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And The Heat Came On

November 3rd, 2008 | Posted in Personal thoughts

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heater

Well, we made it until today, November the third, without needing to flick on our electric heat. That’s pretty good, right? Sure, we could have gone even longer (sweatpants, two pairs of socks and a couple of sweaters sure do go a long way), but it was getting to be just a little too far past the point of comfort, so on came the heat today!

This was especially necessary considering that I’m working from home this week, and find my productivity drops considerably when one hand is over a hot cup of tea and the other is wrapped in a blanket! Unfortunately, the heater has that “I haven’t been used in eight months” smell, but that should dissipate within an hour or so, I imagine.

In case you’re wondering, today, the day of our breaking point, it is eight degrees celsius which is… 46.4 degrees fahrenheit for you Yanks. Now, that’s the temperature (from the weather channel, at least.) Inside, it’s likely warmer without the heat, and we are a little bit protected as we live in an apartment building with heat in the common areas (hallways, ect).

Holding off as long as we did, and keeping the heat on at a moderate temperature now, should help with our overall energy costs this year, and I can feel better about my family’s carbon footprint.

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Coupons for Wikipedia?

November 2nd, 2008 | Posted in Personal thoughts

I happened to come across this paged titled Wikipedia Coupon Codes - all coupons, discounts and promo codes for en.wikipedia.org”. Since Wikipedia is a non-profit company, coupons shouldn’t be necessary. I will provide a URL but not a live link since I don’t believe they deserve one http://www.retailmenot.com/view/en.wikipedia.org.

It seems like this retailmenot company is creating pages for top websites so they can state on their home page they offer coupons for more than 20,000 stores. It sounds funny but they added the alert: “Sorry for the inconvenience but this merchant has specifically requested to have all user contributed coupons removed from the RetailMeNot system.” Isn’t removing the page completely a better idea?

They even list non-English Wikipedia sites, such as the Turkish version: http://www.retailmenot.com/view/tr.wikipedia.org

It’s time for that website to filter these pages out.

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Reward Yourself For Saving

October 26th, 2008 | Posted in Personal thoughts, Saving Money

icecream

Every once in awhile it’s important to reward ourselves for the hard work we do saving. Doing so helps to keep us from feeling deprived, as well as, we are more likely to resist the urge just to give it all up and blow the budget on a big splurge.

Whether your splurge is a premium container of ice cream or something a little more expensive, it’s important to indulge from time to time, within moderation. If I desire something particularly expensive, it’s easy to simply save up for it so that when I am able to make the purchase, there isn’t any guilt involved.

While I don’t go out and spend on every latest thing, I do not deprive myself either. I simply make responsible financial choices in many ways, so that I am able to enjoy and indulge myself without breaking the budget.