I’m just going to say it: Bottled water is a huge waste of money. I’ve heard every argument in the book for drinking it, and I’ve yet to be convinced that it makes any sense for a person living in America to drink it. I’m so fervent in my belief that I made a short video about it:

Although the video is pretty hokey and meant to be light-hearted, I made a great effort to fill it with actual facts about bottled water and tap water (my sources are listed at the end of this post). 24% of bottled water is just repackaged tap water, and the brands that actually come from a spring or a glacier or… whatever? They give you no guarantee of cleanliness or safety, since they’re so loosely regulated.

And the cost difference is just ridiculous. In a 1999 report on bottled water, the National Resources Defense Council found that:

A five-year supply of bottled water at the recommended intake of eight glasses a day can cost more than $1,000. An equivalent amount of tap water costs about $1.65.

My campus sells Aquafina at $1.50 for 20 ounces. That’s $9.60 a gallon, compared to just $0.002 for a gallon of tap water! And according to the Beverage Marketing Corporation, the average American drank 29 gallons of bottled water in 2007. That’s $278.40! And how much would that much tap water cost you? Just under 6 cents. Seriously.

Bottled water certainly has a place in this world. There are 1 billion people in this world that do not have access to a reliable source of drinking water. But those aren’t the people that are getting bottled water. For Americans who have highly regulated public water readily available, bottled water is simply a choice.

And it should be an easy choice to make. Even if you went out and bought a nice $20-$30 stainless steel or aluminum water bottle to fill up every day, you’d come out way ahead of paying for bottled water. In addition to fattening up your wallet, you’d make a huge environmental impact, as well.

Americans went through about 50 billion plastic water bottles last year, 167 for each person. Durable, lightweight containers manufactured just to be discarded. Water bottles are made of totally recyclable polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic, so we share responsibility for their impact: Our recycling rate for PET is only 23%, which means we pitch into landfills 38 billion water bottles a year–more than $1 billion worth of plastic.

- (Fast Company.com article, emphasis added)

The evidence against bottled water piles up as high as the empty bottles in the landfill: drinking bottled water when tap water is readily available doesn’t make any sense, no matter how you look at it.

The video in this post was made as an entry for the Take Back the Tap video scholarship contest. And now, it’s made me a finalist! The video was a lot of fun to make, and yes… that’s I make a cameo at the end!

Sources:
“Take Back the Tap” by Food & Water Watch
“Bottled Water: Pure Drink or Pure Hype?” by the National Resources Defense Council
“Message in a Bottle” by Charles Fishman on FastCompany.com
“Bottled Water’s Success Story Continues” by the Beverage Marketing Corporation

Here’s a tip:

Don’t trust your printer when it tries to tell you that you’re nearly out of ink. Especially if your printer is an HP psc 1210 All-In-One!

Mine told me back in September that I was nearly out of black ink, so I ran out and got a new print cartridge for it. Since I print a lot for both school and work, I knew I couldn’t afford to run out of ink. But I decided not to change the cartridge until I could see a noticeable drop in quality.

I’m still waiting, 6 months later, for that print quality to drop. And if you average out my printing, I probably print one page a day (yes, black - I rarely print color, I haven’t replaced the color cartridge in two years!). So that means that my printer can churn out over 180 pages on a “nearly empty” cartridge. (And counting!)

Moral of the story: the little warning icon might be a good indicator of when you should buy a new cartridge, but you can probably squeeze out quite a bit before you actually need to change the cartridge.

Also, here’s an indication of my insanity - once I do change the cartridge, I’m going to make a spreadsheet to track exactly how many pages I can get out of a cartridge. Yep - I’m nuts!

Although, maybe not that nuts - there are a lot of people that track things like this. I seem to remember a website where people could enter in how many miles they got on their tank after the gas gauge hit E… one of you reading this wouldn’t happen to know the name of that site, would you?

Last week, I asked you guys whether I was being cheap or being frugal by putting off the purchase of a new power adapter for my laptop. I got a variety of answers, but a lot of common opinions kept popping up. Notably, several people told me that buying a new adapter would save me time, and thus make me more productive, which would save me/earn me more money.

No offense guys, but… WRONG.

Saving time does not save you money. Extra time on your hands only saves/earns you money if that time is well spent. I’m a huge procrastinator and a master at finding distractions, so five extra minutes in my day doesn’t mean five more minutes of work - it means five minutes of mindlessly checking Facebook.

That isn’t to say that saving time can’t save you money - just that it probably won’t. Unless you have some sort of productivity system in place, that extra time will just get lumped into the rest of your day, and you probably won’t see any difference at all.

The same goes for money. Frugality, without some sort of greater plan for your money, won’t get you very far. Sure, you might save $1.10 by going to this gas station instead of that one, but unless you have some idea of what to do with that extra $1.10, it doesn’t really matter. The more money people have, the more they tend to spend. Have you ever noticed that money problems tend to follow people, even if they get a raise or a higher-paying job?

Money doesn’t solve money problems, a change in behavior does. More time doesn’t solve time management problems… a change in behavior does. Once you have a plan for your time and money, then you can worry on trying to find more of each to accelerate that plan.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some quality procrastinating to do!

Today is Blog Action Day - the day when bloggers around the web, and around the world, are uniting to bring environmental issues to light. The following is my offering to this great movement.

I try not to be too heavy-handed with it, but sometimes it just comes through. I’m a tree hugger. Perhaps it’s a product of growing up in a small town, a rural community with vast amounts of nature to enjoy. Perhaps it comes from my parents, who instilled a love of camping and the outdoors in me from a young age. Or maybe Smokey the Bear really just got to me when I was young (only I can stop forest fires!).

However it came to be, I have dedicated a large portion of my time and energy to making sure that I live a life of conservation and environmental awareness. The beauty of all this is that it naturally saves me money. Attempting to use less resources, to reuse items that can be reused, and to recycle tends to be easier on the wallet. After all, if you use less, you buy less!

I do take this to somewhat of an extreme. I engage in a practice called Compacting. The basic principle of Compacting is that you make an agreement with yourself not to buy anything new, with the exception of food, health, and safety products. Everything else must be bought used, or gone without. From the Compacting blog:

1) to go beyond recycling in trying to counteract the negative global environmental and socioeconomic impacts of U.S. consumer culture, to resist global corporatism, and to support local businesses, farms, etc. — a step, we hope, inherits the revolutionary impulse of the Mayflower Compact; 2) to reduce clutter and waste in our homes (as in trash Compact-er); 3) to simplify our lives (as in Calm-pact)

Compacting was largely started as an environmental movement, but it was quickly discovered that Compacting could save vast amounts of money. Since each Compacter makes the agreement with themselves, they decide how far they want to go with it. Some Compacters in cities have given up cars as part of their Compact, since gas and other maintenance items must be bought for them. This may not be possible for those of us living in areas where biking and public transportation are not possible.

In addition to the creed of not buying new, here are some other things I do to as part of my Compact:

• When buying food items, I strive to buy those with the least packaging.
• I attempt to drive my car only as often is as necessary, combining trips and staying on campus all day instead of driving home and back.
• Recycling as much as possible.
• Consuming media electronically whenever possible. This means reading newspapers and magazines online, as well as downloading songs from iTunes instead of buying CDs (not that I’ve actually had the money to buy songs lately!).
• Using Freecycle both as a way to find items I need, as well as a way to give away items I don’t (I gave a lot away during our recent move.
• Eliminating unneeded objects from my life, via Freecycle, donation, or garage sale (I’m still working on this - sometimes, it’s hard to let go).

You can see how these behaviors improve both my environmental impact and my bottom line. But I understand that many people aren’t prepared to sacrifice quite so much as I have. But anyone can take the ideas of the Compact and adapt it to their own life. These tips are not just for those of us who have dedicated ourselves to the cause. If everyone adopted just a few of the Compact principles, there would be a great force of change.

More information on the Compact can be found here:
The Compact Blog
SFGate Article on The Compact
The Compact Yahoo Group

It doesn’t necessarily have to be your grandparent, but buying your first car from a member of the elderly community has some awesome perks. My car (nicknamed Fity Thou’) serves as the example of what a sweet deal you could land.

Why My Granny Car Ownz:

• I got it for $2000 and was allowed to pay monthly, with no interest. Grandmas are so sweet!
• Low mileage. I got it in November and it didn’t even hit 50,000 miles until yesterday (see the sweet picture I forced my passenger to take).
• Taken care of well. When my grandfather was alive, he made sure it saw regular checkups. My grandmother continued the trend, and she didn’t drive it much anyway (see “low mileage” above).
• All leather interior.
• Random perks left inside, specifically for me. I think she gave me two ice scrapers and three boxes of tissues.

If you’re shopping for a first car for yourself or (heaven help you) a teenage child, consider moseying your way up to the nearest retirement community.

We humans do not like to give up luxuries that we’ve become accustomed to. When a personal finance blogger suggests that someone in financial peril cut the cable or satellite, the person in trouble often balks at the idea. Who can live without cable in this day and age?

Strangely enough, I can. I didn’t think it was possible. Even as a kid, when we didn’t have cable, my life revolved around the glowing box in the living room. I grew up on “Seasame Street” and T.G.I.F. (back when it was still good). And when I was 8, we moved to a house that was less in the middle-of-nowhere, and got cable. Suddenly my life revolved around all the wonderful shows that Nickelodeon could offer me (oh “Salute Your Shorts,” how I miss you).

By the time we moved back to the middle-of-nowhere house five years later, we were all addicted. We still couldn’t get cable out there, so we mounted a satellite dish on the roof and received the joy of 150 channels - minus the local stuff.

That’s where I think this whole thing began. You get used to saying “I don’t get the local stations.” You get used to not having it anymore. Eventually our satellite brought us local channels too, but we tended to forget they were there, after not having them for so long.

When I went off to college, my dorm offered free basic cable, or you could upgrade to digital cable for a monthly fee. I was puzzled by all of the people I saw grabbing up the digital boxes. What more were they paying for, exactly? I was entirely happy with my free Sci-Fi channel and Comedy Central. And when exactly did they think they were going to have time to watch these excessive channels they were signing up for?

I myself only managed to watch the images on the Magical Moving Picture Box when friends came over to hang out. And usually we dragged my DVD player into the lounge, instead of watching whatever scheduled shows the TV had to offer.

When I moved home this past December, my mother proclaimed that she was going to cancel the satellite to help offset the cost of me living there. I thought about it for a moment - canceling the satellite meant no live television at all. Our feeble “rabbit ear” antenna couldn’t even pick up the local stations for us. I would be cut off, let only with my DVD player for comfort.

But it didn’t really bother me. And the fact is, you can live without TV better today than you could just a few years ago, and here’s why:

• All of the four major networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX) offer several of their shows on their website. Despite my lack of TV, I’m entirely on the ball with LOST, Heroes and Grey’s Anatomy.
• TV on DVD has become a major force. It’s how I’ve seen the first seasons of LOST and Grey’s, and the entire series of Angel, Buffy, Firefly and Coupling. And you don’t necessarily have to buy the DVDs new: you could buy them used on eBay, rent them from Netflix, or do what I do: borrow them from your friends!
• There’s more free entertainment on the internet than you could possibly absorb in a lifetime. Yes, not everything on YouTube is worth watching, but then there’s always something like Barats and Bereta that totally is (I recommend the Mother’s Day video to start with).

In about a week, cable will be installed in our new house. And I don’t care.

Read the dramatic conclusion in “How To Live Without Television - Part II”

As May 15th approaches, I become more and more engrossed with my fight against No Gas Day. A quick reiteration: I’m not fighting this because I love high gas prices and hate hippies - quite the contrary: I filled my tank up for $50 the other day and screamed and cried, and I also hug quite a few trees myself. But I find No Gas Day to be a bunk idea that takes away from real plans to lower gas prices and help the environment. And now MSNBC is backing me up:

Why one-day gas ‘boycott’ won’t work

The article addresses the accuracy of the No Gas Day email itself (no, gas prices did not drop 30 cents in one day after the first No Gas Day), and goes on to speculate about what would happen if no one used any gas for one day (no cars, lawnmowers, ambulances, or fire trucks) and who exactly would feel the pinch from that. In the end they come to the same conclusion I did: the best way to impact the price…

“is to reduce the amount of gasoline consumed per person. And the best way to do that is to improve the efficiency of cars on U.S. roads. If you doubled your average mileage, you would cut consumption in half.

Now that would put a big crimp in gasoline sales and almost certainly send pump prices tumbling.”

Just because something won’t die doesn’t mean it’s good idea. For those lucky 2 of you in America that never heard of the “No Gas Day” idea, is goes like this: just about every year since 1999, someone has decided that we should try to lower gas prices by boycotting the gas pumps for one entire day. Gas company profits will fall! Prices will drop by 30 cents or more due the sudden decrease in demand! Our consumer outrage will be heard and our demands will be met!

Only, it doesn’t work. It didn’t work in 1999, or 2000, and it’s not going to work in 2007, either.

First of all, I’m not getting down on “hippies” or environmentalists at all. I’ve mentioned before, I’m a staunch environmentalist who has gone as far as not buying anything new in the name of saving the planet (and a significant amount of money). I see the good intentions of a “No Gas Day.” But I also see the insanely flawed logic, and even worse, how detrimental such an idea can be to our long term gas prices.

Sexy, Not Effective
People want to participate in a “No Gas Day” because it’s easy, and it sounds ever so sexy and powerful. “Yeah! I won’t buy gas today, how do you like that, oil man?” But it doesn’t make any real sense. First of all, the average consumer probably doesn’t fill their tank more than once a week, let alone every day. So we can only assume that gas companies don’t measure sales on a daily basis, but more likely, a weekly one. A “No Gas Day” wouldn’t even register a blip on their radar, since everyone will likely fill up their tank some other day that week.

Also, you have to consider the actual way a boycott works. Remember learning about Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott in school (or, if you happen to be old enough to remember it yourself)? A one day bus boycott wouldn’t have really made a big difference to the bus companies, because everyone would just be riding again the next day. Sure, they would have lost that much of one day’s profits, but if everything returned to normal the next day, do you really think they would have changed their racial seating policy?

No. Instead, it took a year-long boycott and the intervention of the Supreme Court to change the Alabama law that dictated the bus companies’ policies. Could you give up gas for a year? If you, and many others, could, it might actually make a difference.

There Is Another Way
It doesn’t have to be as extreme as a year-long complete boycott of gas. Sure, that would help. But if you live in the middle of nowhere (like me) and need a car to get anywhere, and haven’t yet figured out how to get your car to run on coffee, you can still find ways to cut back on your gas consumption. Yes, this is the real way to show the gas companies you’re mad as hell and not going to take it any more: slow and steady reduction. Most of this isn’t going to be news to you - you’ve probably heard it all before. But how much of it are you actually doing?

• Carpool, bike, rollerblade, or walk, when you can. Or just stay home!
• When choosing between two fun activities, include the distance you’ll have to drive in your decision-making.
• Make right turns instead of left turns.
• Don’t speed.
• Empty your trunk - extra weight uses more gas.
• When you buy a new car, make fuel efficiency a major priority.
• Combine errands - if you have a bunch of things to do in the same area this week, do them all in one day instead of driving out there multiple times.
• The average American family has more than two cars. Try to drive the most fuel efficient one. (Get used to saying “Let’s take my car - it gets better gas mileage!”)

Tips like these will save your pocketbook in the “now,” as well as help cut down on overall demand for gas in this country, which should lower gas prices and save you money in the “then.” Anybody else have some fuel efficiency tips to add?

The Danger
I really do believe “No Gas Day” is a dangerous idea. People feel like they’re making a difference, but they’re really having no impact. And because they feel like they did good, they can also feel like they’re excused for things like having a gas guzzling SUV that they don’t need, or anything else they might do (but know better). The excuse “Yeah, but I participated in No Gas Day!” is useless, and gives the false idea that a simple stunt can make a real impact. So fill up your tank on May 15th, 2007… but only if you really need gas.

Sources:
Snopes: Pain in the Gas
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day on the Net - Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

The other day, when I was talking about how I save money flying the friendly skies, I mentioned that I can fly out of either Rochester or Buffalo. I do this because the flexibility saves me a ton of cash. On this particular trip, flying out of Buffalo cost about $100 less than flying out of the more convenient Rochester airport. The trouble is, I had to drive 80 miles yesterday to get to Buffalo.

Making the hour and a half journey to Buffalo yesterday reminded me of something I do with my car that’s a little odd - at least for someone in my age bracket. Starting in January, I gave up speeding. And I did it because speeding is expensive.

Sticking to the speed limit can improve your fuel economy by 7-23%. With gas prices what they are, I really don’t feel like paying more for gas than I have to. On the open highway, I stay in the slow lane and put my cruise control right on the speed limit.

I’ve never received a speeding ticket, and I’m really working on keeping it way. I saw a friend pay $800 for one speeding ticket during a road trip of ours. Can you say “ouch?” Not to mention, I have a relative that receives frequent speeding tickets. We compared her insurance rates for her one car, to my sister’s insurance rates for three cars. My speedy relative is paying twice as much on her one car as my sister pays on all three. Just like I don’t want to pay more for gas, insurance is expensive enough as it is without paying six times as much because of speeding tickets.

I have to say, aside from saving me money, not speeding gives me piece of mind. Not only is it safer, but the other day, I passed a State Trooper aiming a radar gun at me. But I didn’t have that fleeting moment of panic that I usually feel when I see a cop on the road, because I knew that my cruise control was set exactly to the speed limit. Better luck next time, Copper!

Well, I’m leaving (on a jetplane) again. For Los Angeles, again. And once again, I’m reminded how much I hate the experience of modern air travel. I might not have any way to combat the tedious (and possibly ineffective) safety regulations, but I have come up with a system to save as much money as possible.

Tip #1: Don’t pay for it. Ok, this really isn’t “advice,” since not everyone has big, doe-y gray eyes like I do. But if you happen to be good at it, get someone else to pay for your flight. I’m not advocating begging, pleading or blackmailing (unless you’re really good at those) - instead, I just wait around until someone else buys me a plane ticket. It happens more often than you might think.

Tip #2: Don’t pay much for it. Although someone else usually pay for my ticket, I’m always charged with the task of tracking down the cheapest ticket. Because I’m exceptionally good at snaking my way around the internet and finding a deal? Probably not. It’s probably more along the lines of “I have a lot of time on my hands to scour websites.”

The best thing to do is use some of the “fare aggregator” websites, which search of the other plane fare websites for you. I have a confession to make: last time I went price checking, I brushed off the best website of all - didn’t even visit it, let alone fill out the search box and look up fares. Funny story, actually. Because the site is named Kayak*, and I can’t swim and thus am deadly afraid of kayaks (the idea of getting flipped over in one and being trapped under water gives me the heebee-jeebees), I didn’t even visit the site. I completely avoided it.

Not so this time, however. I bounded over to Kayak and fell in love at first search. Not only did it find me the lowest fare, but the advanced search options allowed me to both be flexible about dates and airports (I can fly out of Rochester or Buffalo, and land at LAX or Burbank… doesn’t matter to me) in order to find the bestest best fare for me. Win!

I’ve got this cute Kayak site widget, if you want to try it out right now:

The other site I use is SideStep, which didn’t find me the same low fare as Kayak this time, but it’s worth checking both sites every time.

Tip #3: Don’t buy anything at the airport. Seriously, there’s nothing there you can’t buy elsewhere, and probably at a quarter of the price. Be a little prepared, and you won’t need to buy anything in there. I just went to the supermarket and loaded up on Pringles and those little cheddar cracker sandwiches with peanut butter inside them. Bring your own books and magazines - airport bookstores are about the only place you’ll ever see books selling at their list price.

The only thing you really have to buy in the airport, maybe, is a drink, since they won’t let you bring one in. But you could always bring in an empty water bottle and fill it at a drinking fountain once you’re through security.

Tip #4: Definitely don’t buy anything on the plane. $5 for the world’s shoddiest pair of headphones? And don’t even get me started on those SkyMall catalogs. You’re being catapulted across the country in a metal tube - now is not the time to be buying lawn ornaments or massage chairs. And if the in-flight movies aren’t free, forget about them. They’re usually not that good anyway, and even if they are, they’re usually edited for content.

Tip #5: Park the car for free. This might be hard to pull off. Since I’m flying out of Buffalo again, it’s particularly hard to find someplace to leave my car for a week, without getting charged $50. Thankfully, I have a friend who goes to college in Buffalo, who doesn’t mind me leaving my car at his place, and giving me a ride from his campus to the airport - in exchange for a plate of brownies.

*Affiliate link.