energy

My best posts that got no attention

Posted July 12, 2009 - 04:00 by Philip Brewer

Personal Finance

Bridge over copper slough

A few times I've written a post that I thought was good, but that seemed to vanish into the blogosphere without a trace. On my two-year anniversary of writing for Wise Bread, I'm going to link to five of them and suggest that you take a look at them. For a few long-time readers it may be a second look. (But, judging from the number of reads these got, not many.)

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7 Ways To Lower Water Heater Costs

Posted January 11, 2009 - 17:24 by Lynn Truong

Frugal Living, Life Hacks

water shower

Your water heater can account for 13% of home energy costs. The good news is that there are small, easy tweaks you can make to lower those costs and conserve energy at the same time.

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Book review: Game Over

Posted January 11, 2009 - 10:45 by Philip Brewer

Green Living, Investment

Cover of Game Over by Stephen Leeb

Stephen Leeb's new book makes that case that we're running into resource limits on every front--energy, metals, water--and that this problem is going to affect everything we do. Then, it looks at what can we do about it, as individuals and as a society.

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Invest some of this cheap energy

Posted October 20, 2008 - 10:14 by Philip Brewer

Personal Finance

Slough in central Illinois

I've tried to avoid predicting energy prices, except to say that they'll be volatile. I'm not a bit surprised to see oil and gasoline prices dropping by half in the past few months. I do think, though, that the long-term trend is up. If I'm right, you should seize this opportunity to invest some of this cheap energy for the long term.

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Opt-out of the wasteful $26 billion phone directory industry

Posted August 21, 2008 - 12:00 by Paul Michael

Frugal Living, Green Living, Consumer Affairs

yellow pages in the dumpster

In this day and age of the internet, free Google 411 and a host of other paperless directory services, what use do the big, fat phone directories serve? I don’t know about you, but when I get those large plastic bags filled with 3lb phone books, I usually put them straight in the recycling bin. We never use them. Now a website similar to the National No-Call registry is asking you to sign up and stop receiving these archaic books.

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The good life on less energy--even in the US

Posted July 10, 2008 - 04:18 by Philip Brewer

Green Living, Real Estate and Housing, Cars and Transportation

Bicycle on rural road

Whenever I write a post about energy, I point out that we know it's possible to have a high standard of living while using less energy--people in European countries do, so it must be possible. That always draws comments from people who say that things are different here. When it comes to opportunities for saving energy, that's simply not true.

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Welcome to Container City - How Shipping Containers Are Recycled into Green Dwellings

Posted May 14, 2008 - 22:54 by Xin Lu

Personal Finance, Frugal Living, Green Living, Lifestyle, Real Estate and Housing

Container City

At any port you can probably see hundreds to thousands of empty shipping containers just sitting around waiting to be loaded. In recent times these containers have not only transported goods across oceans but have also been transformed into energy efficient dwellings with some great design and ingenuity.

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What if energy costs keep rising?

Posted May 9, 2008 - 05:15 by Philip Brewer

Budgeting, Cars and Transportation

Last year's gas prices

I don't know if energy costs will keep rising.  Nobody does.  Even with recent growth in China, India, and elsewhere, the US still consumes 25% of the oil produced world-wide, so a severe recession in the US could easily cut total demand enough to bring the price down.  Recession or not, I think the medium-term trend in energy costs is up.  Just in case I'm right, you ought to have plan for that.

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Is daylight-saving time a complete waste of energy?

Posted March 7, 2008 - 12:52 by Paul Michael

Frugal Living, Lifestyle, Consumer Affairs

DST

This weekend the clocks “spring forward.” I’m not a huge fan of DST . In fact, I’m not a fan of anything that steals one hour of precious sleep away from me. But I always took comfort in the fact that it was at least good for the environment, saving energy and money. However, a new study says “maybe not.”

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Non-financial investments

Posted February 29, 2008 - 09:24 by Philip Brewer

Investment

Gateway in formal gardens at Allerton Park

Talk about investments and most people think stocks, bonds, and mutual funds, plus maybe real estate and commodities like precious metals. Let's call those "financial investments." You buy them with money and you hope that they will eventually return money in the form of interest, dividends, rent, or a profit when you sell it. Financial investments are great, and everybody should have a plan for building a portfolio of them, but there are also non-financial investments, and non-financial investments can often yield a higher return.

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