Hopefully your week is going well. I can’t believe that Labor Day is this weekend. My how time flies when you’re having fun! Remember if you’re looking for something to do on the cheap, make sure to check your local newspaper and internet resources and I’m sure that you’ll find something.

College football starts on Thursday, and I have really missed it this year. That’s always something fun to do with your family. High school football has also started and you can usually get tickets to a game for less than five bucks.

Fantasy football drafts are also getting started for the pro season. You know that you don’t have to pay to play that, but can play if for free. One of the places you can play for free is from fox sports - here’s the link - click here.

We’ll be taking some time off over the weekend so our next post will be on Tuesday or so of next week. We hope you and your family have a wonderful labor day.

• A beautiful day here… like Baby bears soup. #

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Out of Gas Newsletter - Issue 96 August 28th, 2010
Saving Money at College Saving Money on transportation costs

A good Saturday to you. I can’t believe the weather we had this past week (well since Weds.) high temps were in the high 70’s and low 80’s but the kicker was little or no humidity (and it has felt like a jungle around here). Next week we are supposed to return back to the jungle.. but hey fall can’t be to far away… I only hope this winter isn’t as cold as it has been hot.

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We’re taking next weekend off (it is Labor Day weekend) so we hope you and your family have lots of fun, no matter what you do.

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Saving Money at College Saving Money on transportation costs

1. Walk to class / ride a bike. Not only is this a great way to keep off those freshman pounds that people talk about, it will also save you money. Some things to keep in mind with this strategy.
- keep a close look at the weather forecast, it may be fun to walk a few blocks on a Sunny Sept. day but it wouldn’t be fun to walk it during a rainstorm.
- stow some rain gear in your backpack (an umbrella or poncho)
- unless you enjoy traveling thru the drifting snow or are part eskimo, make some alternative plans for the winner - you will have to walk some to get to a class, so make sure you have some good winter weather clothes.

2. Take the bus. If you live a good distance away from your classes then try taking the bus. I did this for a whole semester and it worked well. Do some test runs to see how long the bus ride will take. Get a schedule and work on creating some routes for your days. Most cities give students a super rate for a bus pass.

3. Carpool. If you live with a group of students off campus, a good idea is to car pool. Take turns driving for a week. If you have four people sharing a ride then you’ll only have to drive one week out of the month.

4. Download our free guide - check out the link below for our free gas mileage guide. It is full of tips to help you save more on gas and mileage.

5. Take advantage of your student ID. Many different places around colleges give you discounts since you are a student. Take full advantage of all the discounts you can.

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If you haven’t had a chance to get our gas mileage guide we would encourage you to do so. It’s free. You can find it here. Thanks so much for sharing your day with us and we hope you have a wonderful weekend.

I found this article today while browsing the internet and it had some pretty good information.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/18/study-shows-people-are-clueless-about-energy-savings-heres-what-actually-works/

There was a survey and the participants were asked an open ended question.

The take away can be found from this snippet within the article -

The majority of the participants’ answers, such as turning off lights, changing thermostat settings and unplugging appliances, fell into the curtailment category. These actions are certainly helpful, but even more effective are efficiency changes, such as using CFL light bulbs, buying Energy Star appliances, and driving a hybrid car. In other words, it’s better to buy new, efficient equipment than to sparingly use older, energy-hungry products.

The article also has some nice charts which you will want to check out.

So here are five things you can do - again from the article -

Here are five of the most effective things you can at home to lower your energy consumption:

1. Replace incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs
2. Weatherize your home with caulk or weather-stripping (80% of older homes are under-insulated)
3. Install a more efficient heating and/or air conditioning unit
4. Install or upgrade attic insulation and ventilation
5. Adjust your washing machine settings to warm, or even cold, water

Some Cheap ways to get rid of mosquitoes

This year where we live it has been like a jungle. Hot and humid during the days (and I mean hot) and then in the afternoon there is usually a thunderstorm for a few minutes and then the furnace turns back on. So in addition to being miserable from the heat we also have been attacked by a horde of mosquitoes.

Here are some ways that you can get rid of the bugs or get less bug bites that won’t break the bank.

1. Get rid of the standing water in your yard. Also remove garbage. Take a survey of your yard, you may be surprised at where water is collecting, for me it was a section of our ditch that needed a little work to make it drain better.
2. Keep away from sweet scents. Skeeters have an awesome sense of smell, the reason they are biting you is because they can smell your blood. They also love things like perfume, cologne and lotions. So if you’re planning on being outside try to keep those to a minimum.
3. Garlic. Eat it / sprinkle it. When you eat Garlic the mosquitoes can smell it and they’ll leave you alone. If you don’t like garlic (it does taste good on garlic bread) then you can buy some and sprinkle it around the places you hang out… like around the bar b q, your porch swing, lawn chairs etc.
4. Fans help to keep the skeeters away. For whatever reason they don’t like a breeze. That one makes me want to install a ceiling fan on the back porch.

Out of Gas Newsletter - Issue 95 August 14th, 2010

Hope your weekend is going well.  I can’t believe that August is almost gone.

Links you can Use

If you’re looking to sell something - especially electronics you may want to check out the following link -

http://www.gazelle.com/

Don’t forget to follow us on twitter - http://twitter.com/savingmoneyon

Saving Money on College - Finances (you know money)

1. Pay your bills on time and you will avoid a late fee. The late fee can add 10, 20 percent or more to the bill.
2. Don’t get a job during the first week of school (unless you have no choice like me). Wait until you know how rough your classes are going to be and when you do your best studying. Then work on finding a job that you can work around.
3. Shop the sales, instead of just throwing the sales papers in the garbage take a little time and check them out and plan your shopping accordingly.
4. You can have fun without spending a whole lot of cash, we’ll work on giving you some tips on that next week.
5. Get a free checking account. At all major college campuses there are banks that love students. You may have to check them out (or ask friends who went there the year before).
6. If at ALL possible stay away from a credit card. If you have to use one then make sure that you pay it off when the bill comes. If you have a credit card make sure that you have only one… more than that and you’ll be tempted to splurge.
7. Make sure that you balance your checkbook.. hopefully your Mom and Dad taught you how to do that.

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If you haven’t had a chance to get our gas mileage guide we would encourage you to do so. It’s free. You can find it here. Thanks so much for sharing your day with us and we hope you have a wonderful weekend.

Saw this today on one of the early morning news shows. It was the person who created Groupon. Groupon is a site that offers local deals on everything from dinners to flip flops. There are a few caveats though. The big one is that the deal doesn’t count until x number of people purchase the coupon. So for instance today in their Memphis offer a deal for a riding lesson for 25 bucks… if you were in the market for a riding lesson you would save 30 bucks. So you would need to buy the coupon. In order for the coupon to be valid 35 total people would need to buy it. At the time I wrote this only 2 people had bought it. For Nashville the deal was $60 of food for $30 and it was valid, in fact over 700 bought it and there comes the downside. So do you think all 700 of those folks are going to want reservations tonight, if so someone is going to be out of luck.

Just from checking out other cities it seems that Gropons do very well with dining and not so well with other types of sites, so if you live within a city that they serve then you should be in luck.

It is super easy to register for the site, you need to enter your name, email, location and it will bring up the nearest page for you. One thing for whatever reason it didn’t like my gmail address at all and I got caught in an endless loop. When I used another email address which wasn’t gmail it worked… maybe I was just having bad luck. It will them ask you to enter some more of your information to become a member.

I saw this on a couple of different newsie sites this morning and I thought I would bring it to your attention.

One benefit of one of the new consumer protection laws is that retailers are now allowed to give discounts to people that pay with cash. So why would retailers want to give you a discount… the big reason is that they have to pay in order to accept your credit card. They pay a percentage of whatever you buy and sometime they pay a transaction fee as well.

I did notice on vacation that some of the service stations were offering a discount if you paid with cash instead of plastic. What I’m curious about is how much will they discount the prices. The most that the store would have to pay for a credit card transaction would be about 3% or so and I’m sure that the big stores like Wal-Mart have probably negotiated that fee down to 1% or even less. I guess that time will tell how much of a discount we’ll get. Till that time make sure to take a little extra cash in your pocket since it may be able to save you some money.

Enjoy your day.

Saving money on food in college

Out of Gas Newsletter - Issue 94 August 14th, 2010

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We talked about saving money on textbooks on Monday, and I figured that we would continue with some advice on saving money as you get ready for college.

In college there are a few different things you’ll spend money on, these include Books (which we talked about), Eats, transportation and other expenses (if you want to go out on the town or go shopping).

Saving Money on Eats - probably the least expensive way to get your eats is to buy a meal plan. Colleges offer a wide variety of packages that you can choose from. If you are a big breakfast eater then you would of course want to include that. If you don’t like breakfast then you would skip that from your meal plan. The big thing is you want to cater it to meet your needs. If you live off campus then you may not opt for fewer meals. Costs usually range from $8 to $12 / meal (thats based on the UK food plan). The good thing about the plans is you know that each week you (or your child) will at least have x number of meals during the week, of course having the meals available and actually eating them are something totally different.

If you don’t want to go with a meal plan there are other options. I had 2 roommates and an apartment for much of my college experience. We would budget for food and each person would contribute a set amount at the beginning of the month (you could also do this every week). I had a roommate who loved cooking so we let him do the shopping and the cooking and he didn’t have to contribute as much to the food fund.

Some other ideas for saving money on food.

If you drink coffee make your own and a Thermos is your friend. Buying coffee at 2 bucks a drink can get pretty expensive.

Collect coupons and use them.

Couple of meals that are very cheap. Oatmeal, Ramen Noodles and Mac and Cheese

I read an article today in the Huffington Post that gave a unique way to save money on your air conditioning costs. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nick-rosen/how-to-cool-down-while-po_b_673217.html

It said to create a cold room in your house and then turn the thermostat up a couple of degrees. It didn’t really talk about how to make the cold room, but this is one way you could do it, I would think.  Create the room in the center of your house, preferably with a couple of walls between you and the outside and away from entrances and exits. Close the vents. Insulate that room the best you can from any drafts. I wish I could test this to see how it would work. Both my wife and daughter have asthma and if they get too hot then they start coughing their heads off, which eventually leads to a full blown asthma attack. So saving money on the air conditioning is one expense that I don’t worry about. If you think you would like to do this in your home I would love for you to comment below and let us know how it goes. Let us know if you ran into any obstacles, did it work and most importantly did it save money and if so how much.

Enjoy your Friday.