Category Archives: The Experiments

Jun 13 0 comments
HVAC, The Experiments

More ways to reduce the heat

It’s 81 and sunny outside, but I’m feeling quite cozy in my apartment, even though it’s 4 p.m. - the hottest part of the day.

During the week I’ve learned some more heat-reducing tips that I think will help save me and my cat from heat stroke this summer. They are:

  1. Close those gaps: Inspect all your windows and doors for cracks that could let cool air out and hot air in. I found a gap in one of my windows, where the upper pane and the lower pane meet, so now when I close that window I shove some insulating tubing in there to stop up the hole. Use similar techniques for door frames and other areas of unintended ventilation.
  2. If you can’t take the heat…: What’s the difference between a stove and a space heater? Aside from their intended uses, not much. Stoves, like space heaters, will heat the heck out of a room. So try to stick to fast-cooking meals and meals that require only one burner to cook. And if you’re using the oven, open the door as infrequently as possible. Even better, eat raw meals or grill outside. This will add no heat to your home.
  3. Those hot, steamy showers create a hot, steamy room. So switch to lukewarm water. And if you blow-dry your hair, turn the heat down to warm.
  4. Turn it off: Lights, appliances, your computer… they all release heat. So if you’re not using them, turn them off.

After making these little changes, I’ve become more confident that I can make it through the summer with no air conditioning. Wohoo! If this works, I’ll save at least a few hundred bucks - money I can apply to much more important (or, maybe, fingers crossed, more fun) purposes.

Jun 07 0 comments
HVAC, The Experiments

Highs in the 80s, and I have no air conditioner

Its not just you

It’s a new month, so it’s time for a new experiment. Last month the task at hand was to track my expenses and then analyze them with the goal of creating a budget. This I did with moderate success.

This month, the test will be one of will, physics and heat tolerance.

It’s getting hot in my apartment, and I have neither an air conditioner nor the money to afford one (even a cheap one - they run around $100. And I’d probably need two of them to cool my 500ish square-foot apartment, and one of them would probably cost more than $100 because I’d need a bigger unit for my larger room).

Nor could I pay the electric bills associated with cooling an apartment - even a small one like mine.

(I can’t find any info on how much it would cost to run a couple of window air conditioners all summer long, but I’m assuming it’s at least $10 a month, and probably more. That is a completely uninformed guess, so don’t take my word for it…)

So it comes down to this: Without an air conditioner, can I keep my home at a temperature comfortable enough to avoid heat exhaustion (both for me and my cat)?

My hypothesis is that I can - at least as long as the temps remain in the 80s. I have no idea what I’ll do in upwards-of-90-degree weather (I mean, other than sweat through my clothes) but let’s worry about that later.

In the meantime, to maintain some small amount of comfort, here is my plan:

The sun is the enemy of the cool

As much as I adore the bright summer sun, its searing rays can turn a well-lit room into an oven, especially if you have east- or west-facing windows like I do.

According to a fact sheet (PDF) from the Southface Energy Institute, heat from the sun can increase air conditioning bills by more than 30 percent. Meaning sunlight makes a room way hotter.

Their advice: Close window shades and shutters during the day to block the sun’s rays and, in turn, cool your apartment.

(Sidenote: Minor problem for me is that I have a fair number of plants, and they need sun, so I can’t really close all the blinds. Instead I’ll try to concentrate the plants near the smallest windows and leave those blinds open just enough to ensure my plants get sun. Not a perfect solution, but it’s better than nothing.)

Let the night air in - and keep it in

At 11:15 on this beautiful Sunday night, the temperature outside is nearly that of a perfect room: 71 degrees - mild and cozy, and expected to drop further to 62.

Cool air in the summer should be savored, and so I’ve opened my windows to let that air in.

Tomorrow morning (and every morning for the rest of the summer), I will close the windows to trap that cool air and keep the hot air out.

Emphasize air circulation

There’s nothing better than a cool breeze on a hot summer day.

Almost as good is the artificially created circular air flow wrought by a quality ceiling fan when you’re sweating buckets in your ill-cooled apartment. My ceiling fans have been running 24/7 for a few weeks, and will continue to do so for more than a few more.

The reason: Air in motion feels cooler than air at rest, and running a ceiling fan costs less than running an AC unit.

Beware midday cooking (and computing)

Appliances around the house emit heat, so I’ll avoid using my appliances during the hottest hours of the day. If I must use my computer, I’ll take it down the block to the (air-conditioned) Italian eatery that has free wifi.

Stoves and ovens, whose purpose is to heat food, will have a similar impact. I mean, a greater impact. They were made to heat stuff. Obvi.

Stay hydrated and wear thin, breathable, white clothing

I’ll drink water like a marathoner and dress like a Bedouin. Drinking water keeps you from sweating yourself to dehydration, white clothes reflect the sunlight, and loose clothes allow for more air circulation. That means less heat, more health - and more comfort.

On very hot days, cool, wet towels feels good on your neck, and pets enjoy sprawling out on them on the floor.

If all else fails, stick my head in the freezer, or get out of the house

Not the most energy-efficient technique, but it’s better than heat exhaustion and death. If it gets too hot to handle, my cat and I will hop in my Jetta, crank up the AC and go for a drive.

You get the idea. For more advice on how to beat the heat, check out the links below:

<strong>Further reading:</strong>

May 16 0 comments
The Experiments

Money in May: 12, 13, 14, 15, 16

Tracking my expenses dollar by dollar, day by day. Here’s what I spent this week:

May 12: $0.50 on a pack of Ritz crackers with peanut butter at the little convenience store at work. The shop’s manager is a blind man, and he had to feel the crackers to verify what I was buying. That was the most interesting part of this purchase.

May 13: I traveled for work and on the way home stopped at this adorable cafe for a decaf coffee and one of the tastier cookies I’ve had in a while - a granola ball, it was called. Total cost: $2.50. Plus I bought $6 of gas, for which my employer will reimburse me.

Also on May 13: I got paid, and I paid some bills. Specifically:

  • $140 to MasterCard
  • $66 to the electric company
  • $35 for medical bills

May 14: Didn’t buy a single thing.

May 15:

  • $28 to FINALLY get my PA drivers license
  • $11 for spanikopita, saganaki and a baklava sundae at a local Greek festival
  • $3 for a beer after the festival
  • $6 for AAA batteries so my friends and I could play Guitar Hero II at my place afterward

May 16: Went grocery shopping and spent $37.

Grand total: $335

Now, if you’re like me, you probably find these posts somewhat useless. What good is it to know what I’m spending if I don’t know what I should be spending? In other words, it’s about time I made myself a budget and started tracking my expenditures categorically and with some goals in mind.

So that’s what tomorrow’s post will cover. How to budget, or how to start budgeting: Tips from a beginner and the PF the blogosphere. Until then.

May 13 0 comments
Saving It, The Experiments

My emergency fund

emergency

Hotline, by Eflon at Flickr

Starting an Emergency Fund, personal finance bloggers say, is one of the essential parts of taking control of one’s finances and crawl one’s way out of debt. Here’s what it entails:

Definition of an Emergency Fund: Some amount of money - $1,000, $5,000, maybe more - that is set aside to pay for true emergencies if/when they arise. This money should be difficult to access, i.e. in a bank account for which you do not have a debit card, and used only when absolutely necessary. Job losses, car accidents, health problems and the like would count as Emergency Fund situations. Wanting a new pair of shoes or a weekend in Philly would not.

Emergency Funds provide financial freedom. With cash set aside for emergencies, I won’t have to use credit to finance my life should something bad happen. This makes so much sense, and I wish I had learned about the concept long ago.

Lucky for me, I already have an Emergency Fund of sorts, or at least I have a savings account at an Internet bank (E*Trade) - an account I draw from rarely and invest in biweekly - $36 every payday.

But to make it a true Emergency Fund, I must first do two things:

  1. Change my mindset about the money in the account.
  2. Stop using credit cards to buy things. Period.

I’ll elaborate. First, my mindset. Since I started investing in the E*Trade account a few months ago, I’ve gone back and forth about how I should use it. Mostly I’ve rotated between “Long-Term Savings” and “Vacation Fund.”

Neither makes much sense. With my megalithic debt and sad, meager income, I should not focus on investing extra income for the long term. Paying down my debt should be a bigger priority.

As for Vacation Fund, I should not go on vacation until I can afford to go on vacation. It kills me to say it, but I have to accept that I cannot afford vacation right now. If I am saving $36 every other week (that’s 5 percent of my take-home pay, mind you), I should not blow it on vacation.

So yes. That money, as of today, is for emergencies only. Nothing but emergencies.

Now about credit cards. Oh yipe, this is hard. But especially after reading this post at Get Rich Slowly, I’m convinced I should cut mine up and throw them away. Even though I’ve already stopped using them for most expenses. Even though, since starting my job in January, I have not gotten any deeper in debt.

Right now I use credit cards for three types of purchases:

  1. Stuff I cannot afford right now but will be able to pay for once I get my next paycheck
  2. Stuff my parents are buying for me but will have to pay me back for after they get their next paycheck (their situation is precarious, too, but for completely different reasons)
  3. Stuff I cannot afford at all but really really want

No. 3 happens rarely, but that it’s on the list at all is bothersome and unjustifiable. If I can’t afford something, I should not buy it. End of story. No excuses.

No. 2 may be a legitimate reason to keep one credit card on hand, and I will think about that one before cutting all my credit cards into a bazillion pieces.

As for No. 1, I feel like it’s a trap. Rather than buying something a week or two before I can afford it and risk buying too many things and being unable to afford them, why not just wait those few extra days? I can think of few truly good reasons to have purchased on credit the items I have recently purchased on credit. (Examples include: a skirt, a pair of shoes, sticky mats to put under my rugs so they don’t slide around on the floor, a few plants, a couple of dinners.) Credit cards create a vicious cycle - one I want to break.

Further, the only stuff I could truly, truly justify using a credit card to buy is stuff for which I could justify a dip into my Emergency Fund. Meaning I do not need a credit card, or at least I won’t once I have some dough in my Emergency Fund.

Oh sweet Jesus, I may have to cut up my credit cards.

But first let’s skip to Experiment No. 2: Establish an Emergency Fund. It’ll be slow going, but my goal is to put $1,200 in it by the end of the year. At my current rate, I’ll have about $900. That means in the next few weeks or months I’ll have to find some more ways to save.

May 11 0 comments
The Experiments

Money in May: 8, 9, 10, 11

Oh geez, these days drained my bank accounts. I went to Chicago for the weekend to visit friends and family and celebrate turning 26 and, well, I could have done worse, but I could have done better, too. Then, when I got back, I had to buy more stuff (cat food, a Mucinex, etc.). The takeaway is I can’t wait until Wednesday, because Wednesday is when I get paid.

I’m going to just run through the expenditures here. Look forward to more posts about lessons learned.

Friday, May 8:

  • A banana at the airport: $1.30
  • Coffee and a cookie at my favorite coffee shop ever: $3
  • Pad See-Ewe with tofu: $10
  • A cab from my friends’ place to my sister’s place at like 1 a.m. (The distance was totally walkable, but I was alone and it was 1 a.m.): $5

Saturday, May 9:

  • A cab from my sister’s place to my aunt and uncle’s place: $6
  • Overpriced coffee with a smidgen of soy milk for which the bastards charged me 65 cents: $2.50
  • The best falafel sandwich this side of the Atlantic: $5
  • Split cab to see a really kickass ’80s hair-metal cover band play: $2
  • Cover for the cover band: $10
  • (Sidenote: in general I am opposed to paying cover. I mean, why pay extra to drink when drinking is already so expensive? But OMG, to see Hairbanger’s Ball again I would pay like $20. Three-point-five hours of belting out the finest rock ballads Bon Jovi, Journey, Pat Benetar, Poison and other rad rock bands of my childhood produced - that is, well, not priceless, but justifiably pricey, and I would do it again in a second, probably like 287 nights a year.)
  • Amstel Light at Joe’s on Weed: $7
  • (Another sidenote: The beer was not worth $7. I now live somewhere far cheaper than Chicago, so paying $6 plus a $1 tip for a beer only slightly less shitty than say MGD, that’s an afront on me as a consumer. $7 would have gotten me four beers in Central PA. More on beer purchases later, though. I have thoughts/questions on buying rounds.)
  • Cab to the diner: $2
  • Diner food at the diner at 4 a.m. after one of the funnest nights in a long time (and I’ve had some amazingly fun nights recently): $6

Sunday, May 10, or: the day things got really expensive:

  • Brunch. A phenomenal brunch: $16
  • Pasta sauce later determined by the Transportion Security Administration to be a liquid and confiscated and thrown away: $7
  • (If only I’d thought ahead and transferred the pasta sauce into four or so mini plastic bottles and then put the bottles in a quart-sized plastic baggie. Then it would’ve been a condiment, not contraband. Effing love the TSA and their ridiculous rules. That was some damn tasty pasta sauce, too.)
  • Giordano’s stuffed spinach pizza, a gift for my friend Laura, who for free takes care of my cat when I am away: $19
  • Train/bus fare to the Chicago airport: $2
  • Parking at the Philly airport: $33 (grr…)
  • Gas for the drive home: $12

So that’s Chicago. Added up fast, but I don’t regret most of it. I received some birthday money that will cover the majority of the expenses. Also sold some shoes on eBay. Yay.

Chicago total: $149

(That includes the flight there and the lodging, both of which were provided by my friends and family :-) )

Last, but not least, May 11:

  • Overpriced, yuppieish, all-natural cat food: $19
  • A box, a thermometer, a scratching post and some other household goods from Target: $25

Monday total: $44

Which brings us to…

Four-day total: $193

Analysis to come. For now, suffice it to say I had a really kickass weekend, but it cost more than I had intended to spend.

May 08 0 comments
The Experiments

Money in May: The 6th and the 7th

The 6th was my birthday. Yay! That meant dinner out financed by my lovely friends and lunch out gifted to my by some wonderful coworkers.

The rundown:

May 6: Spent no money, but had a Mexican lunch and a tapas dinner, and then some pizza and wine after we realized how expensive the tapas dinner was (and that we were still hungry). Hoorah for birthdays. 26, so far, is feeling good.

May 7: $13 on lunch

Admittedly, that was an expensive lunch, and it brings up a question: The lunch was kind of business-y in nature (I’m a reporter, and it was with sources). I haven’t had too many such lunches (I’m still pretty new to the area and the job and just haven’t developed those types of relationships yet), so I’m not sure if it’s something I should ask to expense.

When I was hired, my boss said he hoped I’d have lunch and/or drinks with sources a couple of times a week. The financing of these outings has not been discussed.

I’m thinking I should find out if my work would pay me back for future work-related outings. But how should I ask? And what if they say no? Can they expect me to go out for work-related meals/drinks and also expect me to pay for them?

(Even with the pricier-than-I-tend-to-spend lunch, the two-day total still came to $13. Not bad at all. This weekend will be a major test of willpower, though, as I am going back to Chicago, where I just moved from, and that city (and my habits there) are expensive. Wish me luck.)

May 05 0 comments
The Experiments

Money in May: the 4th and the 5th

It’s been a cheap coupla days, thank goodness. Thanks to some weekend purchases, I had everything I need to make it through the week. Plus I came down with some sort of respiratory infection, meaning no Cinco de Mayo celebrations for this girl. Sad for me, good for my bottom line.

Here’s the rundown:

May 4:
Did my laundry (finally): $10

May 5:
Spent no money. Yay!

Two-day total: $10

Way to go, me!

Also, I was very good at following Rule No. 1 (Think before you buy). Some things I wanted to buy but didn’t:

  • Decaf coffee, today and yesterday
  • An afternoon snack
  • Some shoes on eBay

Plus, yesterday I walked to work. All in all, a good two days.

May 04 0 comments
The Experiments, The Rules

How to stop sucking at budgets, part 1

So, I’m kind of a dork. I enjoy numbers and math and attempting to put my messy financial situation into a neat little box (well, a few boxes, AKA a spreadsheet) so I can plan, save and make myself aware of how much I can spend on going out for a drink if I also want to afford a weekend away every now and then.

The truth: not so neat and tidy.

Here’s what happens: While budgeting, I am austere. I think about how much money I need to spend in a given month, categorize my expenditures, look back on past credit card/bank statements for a frame of reference, and forge ahead, focused on stinginess. Again, austere. If I find that I spent too much on, say, dining out or jewelry, I give myself a mental slap on the wrist and order myself not to waste so much money again. Why would I throw money away when I have so little of it? Next month, I assure myself, I will do better. I will be austere, and not just while filling in the boxes of a spreadsheet.

Based on the budget I have prepared for myself, I should be just scraping by, paying down my bills and putting a bit away for savings.

Still, month after month, I come up short or almost short. And I think I can pinpoint the reason. When I’m out and about, running errands or being social, the austerity slips away. I can be talked into things. I can talk myself into things. Little things, big things, things in between. And I really don’t know why. It’s not that I don’t understand the financial straits I’m in. (Reminder: $26,000 a year with $60,000 of debt spread between credit cards and student loans. Oh, and did I mention I have almost no savings?) (Also, importantly, the budget I’m trying to adhere to includes my full student loan payments ($435/month), even though some of my loans are in deferment until June and right now I’m paying closer to $150.) It’s more that, in many situations, multiple times per week or even per day, I can talk myself into things. Or I don’t even give myself that option - I just buy something, boom zap pow, and my money’s gone. Snap.

That brings me to: My First Experiment. And also: My First Rule.

Let’s start with The Rule.

Rule No. 1 of Getting Out of Debt: Think before you buy.

I don’t mean overthink or nitpick or analyze the hell out of or anything like that. Just take a moment. Pause. Reflect. Is this something I need or something I want? Is this something that will put me over budget? Will I suffer if I don’t have this thing? The answers to those three questions can be processed within microseconds, almost gut-reactionly. If all signs point to don’t buy it, then don’t buy it. If even one sign points that way, refrain. It’s simple: Don’t buy it. Refrain. Move on.

I will update you on my progress.

Part Two, then, is the experiment.

Experiment No. 1 to Learn to Reduce My Debt: Record the Things I Buy

I am not the first personal finance blogger to do this, and nor will I be the last. But for the month of May (and possibly June), I will dedicate myself to recording my expenses, even the tiny ones, on the Internet, for all who are interested to read and judge and pick apart and comment on. I welcome your comments, especially if they’re helpful, but also if they’re a little mean (note to meanies: try also to be constructive).

So there we have it. Two baby steps in the right direction. Wish me luck. More to come. Ciao.