Put handtowels by the kitchen sink to dry your hands. It’ll cut down a *lot* on the paper towels you need to buy.
Budgeting tip of the day
Set your fridge/freezer to only be as cold as they NEED to be. Otherwise, you’re wasting electricity *and* money.
Superfun post
Superfun post (here) from Emily, at Not Finished Yet. She notes, “So, I tried Pear Budget, and I decided that — it’s awesome. Today I signed up for a whole year of the service. It cost me a whopping $30. That’s it! Woo-hoo! I feel good!”
She goes on to describe some of the stuff she likes (tagging, for example), and then she drops this gem: “Maybe I’m getting excited over a little thing here, but I think that’s really cool. It’s fun! And if it’s fun then I will do it. I don’t do boring very well. In fact, as evidenced by the complete lack of ‘doing’ on my 2008 taxes until I had to, I don’t do boring AT ALL. So, a little ‘fun’ is a very good thing for me and my finances.”
Yay, Emily! Thanks for the review! (And for everyone else, you can read it here.
Budgeting tip of the day
Don’t focus on the stuff you can’t buy. Focus on the goals you’re working towards. I know: It’s *hard*. Try it?
Budgeting tip of the day
First: “Reduce.” Second: “Reuse.” Third: “Recycle.” (ht @frugalhacks http://cli.gs/vWDHXy)
Budgeting tip of the day
Cable costs over *$700 a year*. Is that worth it to you? Maybe. Maybe not. Be intentional about your purchases.
Budgeting tip of the day
Save the pages you’ve printed out that you’d normally throw away. The backs make great coloring / note paper.
Budgeting tip of the day
Ask your utility companies to standardize your bills: You pay the same amount each month. (Thanks, @frugaldad!)
Quote from Seth Godin
“It’s amazing that people have so much time to fret about today’s emergency but almost no time at all to avoid tomorrow’s.”
Seth Godin: How Far Away Is Your Emergency?
Update: the site’s back up and running
Update: the site’s back up and running.
The tech support at Media Temple said that we didn’t need to do anything to get our site back up. So we didn’t do anything, trusting they’d take care of it. Apparently, we did need to do something: we needed to bug them.
Frustrated that the site was still down, six hours after they said they’d take care of it, we got on the phone to ask them why it was still down, especially when their “system status” page said that all affected websites were “online” (as of several hours ago). They did something to escalate it in their system, and, bottom line: the site is back up.
Once again, let me apologize for the shoddy availability this past week. We’ve started the process of transitioning to a new host. This is a complicated process, and it’s not one we’ve done before, so I can’t say for sure how long it’ll take us. But we are working on it. Thanks for your patience as we’ve worked through this.