Whole Living on a Budget
Resources for a more natural, balanced, and sustainable life.Archive for money-saving tips
Green Your Life With Your Tax Refund – Part One
It’s tax time again. If you don’t owe Uncle Sam and you can claim credits too, this is a happy time for you. With some extra cash at your disposale, you have an opportunity to ramp up sustainability in your lifestyle. Here are a few of my top picks on how to spend Tax Refunds to Green your life:
Buy a share of Community Supported Agriculture! A new farming season is upon us, and it’s the best time to purchase a food subscription of from a local farm. I’ve mentioned Community Supported Agriculture a few times in this blog, so you probably already know that I’m a big fan.
What is Community Supported Agriculture? It is a way for you and me (the folks who don’t farm) to buy a share of a whole year of produce from a local farmer upfront. When growing season is at it’s peak (usually late April through October), you will get a weekly or monthly basket of fresh farm goods including produce and often even milk, eggs, cheese, meat or flowers, depending on the farm.
Prices vary and from my experience a share can cost anywhere from around $100 for a small weekly vegetable basket to up to $500 or more for organic meats. To find a CSA farm, visit LocalHarvest.
Get a Bike! Remember how fun an afternoon bike ride used to be when you were a kid? It can still be fun…if you take it slow and build your stamina up again.
Bikes are the most efficient form of transportation in exisentence and a safe, low-impact way to exercise. Plus, with the cost of gas prices steadily up to $3/gallon or more, using a bike for small trips here and there will save you some big bucks in the long run.
Buy a Moped! Okay, so the bike thing didn’t turn you on. If you’re too lazy to bike (like I am these days), a moped is a nice alternative.
First of all, it will save you tons of money if you use it for most of the trips you would normally use an automobile for. Most mopeds get around 120 miles to the gallon! That is crazy wonderful for saving gas money and lowering your environmental footprint. Just as nice: in most states you don’t have to buy auto insurance to drive a moped, so no more insurance payments.
The price for a new moped starts around $700. To be even more eco-friendly (and frugal), look for a used one in a local classifieds ad or on Ebay.
CheapCycle and FreeCycle: My Favorite Method to Buy/Sell/Give/Obtain
Last night I took about five minutes to make a post on my local CheapCycle Yahoo! Group. Today I made $200 in about five more minutes when a guy showed up and took a quick look and handed over cash for some used appliances and furniture that I needed to get rid of for a coming move. Dude, that was easy.
CheapCycle is collection of Yahoo! Groups that help people recycle items by buying and selling them to each other locally…and for cheap. I’ve been using it for nearly three years to purchase and sell all kinds of stuff from a sewing machine to clothe diapers. It’s completely free, which means a lot more ads than the newspaper 
classifieds and a good chance of finding what you need or want. To get in on the super cool action, just log into your Yahoo! account (or sign up for one free), then go to the CheapCycle master list website and find the closest group to your geographical location. Click on the Join this Group! button on the Group website and from there you’ll get an email explaining the rest.
Another similar network that I love is FreeCycle. This one is even better because everything is free. You can find your local group on the main FreeCycle website and join through Yahoo! the same as you do with CheapCycle.
The central purpose behind both of these movements is sustainability and helps everyone put the “reduce, reuse, recycle” motto into action. They use the power of the internet to connect people together so more things can be reused and recycled while keeping lots of good stuff out of landfills. Beyond that, they offer you the chance to obtain what you need at a great price (or free!) and get rid of what you don’t need while getting you more in touch with your local community and other people.
How to Ensure the Safety of Second-Hand Items
You might have thought that the cheap one-year old air purifier you saw on Craigslist today was a great deal, but what if it could be a fire hazard? Or what about that great baby carrier they have at the children’s consignment store downtown? It may be one that has been recalled due to falls that have fractured the skulls of babies. I don’t want to create a post about fear, but it is true that there are a lot of products out there that have some hidden dangers that might not be apparent at first. And that is another reason to choose to buy second hand items. Not only is it a more sustainable practice than buying a new product, there is also a lot more information out there about older products since they have already been used by plenty of consumers. The first place to start on your research should be a look into Product Safety Recalls.
For instance, you want to buy a used vehicle you found in the classifieds. If you look up the year, make and model on this page of Recalls.gov you can see if there have been any recalls on it. From searching this website, I discovered that a used vehicle I onced had was recalled for a possible leak in the fuel system at the throttle body injection fuel feed pipe connection. I have no idea what that means, but according to the website that leakage could result in an underhood fire and my ass turning to ashes. So I’m sure glad I don’t have that car anymore, but wouldn’t it have been nice to have known that before I bought it?
Another good resource for Product Safety Recalls is the Federal Citizen Information Center. This website provides a guide to understanding recalls, lists recent product safety recalls, and allows you to sign up to be notified by email with updates. So if you keep on top of things, you may even be able to realize that the cute little Christmas figurine at your neighbor’s garage sale is one of those that Home Depot recalled for lead paint. And you can save yourself that $.05 you would have paid for it and tell your neighbor to get his kid checked for lead poisoning. Fun stuff, huh?!
Frugal Living from the Oklahoma City Catholic Worker
Robert Waldrop is defiantly one of my idols. He has been the central force behind the Oklahoma City Catholic Worker for years, has brought a local food movement to central Oklahoma, and taught me innumerable things about social justice as well as sustainable and frugal living. His website, Better Times: the Webzine!, has a wonderful variety of resources to help everyone live better on a small budget. I highly recommend visiting the site and venturing through it thoroughly, but here are some good links to get you started:
Saving Money on Energy in Winter
Making Your Own Snacks
Make Your Own Baby Wipes
Cloth Diapers: Best for Baby
Family Food Security
Spider Plants for Inexpensive Air Purification
When I first moved to Kentucky, I was living in a old apartment with synthetic everything and a freeway right outside my bedroom window. Being overwhelmed with the poor indoor air quality and too broke to buy an electic air purifier, I purchased my first spider plant. Three years later, after many moves and lots of neglect, my first spider plant is still with me and a companion to several more that I have aquired that clean my air and add a touch of nature to my home.
Why did I choose spider plants (Chlorophytum comosum)? Well first, they are cheap and easy to find. Second, in my experience, they low-maintenance and nearly impossible to kill. While I was attending Massage School, working full time, and dating the crazy person who became my husband, I was basically never home. So my spider plants were extremely neglected, left in a fairly dark house and almost never watered. And they might have looked pretty ugly for a while, but they are alive and flourishing today. But the best reason for owning a spider plant is that there are numerous studies that prove that they contribute to good indoor air quality. Not only do they eliminate carbon dioxide like all plants, but they remove other toxins including benzene, formaldehyde, trichlorethylene…and that’s important if you’re aiming for a healthy home.
Now if the spider plant isn’t your style, there are other house plants that filter indoor air as well. The list includes (with links to wikipedia):
English Ivy (Hedera helix)
Golden pothos or Devil’s ivy (Scindapsus aures or Epipremnum aureum)
Peace lily (Spathiphyllum ‘Mauna Loa’)
Chinese evergreen (Aglaonema modestum)
Bamboo palm or reed palm (Chamaedorea sefritzii)
Snake plant or mother-in-law’s tongue (Sansevieria trifasciata ‘Laurentii’)
Heartleaf philodendron (Philodendron oxycardium, syn. Philodendron cordatum)
Selloum philodendron (Philodendron bipinnatifidum, syn. Philodendron selloum)
Elephant ear philodendron (Philodendron domesticum)
Red-edged dracaena (Dracaena marginata)
Cornstalk dracaena (Dracaena fragans ‘Massangeana’)
Janet Craig dracaena (Dracaena deremensis ‘Janet Craig’)
Warneck dracaena (Dracaena deremensis ‘Warneckii’)
Weeping Fig (Ficus benjamina)
Gerbera Daisy or Barberton daisy (Gerbera jamesonii)
Pot Mum or Florist’s Chrysanthemum (Chrysantheium morifolium)
Rubber Plant (Ficus elastica)
NASA recommends 15-18 plants to purify the air of an 1800 square foot home. So go out and get some and relish in the green foilage and clean air.
Get a Free $100 for Signing a New Lease
The last apartment my husband and I moved into was found online by searching various rental websites. With money being tight, it was a nice but unexpected blessing to get an email from Rent.com saying that I could claim a $100 gift card if I had signed a lease on the apartment I had been looking at on their website. All I had to do was complete a form indicating that I had indeed signed a lease and moved in. Then Rent.com contacted my leasing agent and confirmed that I had mentioned Rent.com as the main source that referred me to the complex. Within about six weeks, I had a $100 Visa gift card in my mailbox for doing something I was doing anyway: renting a place to live.
If you’re planning to move to a new apartment anytime soon, check Rent.com and register an account while you’re searching. If you happen to choose an apartment that they have on their website, make sure you let the leasing agent you speak with know that you came across the apartment on Rent.com so when you sign the lease you can get your free $100 as well.
