Good heads up. The old adage is true for mystery shopping, if you have to pay to shop or for information, it is a scam.
The information is free, and they pay you to shop/or reimburse you for your meal. All the information is free, and Volition.com has a good directory of mystery shopping companies.
The only thing that you have to do is spend a lot of work on the front end to fill out applications.
My family and I have been shopping for about 10 years. You don't get rich doing it, it is almost like a hobby. And who wouldn't want to get paid to eat, or go to Disney (yes for one year we shopped Disney while living in Orlando and got free Admission!)
If you live in a sweltering climate, then by all means, do what you need to do in order to feel comfortable. But if you're like me and you live in a milder climate with only a few really hot days, well, it pays to just suck it up.
Wise Bread's intention is to figure out smart ways to save - for some families, this can mean using ceiling fans and cooking outdoors for a few weeks out of the year. But no one here is suggesting that anyone live in unhealthy conditions. Especially the elderly or frail - heat can be dangerous. These are just suggestions - not fatwas.
I am thrilled at all the reponses to my view on A/C. Now don't get me wrong, I am not an anti-AC fanatic! I am simply in a 100-year old farm house with little resources to put in any kind of long-term cooling solution. We have had to make it work for us, and I wanted to encourage others who may have to go without. My kids are little, and they choose to play all day outside, so coming inside to even an uncooled house is a relief after a hard day of playing in the dirt. Living in a farming community, it is not at all uncommon to see people without AC. Alot of our businesses do use swamp coolers, and they work rather nicely.
My dream is to one day own a heat pump. The tax rebates are nice on these, and they also help with heating costs. (Just wait until this fall, when I write my article on heating my home with a corn-stove!)
In the meantime, we'll make the best of our current situation. Isn't that what Wise Bread is all about? Stay Cool!
Both my mother and my ex-wife were not big fans of air conditioning (you could say they weren't too hot on the idea). When I was a kid, we fortunately lived near one of the Great Lakes and we had a summer room that was screened in on three sides (the other side was connected to the house) and I used to go out there to sleep, because it was too hot to sleep anywhere else in the house. When I got older, having air conditioning became real important to me; it was something I felt I had been deprived of as a child (even though few people had it back then).
But when my kids were small, we lived in the far north (near the Canadian border), where it rarely got above 85 degrees even in middle of summer (we had a few 90 degree days one year and the local paper reported it as if it were hot news). So we didn't have air conditioning at all for most of that time (I think I purchased a small window unit during the aforementioned "heat wave", over the protests of my ex-wife, but that only cooled the living room and kitchen, not the bedrooms). So today, my oldest son keeps the temperature in his home around 60 degrees year 'round, and my youngest is complaining about an apartment he moved into last winter because it has no A/C (didn't seem important at the time he moved, but it does now), and he will probably buy a window unit. I also noticed that when the kids were younger, they seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time during the summer playing in the home of friends who had A/C, and seemed rather cool on the idea of playing outside more, or spending more time at home.
My point being that you may think you are doing your kids a favor by teaching them to live without A/C, but when they grow up they may be the ones that keep their homes colder than anyone else. I'm the same way; I have no tolerance at all for summer heat (particularly on humid days) and I'll bet you won't have as much tolerance as you get older, either. I'm not saying that one shouldn't try to conserve energy, and I like the heat pump idea, but you can only take things so far. If you become too much of an anti A/C fanatic, you may find that when your kids grow up, they keep their houses cold enough that penguins would feel right at home (I have asked my son if he's raising them in his basement!)
Also, bear in mind that with most cars, fuel costs will be higher when you run them with the windows open (because open windows destroy the aerodynamic properties of the car, or to put it another way, they create more wind resistance), and significantly lower with the windows shut and the A/C on - and I sure hope you aren't making your kids ride in a closed-up car with no A/C on 90 degree days!
So what you call an "expensive luxury" a lot of us think of as worthwhile for our comfort. There are a lot of costly entertainment options that I'll forgo (like cable and movies) but no way am I going to go through the summer months without A/C, even though my mother still hates it on all but the hottest days (she was born and raised in the deep south).
P.S. The bad puns were inserted by my evil twin. ;)
How about... drive less? If you buy less, you spend less money. Crazy but true.
Also when it comes to time of day, it's not just cooler evening temperatures. When I worked at a gas station, we and all the other stations in the area would have three price brackets per day. The highest price of the day would be graveyard shift and most of the morning, then it would drop late morning or so, and again mid-afternoon. Price goes back up again around 10 pm.
I'm ususally all about the frugal tips here, but this one seems a bit extreme to me. I just don't think the interruption to one's life is worth the money saved; having to have the whole family sleep in the living room, cook on a campfire, and put blackout curtains on all the windows for four months or longer just seems to be too much of an interruption to me. (Not to mention, it kills one of my favorite electricity savers: Don't use electric lights when free sunlight is coming through the windows; keeps Seasonal Affective Disorder at bay too.) I don't have kids, but what are those who do supposed to tell company when they come over to find the windows bricked up, the living room unusable because of sleeping kids, and the whole family subsisting on hot dogs and potato salad? I think I'd rather be able to enjoy life during those four months, acutally use my furniture, windows, and kitchen, and not have my neighbors and friends think I've become a survivalist. More power to those of you who can do this, but for me, I think I think the $300 spent on summer air conditioning is money well spent.
I know that it's pricey but I have five animals and there is no way I'm going to let them get that hot. Even when the fan is just on, they are miserable on the hardwood floor panting away. I know that panting is what they do but it's just easier for everyone to have the AC on when it's 90 some degrees out with no breeze. I think some things you can't be frugal on at least for this one for me and my family.
But I haven't read the book yet - I just ordered it. :) But that's a key part of the sushi's taste and one of the (many) reasons why supermarket sushi tastes so meh.
does he say anything about the rice being warm/room temp and not cold and hard like most places? i found an awesome place in tustin, ca (Sushi Wasabi) where the servings are small, the fish are "fresh," the rice is warm, the wasabi is ground each morning, and it's always omakase (trust me style=no ordering).
however, it's expensive (duh)
so my bf found catalina offshore products (www.catalinaop.com) and now we order our sushi online. it's all very delicious, top quality, and a real value compared to dining out at a same quality restaurant.
you buy it by the pound (so split with friends) and you have to cut it yourself (sharpen your knife) but it's worth it.
I am so proud of you...even though I don't know you. Getting rid of the stuff that "clogs" you is a great release and a wonderful way to also help the enviroment. If more people thought about the clutter they have and the need to be free of such things--this world would be such a better place.
Check out my website and let me know what you think!
I used to try and sell old stuff on Craig's list or eBay. Like you, I realized it simply wasn't worth the effort. There are plenty of charities around who will take items off your hands and give your full value credit for them. The tax deduction you get is probably worth more than the money someone would have been willing to pay anyway.
Yeah.....I live on the west coast of Florida. No ocean breeze. Humidity can get higher than the outside temps. Living without A/C is not an option. I do, however, keep it at a reasonable setting, 78 when I am home, and bump it up when I am gone for the day, turn if OFF when I am leaving for days. I have ceiling fans in every room, keeps the air circulating...but to not have it at all, in a condo with windows on only one side, so I do not get any cross breeze..nope. Not happening. In fact, the only time we get a breeze in the summer is when there is a Hurricane!
I've been trying to simplify my life through external and internal avenues.
Externally I am slowly selling stuff I don't need. I've come up with a good way for me not to impulse buy - I picture myself a year into the future and try to imagine myself with a product. If I can't see it or don't like what I see I don't buy it. It's so much easier to simplify now then it is after I have too much junk.
Internally I'm clearing out thoughts that I don't need. I'm learning to do this through meditation. I've noticed that I'm choosing to be happy with what I have, not what I lack.
Nomi, I've met a lot of people who subscribe to that thinking. Part of it has to do with sweating a bit, as part of your body's own cooling system.
Where I grew up, we would occasionally use swamp coolers on the really hot nights where even sleeping naked wasn't helping. Those were nice, and cheaper than air conditioning.
We don't use air conditioning at our home here in Spain either. It can get really really hot in the summer.
One thing I do is take hot showers. It doesn't really make sense, but once you get out of the shower, you feel fresh for a few hours.
Another thing I do is drink hot coffee or tea. If my insides are hotter than my outsides, it will feel cooler, right? My hubby tells me that's what the Arabs do and I figure they are smarter than me about these things than I am.
My family and I lived without air conditioning for two Mississippi summers. One trick we used was to spray ourselves and our night clothes with a fine mist of water before going to bed. Then we lay under a ceiling fan. As the moving air evaporated the water, we became much cooler and thus were able to fall asleep comfortably.
Most people in Seattle don't have AC, and that's because we only get a few scorching days every year. Last year, I toyed with the idea of buying an AC unit, but I hate the clammy feeling they give everything. I settled for some sexy ceiling fans and sleeping in the buff. MUCH more frugal. Plus, Will and I apparently have a sort of competition to see who can be more productive naked.
I don't know what's wrong with us. Thank god we live a few states apart or there'd be some sort of serious problem.
Sure, a lot of us got burned in the dot.com craze, but I fell for a cute girl who worked for eToys. I put in $5,000. All I got in return was a hat and a t-shirt, which are both worth more than the stock.
Hello Andrea, I am so glad to come to your post. Fantastic writting and extremely helpful tips! Count me in to come back often to ask for more more and more tips! (*i won't mind in dollar form*)
I have started a "Let Go" meme: http://adropofhappyness.blogspot.com/2007/06/law-of-let-go-meme.html
I invite you to join in. You already have a post here. Just need a bit editting about to let go too in the mind. (Mind first then action in the real world). Talk a bit letting go of hatred if you may dare. :D
Good heads up. The old adage is true for mystery shopping, if you have to pay to shop or for information, it is a scam.
The information is free, and they pay you to shop/or reimburse you for your meal. All the information is free, and Volition.com has a good directory of mystery shopping companies.
The only thing that you have to do is spend a lot of work on the front end to fill out applications.
My family and I have been shopping for about 10 years. You don't get rich doing it, it is almost like a hobby. And who wouldn't want to get paid to eat, or go to Disney (yes for one year we shopped Disney while living in Orlando and got free Admission!)
If you live in a sweltering climate, then by all means, do what you need to do in order to feel comfortable. But if you're like me and you live in a milder climate with only a few really hot days, well, it pays to just suck it up.
Wise Bread's intention is to figure out smart ways to save - for some families, this can mean using ceiling fans and cooking outdoors for a few weeks out of the year. But no one here is suggesting that anyone live in unhealthy conditions. Especially the elderly or frail - heat can be dangerous. These are just suggestions - not fatwas.
I am thrilled at all the reponses to my view on A/C. Now don't get me wrong, I am not an anti-AC fanatic! I am simply in a 100-year old farm house with little resources to put in any kind of long-term cooling solution. We have had to make it work for us, and I wanted to encourage others who may have to go without. My kids are little, and they choose to play all day outside, so coming inside to even an uncooled house is a relief after a hard day of playing in the dirt. Living in a farming community, it is not at all uncommon to see people without AC. Alot of our businesses do use swamp coolers, and they work rather nicely.
My dream is to one day own a heat pump. The tax rebates are nice on these, and they also help with heating costs. (Just wait until this fall, when I write my article on heating my home with a corn-stove!)
In the meantime, we'll make the best of our current situation. Isn't that what Wise Bread is all about? Stay Cool!
Linsey Knerl
Both my mother and my ex-wife were not big fans of air conditioning (you could say they weren't too hot on the idea). When I was a kid, we fortunately lived near one of the Great Lakes and we had a summer room that was screened in on three sides (the other side was connected to the house) and I used to go out there to sleep, because it was too hot to sleep anywhere else in the house. When I got older, having air conditioning became real important to me; it was something I felt I had been deprived of as a child (even though few people had it back then).
But when my kids were small, we lived in the far north (near the Canadian border), where it rarely got above 85 degrees even in middle of summer (we had a few 90 degree days one year and the local paper reported it as if it were hot news). So we didn't have air conditioning at all for most of that time (I think I purchased a small window unit during the aforementioned "heat wave", over the protests of my ex-wife, but that only cooled the living room and kitchen, not the bedrooms). So today, my oldest son keeps the temperature in his home around 60 degrees year 'round, and my youngest is complaining about an apartment he moved into last winter because it has no A/C (didn't seem important at the time he moved, but it does now), and he will probably buy a window unit. I also noticed that when the kids were younger, they seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time during the summer playing in the home of friends who had A/C, and seemed rather cool on the idea of playing outside more, or spending more time at home.
My point being that you may think you are doing your kids a favor by teaching them to live without A/C, but when they grow up they may be the ones that keep their homes colder than anyone else. I'm the same way; I have no tolerance at all for summer heat (particularly on humid days) and I'll bet you won't have as much tolerance as you get older, either. I'm not saying that one shouldn't try to conserve energy, and I like the heat pump idea, but you can only take things so far. If you become too much of an anti A/C fanatic, you may find that when your kids grow up, they keep their houses cold enough that penguins would feel right at home (I have asked my son if he's raising them in his basement!)
Also, bear in mind that with most cars, fuel costs will be higher when you run them with the windows open (because open windows destroy the aerodynamic properties of the car, or to put it another way, they create more wind resistance), and significantly lower with the windows shut and the A/C on - and I sure hope you aren't making your kids ride in a closed-up car with no A/C on 90 degree days!
So what you call an "expensive luxury" a lot of us think of as worthwhile for our comfort. There are a lot of costly entertainment options that I'll forgo (like cable and movies) but no way am I going to go through the summer months without A/C, even though my mother still hates it on all but the hottest days (she was born and raised in the deep south).
P.S. The bad puns were inserted by my evil twin. ;)
How about... drive less? If you buy less, you spend less money. Crazy but true.
Also when it comes to time of day, it's not just cooler evening temperatures. When I worked at a gas station, we and all the other stations in the area would have three price brackets per day. The highest price of the day would be graveyard shift and most of the morning, then it would drop late morning or so, and again mid-afternoon. Price goes back up again around 10 pm.
I'm ususally all about the frugal tips here, but this one seems a bit extreme to me. I just don't think the interruption to one's life is worth the money saved; having to have the whole family sleep in the living room, cook on a campfire, and put blackout curtains on all the windows for four months or longer just seems to be too much of an interruption to me. (Not to mention, it kills one of my favorite electricity savers: Don't use electric lights when free sunlight is coming through the windows; keeps Seasonal Affective Disorder at bay too.) I don't have kids, but what are those who do supposed to tell company when they come over to find the windows bricked up, the living room unusable because of sleeping kids, and the whole family subsisting on hot dogs and potato salad? I think I'd rather be able to enjoy life during those four months, acutally use my furniture, windows, and kitchen, and not have my neighbors and friends think I've become a survivalist. More power to those of you who can do this, but for me, I think I think the $300 spent on summer air conditioning is money well spent.
It acts as an AC as well, saves you money.
I know that it's pricey but I have five animals and there is no way I'm going to let them get that hot. Even when the fan is just on, they are miserable on the hardwood floor panting away. I know that panting is what they do but it's just easier for everyone to have the AC on when it's 90 some degrees out with no breeze. I think some things you can't be frugal on at least for this one for me and my family.
Boing Boing just had a little blurb about this; I know it's cheap, but my morals say no!!
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/06/18/howto_get_att_dsl_fo.html
But I haven't read the book yet - I just ordered it. :) But that's a key part of the sushi's taste and one of the (many) reasons why supermarket sushi tastes so meh.
does he say anything about the rice being warm/room temp and not cold and hard like most places? i found an awesome place in tustin, ca (Sushi Wasabi) where the servings are small, the fish are "fresh," the rice is warm, the wasabi is ground each morning, and it's always omakase (trust me style=no ordering).
however, it's expensive (duh)
so my bf found catalina offshore products (www.catalinaop.com) and now we order our sushi online. it's all very delicious, top quality, and a real value compared to dining out at a same quality restaurant.
you buy it by the pound (so split with friends) and you have to cut it yourself (sharpen your knife) but it's worth it.
for $200 we fed 9 people (w/plenty of leftovers!)
I am so proud of you...even though I don't know you. Getting rid of the stuff that "clogs" you is a great release and a wonderful way to also help the enviroment. If more people thought about the clutter they have and the need to be free of such things--this world would be such a better place.
Check out my website and let me know what you think!
www.lesmess.com
Thanks, Leslie
I used to try and sell old stuff on Craig's list or eBay. Like you, I realized it simply wasn't worth the effort. There are plenty of charities around who will take items off your hands and give your full value credit for them. The tax deduction you get is probably worth more than the money someone would have been willing to pay anyway.
Gal
Thanks!
Yeah.....I live on the west coast of Florida. No ocean breeze. Humidity can get higher than the outside temps. Living without A/C is not an option. I do, however, keep it at a reasonable setting, 78 when I am home, and bump it up when I am gone for the day, turn if OFF when I am leaving for days. I have ceiling fans in every room, keeps the air circulating...but to not have it at all, in a condo with windows on only one side, so I do not get any cross breeze..nope. Not happening. In fact, the only time we get a breeze in the summer is when there is a Hurricane!
I've been trying to simplify my life through external and internal avenues.
Externally I am slowly selling stuff I don't need. I've come up with a good way for me not to impulse buy - I picture myself a year into the future and try to imagine myself with a product. If I can't see it or don't like what I see I don't buy it. It's so much easier to simplify now then it is after I have too much junk.
Internally I'm clearing out thoughts that I don't need. I'm learning to do this through meditation. I've noticed that I'm choosing to be happy with what I have, not what I lack.
Cheers Andrea - to a good Post!
I linked you on the dslreports forums!
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,18531628
Nomi, I've met a lot of people who subscribe to that thinking. Part of it has to do with sweating a bit, as part of your body's own cooling system.
Where I grew up, we would occasionally use swamp coolers on the really hot nights where even sleeping naked wasn't helping. Those were nice, and cheaper than air conditioning.
We don't use air conditioning at our home here in Spain either. It can get really really hot in the summer.
One thing I do is take hot showers. It doesn't really make sense, but once you get out of the shower, you feel fresh for a few hours.
Another thing I do is drink hot coffee or tea. If my insides are hotter than my outsides, it will feel cooler, right? My hubby tells me that's what the Arabs do and I figure they are smarter than me about these things than I am.
I put wet t-shirts into the freezer and wear them throughout the day. =)
My family and I lived without air conditioning for two Mississippi summers. One trick we used was to spray ourselves and our night clothes with a fine mist of water before going to bed. Then we lay under a ceiling fan. As the moving air evaporated the water, we became much cooler and thus were able to fall asleep comfortably.
Most people in Seattle don't have AC, and that's because we only get a few scorching days every year. Last year, I toyed with the idea of buying an AC unit, but I hate the clammy feeling they give everything. I settled for some sexy ceiling fans and sleeping in the buff. MUCH more frugal. Plus, Will and I apparently have a sort of competition to see who can be more productive naked.
I don't know what's wrong with us. Thank god we live a few states apart or there'd be some sort of serious problem.
eToys.
Sure, a lot of us got burned in the dot.com craze, but I fell for a cute girl who worked for eToys. I put in $5,000. All I got in return was a hat and a t-shirt, which are both worth more than the stock.
Hello Andrea, I am so glad to come to your post. Fantastic writting and extremely helpful tips! Count me in to come back often to ask for more more and more tips! (*i won't mind in dollar form*)
I have started a "Let Go" meme: http://adropofhappyness.blogspot.com/2007/06/law-of-let-go-meme.html
I invite you to join in. You already have a post here. Just need a bit editting about to let go too in the mind. (Mind first then action in the real world). Talk a bit letting go of hatred if you may dare. :D
Thanks Zoom. I will keep track of this post with my reader and see if I get the same thing.