As the dollar gets weaker because of our ballooning national debt, it will cause commodity prices to increase. So, yes, I believe we will be paying more for fuel this coming winter and for many years to come.
I hope this winter is better than last winter. We spent as much to stay warm in Tennessee as we usually did in Pennsylvania. I did not envy our friends up North last winter.
As much as I wish it won't be so; it will! This winter is going to be one of the coldest my family has seen in awhile. It will be so because of the high cost of gas heating (which we could barely afford the last time we had it) and because the house we rent isn't properly insulated, has old windows and there is daylight coming through around the doors and through the mortor spots in the basement. But we will make it through...we have sweaters, longjohns, wooly socks, housecoats and blankets to-boot to help keep us warm in the house (bet we don't have to layer so much once we step outside though).
My local Propane supplier tells me it's gonna be a cold winter and to expect propane prices to rise steadily over the coming months. Of course they are selling me (but I had already pre bought anyway)...but based on mild winter last year I think we are due for a freezer in VT.
Carmen, it takes about 30 minutes and $2 to make enough laundry detergent to last 4 months. I used to spend about $15/month for detergent for my large family. It would actually take about the same amount of time, or maybe more, over the course of 4 months to buy the detergent and lug it home. I just made $58 in 30 minutes, at an hourly rate of $116. Making your own detergent is a great idea.
Hammy,
A tea urn will make an ideal still. My own still is a king-sized tea urn, one of the old "Burco" boiler types, (you know, the ones that have 3 legs on them?) You'll need to remove the handle from the centre of the lid and cut a 2 inch hole with a tank-cutter and put a 2 inch copper pipe there instead. The brass fittings that you can buy in Wickes or B&Q will hold it in place.Just attach a taper joint to that to bring it down to a 1 inch or 3/4 inch pipe for your worm/ condenser. I just use a pot-still, but if I was making a new one I'd go for a reflux job. How are you proposing to hold the lid in place when using it? I fitted a rubber sealing ring (from Tefal pressure cooker spares) and hold it in place with half a dozen small G-clamps.let us know you get on. Cheers!
I'm pretty bad about this but not TOO bad (probably just because I'm still in my early 20s). I buy makeup or other girly items like facial scrubs, then use them a few times until the next new thing comes along, and the old items go into a box since I hate throwing something away after a couple of uses. I'm sure most of what I have in boxes are already expired.
Then there are my boxes of childhood beanie babies and stuffed animals that don't ever see the light of day either.
And I have at least three or four plastic bins full of old VHS tapes on which I had recorded some favorite TV shows or musical performances when I was a teenager. I'd say the chances of me ever watching one of those tapes again is slim, but there they remain in my closet.
I used to have years of college textbooks stored up in my moving boxes, which were not only heavy but even more of a pain in the butt since I tend to move every year. I finally pulled them all out and sold them on Amazon and Craigslist.
At least a year and a half ago, I went through my clothes and was able to fill a huge box with clothes that don't fit me anymore or that I just don't wear anymore, and I've been meaning to donate them, but I've been too lazy.
This article makes me want to go home and "clean house", but Lord knows I'll probably end up leaving everything where it is.
I'm not worried, especially about keeping warm this winter. I live in North Texas and, despite the "North" in the name of the region, it doesn't really get that cold here. I'll turn the heat on at some point, but probably not before Thanksgiving. And it will, most likely be off before Ground Hog Day. The bigger issue, for me at least, is keeping cool in the summer.
Even if I did have a gas bill as big as my summer electricity bill, I'd still make it through. Living well below my means and having a big emergency fund means that I'm not worried about the winter (or even the summer or spring or fall) months.
Well, of course! The summer proved to be more expensive with the rising cost of everything! So I'm saying the winter will be no different! I just can't make ends meet!!
In my area, NOONE haggles unless it's a good item they really want (i.e. old VCR). It's really quite annoying. We always make oatmeal chocolate chip cookies; 2 per snack bag is 50 cents. They sell really well, and it is so cute when a 5 year old comes up to you with 2 quarters for a bag. :)
Also, you can call the Vietnam Veterans of America or Goodwill; both will come by your house with a truck to load your leftover yard sale items for you. It's awesome! Just be sure you'll have enough stuff to warrant them coming to your home; I would feel guilty about them coming out if all I had left were 2 garbage bags of clothes I could have easily taken over by myself.
And I found a use for my old fanny pack...use that instead of a cashbox which you can accidentally leave somewhere (or someone walks off with it!). Great post!
We have just bought our first home(a renovation project) and have built a fireplace. Hopefully the fire will keep the whole house warm, and we will try to collect all free wood that we can to save money! I'll certainly be spending less than last year as I used an electric heater which was very expensive to run.
I've been using a slithly different version of this tonic and other tonics for 10 years now. They are from jerrybaker.com. Does it work? Well my lawns have always been greenest of the block. But prior to this year my neighbors were all the type that didn't really care for their lawn. This year I moved smack in the middle of two people who use a lawn service to cut and maintain the grass. Each of them has their lawn fertilized 4 times a year. Let me tell you that my lawn looks much better than theirs. This year I was finally able to see the difference. During the summer it rained alot so the difference wasn't very noticeable - Everyone had green lawns. But as soon as we hit a dry period my lawn stayed green while theirs was drying out. I will be using these tonics til the day I day. I enjoy spraying them. It's therapeutic.
For those using Ortho Dail a Spray, This is from Jerry Baker's customer service people:
"For each of the tonic recipes that use a 20 gallon hose end sprayer the ingredients should equal 32 ounces, as the sprayer jars holds 32 ounces, if the ingredients don't equal 32 ounces, just add water so that you start out with 32 ounces to each tonic.
The sprayer sprays at a rate of 1.6 oz per each gallon of water that sprays out of the hose. If you have a sprayer with a dial on it, set the dial to 1.6 oz per gallon to give the correct ratio"
He recommends dispersing the tonic into 20 gallons of water, not 10.
I can recall some really ridiculous jobs I had when I was younger. I used to help this family build fence. One morning I was feeling sick and being truthful about it. I always had to meet my boss at his house. I knocked on the door and told him I was feelin a little sick. He said I will be right out. So I was sitting in my car eating pink iced animal cookies when he came out and told me to roll down my window. He said, well I just can't use you anymore. Your fired. Since then, I can't hardly stand the sight of animal cookies. It give me a sick feeling.
Another job was making buckles for belts. The guy who was my boss, his name was Guy. So my coworker says, watch out, I heard Guy is coming back here to fire you. That wasn't really true. Guy was a good guy. I was too young to realize it at that time, but he was simply counseling me. He was shocked when I said, I dont care. He say okay your fired. I still think of that when I see umpires on the baseball field calling people out.
Later in life, I was desperate to work and took a job with this corporation. You all know the name..but I will not mention it. The people I worked with was great, but the corporation and corporate policies were horrible. People think we dont have slaves or indentured servants these days. Their trick was to stress my importance and they needed me to fill a position where someone had abrubtly quit after working there 7 years. Please, do not, DO NOT be nice and volunteer for something like that. There is a reason why the guy quit, and I went over there and fell into the same exact trap.
When I think back about it, that one hurt the most. I really hurt in my heart. I was devastated.
Those few experiences have scarred me for life. Now I have a phobia of it and get paranoid. What makes coworkers so vicious and manipulative?
I wanna be a billionaire so freakin bad, haha. I tried to add some humor here in case you don't get it. Yet, I really do have a phobia. I just count it as excitement though. It gets your heart pumpin, makes you experience emotions you never thought you could handle. It plays on your paranoia, mistrust, and word games.
I've spent the whole three years since I quit working a regular job joking about this with my still-working colleagues. "Boy!" I'll say. "Glad I'm not about to retire!"
Good for you, Mr. Brewer; I think everyone should have that option. But I don't think it should be at my expense or anyone else's. I too am "a creative", a commercial advertising designer, writer and creative director, and have owned my own company (which I started on a card table in my spare room at home) for over 30 years. As an employer, I can tell you from a different perspective that providing health insurance and other costly benefits to nearly 200 employees over the years has been killer, to say the least. Not that the government cares-- surely you must realize that the several reforms you mentioned, which are certainly needed and will doubtless benefit you and so many others, would have been possible without the government's takeover of the healthcare industry (which will be the inevitable final "solution"), tearing up the country, its foundation and what the Founders so brilliantly innovated in the Constitution in terms of personal freedom and opportunity.
The health care reform plan has little to do with health care as the banking bailout has to do with "protecting consumers", or that the takeover of the auto industry has to do with "saving American jobs" and a "signature American industry". No, but it has everything to do with power and control, via a larger scheme to literally dismantle this country by overwhelming every established system and create from its ashes something most onerous and despicable-- in order to make as many of us, our children and grandchildren as possible desperately and entirely dependent on the government. A scheme by which the U.S. will one day make Europe look like a Ronald Reagan dream come true.
I'm genuinely happy that you are able to pursue your creative bent-- your having and making that choice is an enormous part of what makes America what it has been for over 200 years (Mrs. Pelosi loves it, too, when people get to cash out and go off and paint, but for a totally different reason).
But, at the risk of sounding cynical, I'd ask would you not agree that your particular bit contributes greatly to the classicism being nurtured oh-so-carefully by an out-of-control Pied Piper of Marxism-Socialism? It seems to me that, if a person is led to quitting a "normal" job for the sake of his or her art, they certainly ought to be able to do so; the Constitution guarantees your right to take that other road. But, should it be at the cost of others' efforts, time, talent and treasure? What if the entire population decided to trash everything and paint/sculpt/sing/dance/write (I'm also a singer and song writer, never made a dime at it)? Who would pay the bills, I wonder? And yet, this is the ultimate model and goal being carefully and incrementally put into play by The Powers That Be. I guess there must be a puzzle piece in there somewhere that requires The Twenty Percent to keep producing so that The Eighty Percent won't have to-- oh, wait, there is!-- it's called Tax Reform ("you shouldn't be able to make so much money"). Tell that to Picasso, possibly not only the greatest innovator of contemporary art, but also one of the geniuses of marketing his work. And he was a Spaniard, which, in his time, was a dangerous nationality to be.
Whether you agree or not with any of the above, I nevertheless wish you well in your pursuit. If you could just keep it to yourself, many of us would greatly appreciate it.
@Casey - Brilliant; I'm glad this article helped! I think it really all boils down to the choices you make, and how badly you want something. The longer I travel full-time, the more I see how crucial it is to plan and take that first step...
Another key component when determining investment withdrawal rates is one's portfolio performance over those first critical years of retirement. If one picks the right year to retire and the market does well for those first couple of years, the withdrawal picture is dramatically rosier than if the market tanks over that same initial retirement period.
The other lesson? Don't treat your customers like criminals. As soon as other viable options became available, many of us "talked with our feet". What amazes me is how suprised the business community is ... Blockbusters business policies were ... insulting ... and extremely harsh. Not only was I not suprised by their demise, I was thrilled (and suprised it took so long).
I think it is definitely a case of they thought they were the top dog and that they could continue their existing business model. This is one instance where the consumer won. Blockbuster made a lot of their money gouging consumers on late fees. Netflix came up with a model in which they thought of the consumer first. I could not be happier to see Netflix win this battle.
I'm assuming that Greenspan was (over)simplifying the situation; if we have tax cuts that aren't accompanied by corresponding spending cuts, you end having to borrow money to meet the spending needs, thus, 'cut taxes with borrowed money'. As long as the government refuses to get its spending under the money it takes via taxes, borrowing money is going to continue to be a problem.
@ Zorcy: Thanks for your reply on the contamination question. I will heed your advice and not drink. Can you be more specific on what you mean by "Be careful on doing your cuts, from methanol to ethanol. You could have a lot more methanol in that batch".? I'm not sure I follow you. Thanks again!
I actually didn't notice much of a smell difference in my mash, it wasn't until I distilled it that I noticed the taste difference. If you suggest not to drink than I will take your advice! Can you be more specific on what you mean by "be careful on doing your cuts, from methanol to ethanol"?
As the dollar gets weaker because of our ballooning national debt, it will cause commodity prices to increase. So, yes, I believe we will be paying more for fuel this coming winter and for many years to come.
I hope this winter is better than last winter. We spent as much to stay warm in Tennessee as we usually did in Pennsylvania. I did not envy our friends up North last winter.
As much as I wish it won't be so; it will! This winter is going to be one of the coldest my family has seen in awhile. It will be so because of the high cost of gas heating (which we could barely afford the last time we had it) and because the house we rent isn't properly insulated, has old windows and there is daylight coming through around the doors and through the mortor spots in the basement. But we will make it through...we have sweaters, longjohns, wooly socks, housecoats and blankets to-boot to help keep us warm in the house (bet we don't have to layer so much once we step outside though).
If the fall is any indication, probably colder and colder equals more expensive.
My local Propane supplier tells me it's gonna be a cold winter and to expect propane prices to rise steadily over the coming months. Of course they are selling me (but I had already pre bought anyway)...but based on mild winter last year I think we are due for a freezer in VT.
Carmen, it takes about 30 minutes and $2 to make enough laundry detergent to last 4 months. I used to spend about $15/month for detergent for my large family. It would actually take about the same amount of time, or maybe more, over the course of 4 months to buy the detergent and lug it home. I just made $58 in 30 minutes, at an hourly rate of $116. Making your own detergent is a great idea.
Hammy,
A tea urn will make an ideal still. My own still is a king-sized tea urn, one of the old "Burco" boiler types, (you know, the ones that have 3 legs on them?) You'll need to remove the handle from the centre of the lid and cut a 2 inch hole with a tank-cutter and put a 2 inch copper pipe there instead. The brass fittings that you can buy in Wickes or B&Q will hold it in place.Just attach a taper joint to that to bring it down to a 1 inch or 3/4 inch pipe for your worm/ condenser. I just use a pot-still, but if I was making a new one I'd go for a reflux job. How are you proposing to hold the lid in place when using it? I fitted a rubber sealing ring (from Tefal pressure cooker spares) and hold it in place with half a dozen small G-clamps.let us know you get on. Cheers!
I'm pretty bad about this but not TOO bad (probably just because I'm still in my early 20s). I buy makeup or other girly items like facial scrubs, then use them a few times until the next new thing comes along, and the old items go into a box since I hate throwing something away after a couple of uses. I'm sure most of what I have in boxes are already expired.
Then there are my boxes of childhood beanie babies and stuffed animals that don't ever see the light of day either.
And I have at least three or four plastic bins full of old VHS tapes on which I had recorded some favorite TV shows or musical performances when I was a teenager. I'd say the chances of me ever watching one of those tapes again is slim, but there they remain in my closet.
I used to have years of college textbooks stored up in my moving boxes, which were not only heavy but even more of a pain in the butt since I tend to move every year. I finally pulled them all out and sold them on Amazon and Craigslist.
At least a year and a half ago, I went through my clothes and was able to fill a huge box with clothes that don't fit me anymore or that I just don't wear anymore, and I've been meaning to donate them, but I've been too lazy.
This article makes me want to go home and "clean house", but Lord knows I'll probably end up leaving everything where it is.
I'm not worried, especially about keeping warm this winter. I live in North Texas and, despite the "North" in the name of the region, it doesn't really get that cold here. I'll turn the heat on at some point, but probably not before Thanksgiving. And it will, most likely be off before Ground Hog Day. The bigger issue, for me at least, is keeping cool in the summer.
Even if I did have a gas bill as big as my summer electricity bill, I'd still make it through. Living well below my means and having a big emergency fund means that I'm not worried about the winter (or even the summer or spring or fall) months.
Well, of course! The summer proved to be more expensive with the rising cost of everything! So I'm saying the winter will be no different! I just can't make ends meet!!
In my area, NOONE haggles unless it's a good item they really want (i.e. old VCR). It's really quite annoying. We always make oatmeal chocolate chip cookies; 2 per snack bag is 50 cents. They sell really well, and it is so cute when a 5 year old comes up to you with 2 quarters for a bag. :)
Also, you can call the Vietnam Veterans of America or Goodwill; both will come by your house with a truck to load your leftover yard sale items for you. It's awesome! Just be sure you'll have enough stuff to warrant them coming to your home; I would feel guilty about them coming out if all I had left were 2 garbage bags of clothes I could have easily taken over by myself.
And I found a use for my old fanny pack...use that instead of a cashbox which you can accidentally leave somewhere (or someone walks off with it!). Great post!
I've heard the price of natural gas has dropped considerably. Which is great!
It was a hot summer here in Atlanta, but already cooler than normal.
Who knows?
I say break out the thermal underwear adn keep the thermostat low
We have just bought our first home(a renovation project) and have built a fireplace. Hopefully the fire will keep the whole house warm, and we will try to collect all free wood that we can to save money! I'll certainly be spending less than last year as I used an electric heater which was very expensive to run.
I've been using a slithly different version of this tonic and other tonics for 10 years now. They are from jerrybaker.com. Does it work? Well my lawns have always been greenest of the block. But prior to this year my neighbors were all the type that didn't really care for their lawn. This year I moved smack in the middle of two people who use a lawn service to cut and maintain the grass. Each of them has their lawn fertilized 4 times a year. Let me tell you that my lawn looks much better than theirs. This year I was finally able to see the difference. During the summer it rained alot so the difference wasn't very noticeable - Everyone had green lawns. But as soon as we hit a dry period my lawn stayed green while theirs was drying out. I will be using these tonics til the day I day. I enjoy spraying them. It's therapeutic.
For those using Ortho Dail a Spray, This is from Jerry Baker's customer service people:
"For each of the tonic recipes that use a 20 gallon hose end sprayer the ingredients should equal 32 ounces, as the sprayer jars holds 32 ounces, if the ingredients don't equal 32 ounces, just add water so that you start out with 32 ounces to each tonic.
The sprayer sprays at a rate of 1.6 oz per each gallon of water that sprays out of the hose. If you have a sprayer with a dial on it, set the dial to 1.6 oz per gallon to give the correct ratio"
He recommends dispersing the tonic into 20 gallons of water, not 10.
I can recall some really ridiculous jobs I had when I was younger. I used to help this family build fence. One morning I was feeling sick and being truthful about it. I always had to meet my boss at his house. I knocked on the door and told him I was feelin a little sick. He said I will be right out. So I was sitting in my car eating pink iced animal cookies when he came out and told me to roll down my window. He said, well I just can't use you anymore. Your fired. Since then, I can't hardly stand the sight of animal cookies. It give me a sick feeling.
Another job was making buckles for belts. The guy who was my boss, his name was Guy. So my coworker says, watch out, I heard Guy is coming back here to fire you. That wasn't really true. Guy was a good guy. I was too young to realize it at that time, but he was simply counseling me. He was shocked when I said, I dont care. He say okay your fired. I still think of that when I see umpires on the baseball field calling people out.
Later in life, I was desperate to work and took a job with this corporation. You all know the name..but I will not mention it. The people I worked with was great, but the corporation and corporate policies were horrible. People think we dont have slaves or indentured servants these days. Their trick was to stress my importance and they needed me to fill a position where someone had abrubtly quit after working there 7 years. Please, do not, DO NOT be nice and volunteer for something like that. There is a reason why the guy quit, and I went over there and fell into the same exact trap.
When I think back about it, that one hurt the most. I really hurt in my heart. I was devastated.
Those few experiences have scarred me for life. Now I have a phobia of it and get paranoid. What makes coworkers so vicious and manipulative?
I wanna be a billionaire so freakin bad, haha. I tried to add some humor here in case you don't get it. Yet, I really do have a phobia. I just count it as excitement though. It gets your heart pumpin, makes you experience emotions you never thought you could handle. It plays on your paranoia, mistrust, and word games.
I've spent the whole three years since I quit working a regular job joking about this with my still-working colleagues. "Boy!" I'll say. "Glad I'm not about to retire!"
Good for you, Mr. Brewer; I think everyone should have that option. But I don't think it should be at my expense or anyone else's. I too am "a creative", a commercial advertising designer, writer and creative director, and have owned my own company (which I started on a card table in my spare room at home) for over 30 years. As an employer, I can tell you from a different perspective that providing health insurance and other costly benefits to nearly 200 employees over the years has been killer, to say the least. Not that the government cares-- surely you must realize that the several reforms you mentioned, which are certainly needed and will doubtless benefit you and so many others, would have been possible without the government's takeover of the healthcare industry (which will be the inevitable final "solution"), tearing up the country, its foundation and what the Founders so brilliantly innovated in the Constitution in terms of personal freedom and opportunity.
The health care reform plan has little to do with health care as the banking bailout has to do with "protecting consumers", or that the takeover of the auto industry has to do with "saving American jobs" and a "signature American industry". No, but it has everything to do with power and control, via a larger scheme to literally dismantle this country by overwhelming every established system and create from its ashes something most onerous and despicable-- in order to make as many of us, our children and grandchildren as possible desperately and entirely dependent on the government. A scheme by which the U.S. will one day make Europe look like a Ronald Reagan dream come true.
I'm genuinely happy that you are able to pursue your creative bent-- your having and making that choice is an enormous part of what makes America what it has been for over 200 years (Mrs. Pelosi loves it, too, when people get to cash out and go off and paint, but for a totally different reason).
But, at the risk of sounding cynical, I'd ask would you not agree that your particular bit contributes greatly to the classicism being nurtured oh-so-carefully by an out-of-control Pied Piper of Marxism-Socialism? It seems to me that, if a person is led to quitting a "normal" job for the sake of his or her art, they certainly ought to be able to do so; the Constitution guarantees your right to take that other road. But, should it be at the cost of others' efforts, time, talent and treasure? What if the entire population decided to trash everything and paint/sculpt/sing/dance/write (I'm also a singer and song writer, never made a dime at it)? Who would pay the bills, I wonder? And yet, this is the ultimate model and goal being carefully and incrementally put into play by The Powers That Be. I guess there must be a puzzle piece in there somewhere that requires The Twenty Percent to keep producing so that The Eighty Percent won't have to-- oh, wait, there is!-- it's called Tax Reform ("you shouldn't be able to make so much money"). Tell that to Picasso, possibly not only the greatest innovator of contemporary art, but also one of the geniuses of marketing his work. And he was a Spaniard, which, in his time, was a dangerous nationality to be.
Whether you agree or not with any of the above, I nevertheless wish you well in your pursuit. If you could just keep it to yourself, many of us would greatly appreciate it.
@Casey - Brilliant; I'm glad this article helped! I think it really all boils down to the choices you make, and how badly you want something. The longer I travel full-time, the more I see how crucial it is to plan and take that first step...
Another key component when determining investment withdrawal rates is one's portfolio performance over those first critical years of retirement. If one picks the right year to retire and the market does well for those first couple of years, the withdrawal picture is dramatically rosier than if the market tanks over that same initial retirement period.
The other lesson? Don't treat your customers like criminals. As soon as other viable options became available, many of us "talked with our feet". What amazes me is how suprised the business community is ... Blockbusters business policies were ... insulting ... and extremely harsh. Not only was I not suprised by their demise, I was thrilled (and suprised it took so long).
I think it is definitely a case of they thought they were the top dog and that they could continue their existing business model. This is one instance where the consumer won. Blockbuster made a lot of their money gouging consumers on late fees. Netflix came up with a model in which they thought of the consumer first. I could not be happier to see Netflix win this battle.
I'm assuming that Greenspan was (over)simplifying the situation; if we have tax cuts that aren't accompanied by corresponding spending cuts, you end having to borrow money to meet the spending needs, thus, 'cut taxes with borrowed money'. As long as the government refuses to get its spending under the money it takes via taxes, borrowing money is going to continue to be a problem.
@ Zorcy: Thanks for your reply on the contamination question. I will heed your advice and not drink. Can you be more specific on what you mean by "Be careful on doing your cuts, from methanol to ethanol. You could have a lot more methanol in that batch".? I'm not sure I follow you. Thanks again!
I actually didn't notice much of a smell difference in my mash, it wasn't until I distilled it that I noticed the taste difference. If you suggest not to drink than I will take your advice! Can you be more specific on what you mean by "be careful on doing your cuts, from methanol to ethanol"?
Thanks