master it up. Since he works from home, we get to see him during his lunch break, he gets to play with the baby and have a small chat with me.
I guess one of the downsides of having a spouse as an entrepreneur is that he works a lot. Forget 9 to 5, it’s more like 8 to 10 with food breaks in between.
Enough of my opinions. Want to hear from Dave himself? Being his wife, I can get away with asking him some tough questions and getting some honest answers. So watch my 7-minute interview with him where he honestly opens up about his lifestyle as an entrepreneur and a family man.