Tag Archives: save money

Preparing For a New Baby Minimalista Way, Furnishing Nursery

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Baby news can put anyone over the edge considering the upcoming medical bills, acquiring all the baby gear, nursery furnishings, clothing. All this is besides the upcoming every day expenses, like diapers, formula, health insurance, etc.

I am a minimalista and in less than three weeks we are expecting our second child, this time it’s a boy! We already have a 2-year old girl, and by going through her stuff the other day, I realized that we hardly need anything for our new baby boy! I would like to share with you how I managed to spend very little on both of my kids and still have all the necessities.

In this post I will be talking about setting up nursery. You can spend a ton or spend a little, it’s up to you. All I’m going to do is provide the information that could help you make the choices that are right for you!

1. Relieve yourself from extra work. If you’re planning on more than one kid, Continue reading →

How I Saved On My Maternity With No Maternity Insurance

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If you are reading this post, you are probably desperate.  First off, congratulations on your pregnancy! I hope my story will help you save money on your maternity bills if you don’t have maternity coverage.

In April 2007 I found myself pregnant.  I called my insurance first to find out if they covered pregnancy.  The answer was ‘no’.  Then after calling numerous insurance companies I found that pregnancy is considered a pre-existing condition and none of them could cover me, since I was already pregnant.

I started to get worried.  We have a baby on the way and we will have to pay for the doctor, labs, hospital ourselves!  How much will it be?  Where are we going to get the money?  What if there are complications?

My husband is self-employed and I wasn’t working at the time. We had individual insurance plan through a major insurance carrier.  The only way they would cover pregnancy is if I had maternity coverage before I got pregnant or if we had group insurance through the business.

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I Saved $50 On My Energy Bill!

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In September I actually followed through with the idea from one of my earlier blogposts about turning off my garage freezer in order to save some money on my energy bill. Around the same time I also started rinsing my dishes with cold water before putting them in the dishwasher and the same goes with washing my hands.  The rest of our energy consumption stayed relatively the same, since this September in Florida was just as hot, if not hotter as the rest of the summer months.

One of the motivators for making this adjustment was the increase in energy bill over the prior couple of months. Usually our electric bill is under tolerable amount of $200, but in July and August of this year, it hit as high as $230. That’s when I decided to go ahead and turn off the old freezer in our hot garage. I am assuming that the freezer was on constantly, since I heard its buzzing sound every time I would pass by it, whether it was day or night. The freezer is quite old, the insulation is worn out, the poor thing had to work nonstop in order to compensate for 100 degree + temperature in our garage. And we had to pay for it!

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Save Money On Laundry

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Average clothes washer uses 40 gallons of water per cycle.  Its energy use will depend on the cycle’s water temperature.  The hotter the temperature, the more energy it will use.  The mechanical operation of washer itself does not consume a lot of energy.

You can find out how much power your washer uses by checking out Find Energy Use by Appliance. So here are some tips:

  • Choose a cycle with cold rinse, rather than warm or hot rinse.  It is not the “washing” part that takes a lot of water, it is the “rinsing” part.  So washing in hot or warm water won’t consume nearly as much energy as rinsing in hot or warm water.
  • Choose a cycle with automatic temperature sensor.  This way the washer will use appropriate amount of cold water to accommodate for the required temperature setting, potentially saving energy on hot water use.
  • Try to maximize clothes load every time you use a laundry machine.

Confession Of The Gift Wrapping Cheapskate

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By Malika Risley

I love giving gifts!  I feel good when I see the excitement on the recipients’ faces as they are about to find out what they got.

Mystery is an important part of gift giving.  We conceal the gifts before we give them away.  It’s the feeling of surprise and anticipation that gets everyone so excited about getting a gift.  Wrapping a gift is not a matter of practicality, it’s a matter of delivering emotion.

But paying for something that is going to get torn apart and thrown away just doesn’t seem right to me. At the same time I don’t want to look like a total cheapskate when my present is being unwrapped. So I still wrap my gifts and make them presentable. I just improvise on the materials.  Here is what I do to save money on gift wrapping:

Managing Energy Use By Water Heater

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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:

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Estimate Energy Use By Appliance

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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