Category: Going Green 101

Like most people, we have a big bin to hold all our recycling until I feel the urge to take it to the recycling center. The downside to the big bin is:

• I always wait until the bin is full to take it, and then it takes me forever;
• My husband is forever complaining about how the overflowing bin makes us look trashy, and
• The stuff towards the bottom tends to be nasty from sitting outside for so long.

My solution for a while was to accept paper bags when I went to the grocery store nearest my house (the only one in the area that actually gives you the option of paper!), and then toss recyclables into the paper bags. This looked slightly neater, and when I went to the recycling center, I only needed to hurl the filled bags into the containers, saving me a fair amount of time. ( It is very helpful that I no longer need to sort my recyclables- everything goes in the same containers except cardboard and batteries.)

However, I was still waiting until I had a lot of bags accumulated to decide to take them,-you can file that under “lazy”- and then I would forget them, several times in a row, and again with the husbandly complaining.

Then I started to feel guilty about the paper bags. Really, they’re no better than plastic: they eat up natural resources, and their manufacture causes just as much pollution.

The new solution?

Using my fabric shopping bags to hold my recycling! Now if I want to go to the grocery store, I have no choice but to bring the recycling, or else I’ve got nowhere to put my groceries.

Since I grocery shop twice a week, the recycling moves quickly, so no more whining about the aesthetics of the recycling bin, and hastily-rinsed containers don’t have time to get icky.

So until we get the RecycleBank in my area- hopefully any day now, as it has been so successful in Wilmington, a mere twenty minutes away- this is my recycling system.

Does anyone have experience with the RecycleBank? Is it everything I hope it is?

Or, do you have any more good ideas to make recycling less of a chore?

I’d like to say I’m careful about how much gas I use because of environmental concerns. That may have been true once upon a time. But if I am being brutally honest, today it’s primarily my wallet I’m concerned about.

Like everyone else I know, I’ll be heading to the beach this weekend, and I’m a little on edge about how much it’s going to cost me in gasoline.

I generally operate on a fairly set schedule, and I fill my tank every week on the same day at about the same time. (Thursday, if you’re interested, because my gas station is 5 cents cheaper that day.) This made it pretty easy to track my spending and to budget for gas. Most weeks I paid $20. Sometimes we’d visit family, fairly close by, but that extra trip would tack an extra dollar or two on the total. I hated when I’d go over $25.

I started to aim for under $20 dollars- if I had to go somewhere not in my usual routine, I would strategically plan my errands for the rest of the week to compensate, by shaving off miles wherever possible. I loved that moment of triumph when the pump would stop at $18.

The little victories in life.

Sadly, gas prices kept rising. No matter how much I pulled back consumption, the price went up and my cost was essentially the same. And now, prices have shot up enough that coming in under $20 just isn’t going to happen- I’ve had to mentally adjust to $25 as my goal. The same number that two months ago I saw as extravagant.

Ugh, and now the drive to the beach. I’m happy to be going, but I’m trying to think- What’s the best way to conserve gas here? How can I prevent a small heart attack at the pump next Thursday? (Actually, sigh, it’s highly unlikely I’ll even make it to Thursday.)

Quick Plan for Fuel Conservation:

• Check the tires before we go.
• Pack as efficiently as possible to reduce weight.
• Leave at the crack of dawn to avoid idling in traffic.
• Lecture husband on ways to drive efficiently (he won’t be in a car I’m driving). I think this is going to be a hard sell. But I’ll still remind him, in a pleasant and rational manner, to:
• Do the speed limit. Apparently the posted limit is 55 for a reason! Generally speaking, you spend an estimated 20 cents extra per gallon for every 5 mph over 60. Or, to frame it another way, you lessen your fuel economy by 17% when you drive 70 instead of 55. Not to mention, a speeding ticket is an expensive souvenir.
• Don’t drive like a jerk. No need to speed up behind somebody, slam on the brakes, then zoom out from behind them to pass. Not only is this bad karma, it can decrease your highway gas mileage by 33%.
• Use cruise control. He does this anyway. I’m adding that for your benefit.

In addition, we’ll scout out the best on-the-way gas prices for the inevitable refill on the way home. Last I checked, Jersey gas prices were a good bit cheaper than Delaware’s, thank the gods, because the gas station nearest to my house hit $3.95 yesterday.

And while I’m thinking about it, I’ll head over to TerraPass and see how much it would cost to offset my car’s carbon emissions for the year. I’ve been sitting on some gift certificates I earned by recycling my family’s old cell phones, time to cash those babies in.

Want more tips?

Here’s the top 15 ways to save on gas.

Use GasBuddy to find the cheapest gas near you.

And for goodness sake, put on some sunscreen! It’s for your own good!

I have been economically stimulated, so I did what I’ve been meaning to do for forever- I opened an ING savings account, created an account named “Emergency” and stuck half that stimulus check in it. Unfortunately, right now the interest is only 3% on the amount I’ve transferred, but 3% is way better than nothing.

Setting up the account was really easy, shockingly so. I’m so happy to have that emergency fund money out of my checking account, so that there is no temptation to spend it- out of sight, out of mind.

The best part about ING, besides not having to wait in line, is the ability to set up several savings sub-accounts in one spot and authorize automatic deposits.

For instance:

Last year I started up a system of saving for Christmas, where I would take $20 each week and stick it in an envelope. Then when I went Christmas shopping, I knew exactly how much I could afford to spend and how much I had left. It made Christmas shopping a much easier process, and since I paid cash, there was no post-Christmas depression to deal with when the credit card bill rolled in.

The downside to the envelope system is that whenever my husband runs out of cash, he will borrow from the Christmas money. This is a royal pain because I now have to figure out weekly how much I have to “pay back”, plus I have a heart attack every time I open that envelope and money is missing. Also, after being robbed last year, I have become nervous about having cash in the house, no matter how clever I think the hiding place is.

So along with the emergency fund account, I’ve opened a Christmas savings account. I transferred the amount that I have so far in my envelope, and set it up to automatically withdraw $20 a week from checking. It can sit safely until December, plus accrue interest. Bonus!

Other sub-accounts I plan to set up:

• An account for saving toward this coming winter’s oil bill. I think we can only assume energy and oil costs will continue to rise, and I hate that horrible feeling of dread when the oil man comes to fill our tank, knowing a bill for $400+ dollars will be arriving soon thereafter. Our electric bill peaked at $192.22 this winter, for simplicity’s sake I’ll round up to $200; my lowest so far was $102.30 and I know I can do better. So what I’ll do is assume an average of $150 a month on electric and work that into my budget. If the bill is less than $150, I’ll take the difference and transfer it into my designated ING account for oil. Even if it’s not enough to cover that bill entirely, it’ll take some of the sting out of writing the huge check.
• Saving towards a new (or new to us) car for my husband. It’s nearly a decade old and was flooded out a few years back. I don’t think we’d miss another 10 or 15 dollars a week, plus in less than a year my minivan will be paid off, and we can redirect that $275 a month payment into this savings account. Then whenever his car dies, or when it needs a repair that costs more than we want to sink into the thing, we’ll have some money already set aside for a down payment (and with any luck the car payments won’t amount to more than the $275 already earmarked for car payments). But golly, I wish we could make the car payments stop entirely and put that money towards retirement funds! Does it ever end?

Naturally these accounts are in addition to the funds being put into my husband’s 401(k) and 529 accounts.

• Finally, my middle child, a saver by nature, has over $100 dollars in a savings account at Commerce Bank, where it is accruing a sad 0.25% interest. So we’ll close that out and put the monies into a sub-account in my name, but designated as “Maverick’s Savings Account“. Maybe seeing firsthand how compounding interest works will inspire his brother to start saving his allowance as well.

I’m no financial wizard by any means. Could not be farther from it. If anything I’ve only just begun to really look at the big picture of where our money goes and where it needs to go, and I am sensing that I should have done this a decade ago. My guess is that I’m not alone in this, and that is why I’m taking time to go off-subject and share what I’m doing.

I will tell you, though, that setting these types of savings in motion makes for a lot less general worry about money. Less worry means more energy for the good stuff.

Incidentally, since I’ve opened the account, I now have referral codes for customers opening new checking or savings accounts. (The checking account is also interest bearing, but at a lower rate.) ING will deposit $25 into your account if you use a referral code, open with a deposit of at least $250 and leave it there for 30 days. Let me know if you’d like a referral code.

Further reading:

(FYI, these are the personal finance blogs that inspired me to take control of our budget.)

Trent at The Simple Dollar will walk you through exactly how to set up subaccounts at ING. It’s really easy, but just in case you want to see how it’s done beforehand.

Compare interest rates for online savings accounts at Get Rich Slowly. ING is not the only game in town, just the one I happen to have ( a few hours) experience with.

And you? Any handy family savings tips?