Hypermiling, anyone? March 29, 2008

http://www.hypermiling.com/

I thought it was a bit extreme at first, but have you SEEN the numbers on the gas station signs?  Will they take Monopoly money, do you think?  I already unwittingly practice some hypermiling techniques; I don’t have a heavy foot, don’t brake until necessary and let the engine do that for me, don’t step on the gas straight out of a stop etc.  But this guy takes it to the max!  He even has a video that was pretty enlightening about how often people get zero mph by getting crazy with the brakes.  They also have training for businesses with fleets!  My father owns a business but hypermiling would kill him.  He has a heavy foot.

 I’ve been out of the blogging loop due to unforeseen home improvement projects.   NOT a way to save money, that home improvement thing.  The projects multiply and have babies over night.  One thing leads to another! We just wanted to finish laying the laminate!  Then we realised we had to pull out the cabinets in the bathroom to do it properly.  They fell apart so we had to get a new set which doesn’t sit in the same place, so now we have to tear the wallpaper off and repaint.  If we are going to repaint the bathroom, we should just do the whole house since we have to in a year anyway.  Although, FYI if you do mostly one colour, you can just get the 5 gallon buckets and save at least the cost of one gallon.

We are trying to get reassigned to a base with more doctors for our daughter, the reason for the sudden burst of Home Makeover.  We are aiming for a compassionate reassignment which means we could be out of here lickety split, leaving little time to get the house sold.  We are looking at it like a rental property for at least a year, so we are trying to get things accomplished on a tight budget without looking cheap. It’s not easy!  We are saving on the paint by going with 5 gallons of the semi-gloss in a neutral off white colour.  Semi gloss is easy to clean and the neutral shades will attract more people than my usual colourful preferences!  We decided to carpet the stairs instead of doing laminate.  In our house, they are the first thing you see and since we are doing it ourselves, we don’t want to do a botched job that immediately greets the eye.  We managed to find some cheaper but durable carpet that wasn’t hideous and Home Depot was doing a free measurement incentive.  It looks like we’ll get the job done for less than $400 and it will be much nicer to see professionally installed carpet than amateur laminate with gobs of maple coloured caulking! 

On vehicles February 7, 2008

As cheap as we can be and as environmental as I try to think, vehicles are not our strong point!  DH has a Jeep Rubicon and likes to offroad–not a cheap sport, nor is it very enviro-friendly.  I have to say though, the offroad club we belong to are actually very respectful and help remove all kinds of large waste from the glacier flats and coastal refuge and they are veryanal about the Tread Lightly principles.  Anyway.  I had a Cherokee for a while; it was old and it wasn’t the most gas conserving thing out there but I loved it.  We finally parted last year and we saved for a down payment on our ‘05 Outback.  The gas mileage still isn’t spectacular, but for a family that was used to anywhere between 11-14mpg, it’s sittin’ pretty.  I don’t know if I’m really one to be giving out car tips, but I can at least share what we do until we can afford a Prius!

• Buy used.  That way you won’t get flatted by the depreciation. 
• Long loan, fast payoff.  Now, whether or not it is actually smart, this is what we did.  We shopped around for the best rate, and chose the 4 year loan.  The monthly payments are manageable, but we are actually paying at least double because all of your interest is at the beginning of a loan.  You don’t actually pay for the price of the car until later in the loan.  If you can add as much as you can to your monthly, you will pay it down faster and pay less in interest.  We just got this puppy in November and are working at paying it off at a year and a half instead of 4.  The financial calculator link will help you figure out what you can handle.  It means doing without some frivolous extras, but we will fully own a relatively new car while everyone else is still upside down.
• You don’t need the SUV.  No, seriously.  You don’t.  I had a friend who went from a blazer to some huge thing like a Sequoia or something.  Her excuse was “I need more room.”  For what??  Two kids and their things fit nicely into a Blazer.  They fit nicely into a sedan!  When I pointed that out she said, “Well, I want to feel safer.”  Now, I happened to be privy to the fact that she liked to look good more than be safe (don’t ask.)  The only unsafe vehicle is one being driven by an unsafe driver.  Small vehicles are considered “unsafe” because of the move to bigger vehicles.  Trust me, I hauled a baby and medical junk just fine in a two door Cherokee (once considered a big SUV in her hayday).  Room is rarely the real issue. I even fit my friend and her two children back there AND went yard-saleing!  Sometimes it is warranted, like the friend who runs a daycare. She really does need every seat in the Suburban.  If you don’t haul more than two kids and groceries, a car or smallsize SUV is just smarter.  You won’t pass out at the pump and you will actually fit into parking spaces.
• Shave all you can off of the insurance.    DH is the king of found money.  He found a great rate and after reading lots of fine print, found that you can get a little knocked off the payment if your VIN # is etched into every window and if you use something like The Club.  He used his dremel, practiced on an old picture frame and then tatted all the windows. I hardly even notice.  Call them and ask, it won’t hurt anything.
• Maintenance.  It costs, but it could save you more than what you pay the dudes at JiffyLube.  I wish someone had impressed upon me the importance of checking oil when I was in highschool.  Get cozy with someone who knows how to change oil or do simpler engine work.  This is where some of that Wheel-N-Deal can be handy.