When it comes to phones you have a number of options. You can go with a landline, a cellphone or internet phone. If you have a high speed internet connection you can go with a company like Vonage and pay only $24.99 per month for unlimited local and long distance. Because it’s VoIP you don’t get billed all sorts of taxes and fees that you find on a traditional land line phone. If a phone company advertises $24.99 the final bill will be closer to $40. When Vonage says $24.99 the finall bill will be close to $24.99. There may be sales tax but that’s about it. Also, Vonage lets you keep your same phone number.

The only problem with a VoIP phone like Vonage provides is that it may not be an option if you have a home security system. Home security systems can sometimes require a traditional landline. We ran into that issue and ended up getting the barebones phone plan from Qwest which starts at $14.99 and after all the fees and taxes is more like $25. It has far fewer features than Vonage such as no long distance but costs the same.

Another option is the cell phone. With plans typically started at $40 a month you can see that you’re quickly paying far more than any type of home phone you could get. We used to be paying $80 a month for two cell phones. That works out to nearly $1000 a year. Once the contracts were up we ditched the monthly plan and went with a prepaid Tracfone. Other companies have pay as you go plans but they’re all far more expensive than Tracfone. With Tracfone you can get a phone for $15-20 and you only pay for minutes. There are no connection fees or daily fees that companies like AT&T charge.

The fact of the matter is that you are near a phone almost all the time. I remember years ago when all I had was a pager. It cost something like $8 a month. I’d get a page and somehow I managed to always be somewhere where I could use a phone. I don’t remember ever having to use a payphone. Many places of business will let you use their phone as long as it’s local and you keep it short.

With a prepaid cell phone you can use the phone anywhere and you just keep it short.

The issue is that people think they need a cellphone. They think they need to be available 100% of the time. You don’t. If your friends want to hang out they can call you at work and let you know. Or they can leave a message on your answering machine at home. Instead of talking to people in person now people substitute face to face interaction with cellphones. It’s so much easier to have unlimited talk time on a cell than to take time out to meet in person or wait until the evening when you’re at home to sit down and talk to your friends.

The only things that are so important you must tell someone now are emergencies. Prepaid cell phones are sufficient for that. If it’s not worth 20 cents a minute to tell someone then it can wait until you can call them on a land line or send an e-mail.

Believe it or not, cellphones have only been a “must have” item for about 10 years. Before then people managed to survive using beepers and home phones. People have forgotten that cell phones are a convienence not a necessity.

So next time your cell phone contract is up, let it expire. Get a prepaid Tracfone and see how it works out. Use it for 2 months and see if you really need that subscription based cellphone. It’s amazing how much money people throw away on cellphones because they think they need it.

And once you finally cure yourself of your cellphone addiction, take the $100 a month you’re saving on cellphone bills and do something useful with it like save it. Or invest it. Or save it for Christmas presents instead of using credit cards.

Census.gov has a PDF with all the average and median home values from 1963 to October of 2008.

There’s news coming out that home prices are dropping rather quickly. Well, if you look at the chart you can see that the drop is a market correction. Much like what happened in the 80’s. The house prices shot up unreasonably high and now they’re dropping back down. Current prices are looking more like they should had the bubble not happened.

I’m providing the Excel workbook with all the numbers from the PDF and the chart.

house-prices

Infoworld has an article debunking some PC power myths.

The article claims that the average PC uses 89 watts per hour. Divide 89 by 1000 to get the number of kilowatts. If the PC were left on for 24 hours it would consume about 2.1 kilowatts. For my power plan it costs about 5 cents per kw off peak and 17 cents per kw on peak. On peak is 8 hours in the day. So the total cost per day is about 21 cents. At that rate the cost per month is about $6.30.

In my case electricity is so cheap that there’s little financial incentive to turn my computer off when not in use. And since it’s a server, that’s not really an option anyway. You should do your own calculations to see what it costs to have your PC on 24 hours a day. If your computer isn’t being used 24 hours a day then it shouldn’t be on 24 hours a day anyway. Turn it on when you get home from work or school and turn it off when you go to bed.

Monitors, printers, scanners, etc are what start to add to that bill. Screen savers prevent burn in. They don’t save electricity. As such you should have your monitor go into power saving mode automatically when not in use. I have my screen saver set so that it goes on after 10 minutes of inactivity and after about 20 minutes the monitors go into power saving mode.

The reason screen savers can actually cost you more money is because some of them require your graphics card to do some work which requires more power. The best screen saver is just a blank black screen or a simple static image moving around.

The biggest obstacle to powering off a computer is the boot up time. I have a dual core 2.4ghz system that runs Windows XP Pro and boots in under 30 seconds. If your computer takes a very long time to boot you may want to review the software that is installed on your system and remove some of it.

One of the easiest ways to save money is to keep your car properly tuned up. The EPA estimate that every car has is about the best MPG you can expect out of your car driving like a normal person. Hypermiling is a variety of driving methods that can boost your MPG above the EPA estimate. But, most people can’t safetly use those methods. So instead, focus on the EPA estimate.

Let’s say you car’s EPA estimate is 28 miles per gallon. You can reasonably expect to get around 24. If you’re getting between 24 and 28 miles per gallon then inflating your tires, putting additives in your gas, changing your oil, changing your air filter, etc aren’t going to do much for you. You might be able to get an extra MPG out of your engine.

But, let’s say you notice that you’re getting 22 MPG or less. Well that’s an indication you need an oil change, a new air filter and you should check your tires. The idea is to not have unrealistic expectations of your car and waste a lot of money “maintaining” it by giving it new oil every week. It’s to figure out what a realistic expectation is and maintaining it.

All shops will suggest an oil change every 3000 miles. Read your manual. Newer cars may only need an oil change every 5000 or 7500 miles. You can ignore the sticker. But pay attention to the mileage your car is getting. Calculate the MPG you’re getting and reset the trip counter every fill up. It’s an easy way to track the performance of your car so not only can you save money on gas but also save money on major repairs that can result from not doing the routine maintenance.