Category — bumblefucked wisdom

Admit it. The rising gas prices have you looking longingly at ads for hybrids, right? I know – me too!  What’s got my eye? A shiny new Ford Escape SUV hybrid. Do I need it? Nope. Do I already have a car that gets decent gas mileage. Yup. But all this talk about rising gas prices and fuel efficient cars has given me a bad case of hybrid envy.

Fortunately, I have realized something very important that is helping with my hybrid envy. What is this little secret? Simple.

You can get a fuel efficient car without going hybrid.

I know, it’s shocking – especially if you are suffering from an extreme case of hybrid envy. It’s also true. For instance, if you take a gander at the list of 2008′s most and least fuel efficient vehicles at www.fueleconomy.gov you will notice that the list of most fuel efficient vehicles is not monopolized by hybrids. Sure, the Toyota Prius is tops. But the Smart Car, the Mini Cooper, the Toyota Yaris, Toyota Corolla, Nissan Versa, and a few others are all on the list. And a lot of those are actually a heck of a lot cheaper than a hybrid!

So, ditch that hybrid envy and look for a used Corolla. You’ll save some cash and still get a pretty fuel efficient vehicle.

If you are having some aches and pains and also happen to be in debt then let me diagnose you.

Dear spent-too-much-and-now-in-debt,

Welcome to the club. What club? The exclusive club of Americans having health problems caused by debt stress. At least that is what MSNBC is reporting.

And I don’t doubt it. Stress can do all sorts of wacky things to your body. So, if you have a chunk of debt that you are stressing about then expect wacky body things.

Want me to make you feel better? If so, have a glance at the sidebar. See those little progress bars, or actually lack-of-progress bars? Feel better now? Thought so.

If not, here is what you can expect, according to ailments people listed in the poll in the MSNBC story:

• 27 percent had ulcers or digestive tract problems, compared with 8 percent of those with low levels of debt stress.
• 44 percent had migraines or other headaches, compared with 15 percent.
• 29 percent suffered severe anxiety, compared with 4 percent.
• 23 percent had severe depression, compared with 4 percent.
• 6 percent reported heart attacks, double the rate for those with low debt stress.
• More than half, 51 percent, had muscle tension, including pain in the lower back. That compared with 31 percent of those with low levels of debt stress.

We’ve been going over the budgeted amount for utilities.

I try to keep our utilities part of our budget under $300 a month. This includes: water, electricity, cell phones and cable/internet. The last two have the same fixed cost each month. And electricity is the bill that fluctuates the most.

In an effort to get that number under $300, I took to powering down Riley’s computer while she was at work. I started this two months ago. The difference in the electric bill? A cool $7.00. What I did was turn off the power strip that her computer is plugged into – and turned off the computer which she used to leave on. So, that meant no phantom power from the computer, the speakers, the two portable hard drives and the cell phone charger.

So, last month I decided to see what else I could find that was sucking phantom power right out of our budget. I kept turning off the power strip for Riley’s computer. I also started unplugging everything that I could find that was not in use. That amounted to two coffeemakers, one toaster, 4 lamps, 1 fan, 3 Glade oil plugin nightlights that do not have the oil thingie in them, and an additional night light. I also turned off the power strip that the TV was plugged into. And no leaving lights on when you are not in the room!

The result? The bill dropped from $90 to $74. Granted, I do not attribute the entire $16.00 drop to me being a phantom power ninja. It has been pretty cool here which means lots of open windows instead of using the AC. But, it is still pretty sweet.

Amazon has some awesome money saving deals going on right now.

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Getting paid to blog is a great way to make some extra cash to apply to debt. I have been using SocialSpark on some other blogs to earn some extra money to apply towards debt. SocialSpark is great because the links are all of the “no follow” variety which is supposed to keep you from getting rank spanked by Google.

Today I got notification that I had been paid for my first opp with SocialSpark. I was instructed to log into my account to initiate the PayPal payment. So, I did just that only to discover that it was a cruel joke.

Apparently there is a $20 minimum cash out amount in SocialSpark. So, instead of me getting my $8.25 to apply to debt, they get to hold it hostage until I get up to $20 in my account to cash out. Not cool.

So, not only do you have to wait the normal 30 days before getting “paid” but you also have to wait until you get $20 in your account to cash out and really get paid.

With the price of gas being almost literally arm and a leg I think that fuel consumption is likely to be on a lot of people’s minds. Tons of bloggers are giving tips on how to cut down your fuel costs. Apparently, the easiest way to do that is to slow down. An article on CNN stated that “every 10 miles per hour you drive over 60 is like the price of gasoline going up about 54 cents a gallon.” Yikes. As someone that regularly drives around 70mph or a bit more, that is, well, tragic news.

As the gas prices have been creeping up I have been slowing down. The speed limit on the interstate here is a disappointing 65mph. And you do not have to go too far before it changes to 55 mph. Guess who obeys the speed limit now? Me!

There are a lot of cops here with very sneaky hiding places. So, this slowing down things has likely saved me more than just gasoline. I have avoided speeding tickets and there have been times recently where I came up on a sneaky cop and knew I would have been toast if the gas prices were better.

So, that got me to thinking. If loads of other people out there are slowing down as well to save on gas, what are the cops doing? I suspect they are writing less tickets for speeding now. Wonder if they are bored?

Last Thursday I signed up for a free trial of Rhapsody. I only did so because it was a special offer I got in a MyPoints email and I am all about getting free stuff through MyPoints. If you are not already a member of MyPoints, what are you waiting for? Join MyPoints NOW! Seriously. You can get free gas cards from them, among other things. In fact, that Rhapsody free trial I did gave me half the number of points needed for one $10 gas card from MyPoints. But that is beside the point.

With Rhapsody you get a two week free trial. I decided to cancel it today while I was thinking about it. I did not want to forget and end up with a charge on my credit card – because you have to give a credit card for the free trial to start. And supposedly you get to use the account until the trial period is up.

Prior to signing up for Rhapsody I had done a free trial of Napster‘s online music service. I preferred Napster when it was a file sharing site When I was using Napster I noticed that a lot of the things that I was looking for just plain were not available. I wanted to hear the Andrea Corr solo album – not there. I wanted to hear the latest Beth Hart album – not there. I wanted to hear the latest Aly & AJ album – it was there! But wait – only 3 of the songs were available for full listening. The remainder of the album just offered 30-second clips and you had to pay $0.99 per song for the entire song. Balls to that.

With Rhapsody I was able to find the things that I could not find on Napster. So, score for Rhapsody!

Both sites offered downloadable software as well as allowing you to play the music from their site. I tried out both options with each service. Napster would sometimes get a bit sluggish when searching for what I wanted (but that may have just been my computer). I did not have that problem with Rhapsody. However, with Rhapsody I did have the problem of the audio buffering, only it was more like skipping. That was a real problem. Of course, that could have been contributed to the memory hogging programs I was using at the time.

When it came time to cancel, Napster was a piece of cake. If you are still in your free trial period, you can cancel without needing to call anyone. That is a real bonus. I was not so fortunate with Rhapsody. Not only do you have to call Rhapsody to cancel, but actually finding the number was quite a chore. So, if you need to cancel Rhapsody, you just call 1-866-597-5465. Be warned though that their customer service is clearly farmed out to India, which was a little frustrating. However, I was pleased with how quickly I was able to cancel.

Both services state that even if you cancel before the trial period is up that you can still access the service. With Napster, this was totally true. With Rhapsody, not so much. My trial period with Rhapsody does not end until May 9th but my access is already disabled.

While both Rhapsody and Napster had their positives and negatives, I think that Napster came out the winner in the end. But I would not pay for either service personally. Get a 14-Day Free Trial to Rhapsody if you are interested. Or even better – Click here to get Napster–FREE 7-day trial and start downloading music today!

So, I think the winner here is clear… Napster wins!

We eat a lot of salads in the Bumblefucked household. I am more of an iceberg person and Riley is more of a fancy pants lettuce person. So, she prefers to buy the triple washed lettuce packs that have fancy pants lettuce in them. I see why she prefers it – there is nothing worse than having a salad where all of your lettuce is holding water. So, I get it, I do.

Yesterday I was at Kroger and they had some of those triple washed lettuce packs marked down to $0.99 to move them out. We both needed lettuce and the iceberg looked horrible, and was more than $0.99, so I grabbed a couple of the triple washed lettuce packs.

When I got home I made a salad. The first piece of lettuce I pulled out had a nice dead spider in the fold. Yuck. I told Riley. She then told me how she never washes that lettuce because it is supposed to be triple washed.  Triple washed? I don’t think so. There is no way a spider of this size could have made it through three washings. It wasn’t huge, but it was about the size of a thumbtack.

I chalk it up to a fluke. Maybe it made it’s way inside after the washing? I expect a bug or two from iceberg, but not this.

So, today I get out the same lettuce pack. I take out a piece of the lettuce. Guess what? Two bugs! They were small gnats, but gnats none the less.

Next time I’ll stick to iceberg.

Here at Bumblefucked we have been fortunate enough to make it into a few carnivals. Thus far two of those carnivals have felt it necessary to censor the blog name. One made us known as “Bumble****ed” or something silly like that while the other simply called us “Bumble.”

I find the censorship more offensive than any profanity. (Never mind the fact that I would never call a site “bumble”, wtf?)

It is also quite absurd.

Profanity in a word does not make that work profanity by association. For instance, the word “embarrass” is never thought of as profanity, even though it clearly has the word “ass” in it.

In fact, choosing to clearly censor the word makes it more profanity than not as it makes it seem taboo or something.

And now, back to the regularly scheduled programming here at “Bumble”

It seems to me that in the quest to pay off debt and spend less than you earn, something important gets forgotten by a lot of people. In fact, it is something that I overlooked until a few months ago.

How much is your time worth?

This is something that is important to consider.  And it directly relates to paying down debt, being frugal and so on. You see, in the not too distant past we decided against renting a washer and dryer for our apartment. The cost when I had check on it was 30-something dollars plus tax each month. Then there was also the cost of using more water. After discussing it we decided that it would be cheaper to go every so often to the ‘wash and wait’ or try to do our laundry at family member’s homes for free. So, for the entire duration of that apartment lease that is exactly what we did.

We forgot to consider the cost of that decision. Sure, it saved $30-plus dollars a month on the rental fee as well as the higher water bill. Most months we did laundry only once a month and typically at the home of a family member that we were visiting. The months that we did not do our laundry for free, we spent an average of $15.00. There is no denying that we saved money on paper.

But what we saved on paper we lost in time. You see, those trips to the ‘wash and wait’ ended up being an average of about three hours each time.  That was three hours that could only be spent waiting in a dingy chair. Sure, it allowed us to catch up on some reading; but that was only when it was not incredibly loud in there or when someone did not try to engage you in conversation. And those times that we did laundry at the home of a family member – well, that meant less time spent with them and more time doing laundry.

When we moved into our new apartment a while back, we were presented with the option of renting a washer and dryer again. Like an idiot, I hesitated at first. Then I had the epiphany above and realized our time was definitely worth $30-something a month.