With the arrival of summer and gas prices at around $4 a gallon, the water cooler conversation has turned again to fuel efficiency. One important thing to remember is that the MPG number is not directly proportional to how much money you’re paying for gas. The chart below shows the annual cost of gas varies with the miles-per-gallon rating. Assumptions are 12,000 miles driven a year at $4/gallon.

Going from a medium-sized SUV that gets 20 mpg (Ford Explorer, Nissan Xterra) to a compact car that gets 30 mpg (Honda Civic, Ford Focus) will save you $800 a year. That is more money than going from the compact car to a hybrid like a Toyota Prius that gets 50 mpg combined, which would save you $640 a year.

Now, if you are driving a full-size truck that gets 15 mpg, just going from 15 to 20 mpg would also save you $800 a year. So we see that going from 15 to 20, 20 to 30, and 30 to 60 mpg are each about the same size “step” in terms of annual savings. For heavy drivers, each such step would be nearly $1,000 a year in gas, and that’s assuming gas prices don’t keep increasing! Look up your car’s numbers at FuelEconomy.gov.

So while making the jump to 50 mpg would still save you the most gas, the Prius still costs more money than a similarly-sized compact car like a Honda Fit. One piece of good news I read recently was from Scott Burns at AssetBuilder that his Prius batteries have lasted 100,000 miles and 8 years with no need for replacement. If you get good at buying and selling used cars on Craigslist, you could conceivably make the swap to a more fuel-efficient car relatively painlessly.

A recent government study found that over 25% of Americans now rely solely on a cellular phone for calls. In some states, over a third of people were wireless-only. This is a growing trend, and I wonder if you readers are any different?

What Is Your Phone Situation?

• Cell Phone Only
• Cell Phone + VoIP Solution (Skype, Vonage, Ooma, MagicJack)
• Cell Phone + Landline (Both)
• Landline Only

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Factors that increased the likelihood of being wireless-only were having a lower-income, being younger, and renting. It’s suggested that being poor means you’re more likely to cut landlines as an extra expense, while being young means you may simply never have had a landline. Finally, both prepaid basic plans and packaged plans offering unlimited minutes have become cheaper and widely available.

One major factor stated for keeping a landline is for reliable emergency usage. Other possible reasons that come to mind are that you make a lot of calls, better clarity, or you wish to minimize radiation exposure. I solve those problems with my significantly cheaper VoIP phone service.

Ever since I stopped moving every year, I’ve wanted to get a big dining table, something that could fit at least 8 people. Finding one big enough at a retail furniture store was difficult, and when I did find it they were really expensive. While working on our house, we discovered home improvement stores that stores that sell reclaimed or recycled building materials. There are many local non-profits that do this, but one national “chain” is the Habitat for Humanity ReStore, which accepts material donations to fund their charitable home-building goals.

I was exploring one of these stores when I came across a 8 ft x 3.5 ft sheet of what look like reclaimed hardwood flooring. Upon closer inspection, it was actually pieces of the flooring from an old high school basketball court. The underlayment was still attached, and it was pretty sturdy. A handmade sign suggested making a table out of it. How cool is that?

The store had already recycled a piece for themselves. After some sanding and adding a border with reclaimed 2x4s, here’s what it looked like:

It cost us $60 plus $20 in reclaimed wood for the border, legs, and apron. Now to borrow some power tools and learn some carpentry…

I try to keep my life simple, but don’t see myself as a serious frugal person. I don’t make my own soap, and I eat out a lot. But one thing I recently fell in love with was making my own popcorn. It sounds so obvious, but it never really sunk in that I could make a huge bowl of kettle corn in 5 minutes and $0.50 in materials. To think, I was buying the stuff from the local farmer’s market for five bucks a bag!

Basic Directions

Heat 1-3 tablespoons of any cooking oil on medium high to high and add a single kernel of popcorn in a large, heavy covered pan. I use a wok-shaped stir-fry pan like this one. After you hear the first kernel pop (the oil is now hot enough), pour in 1/3 to 1/2 cup of popcorn (or enough to cover bottom of pan, no more than 1 kernel deep); re-cover. Shake constantly until all kernels are popped.

Plain Popcorn Tips
Adding salt is classic, but fine salt like popcorn or pickling salt sticks the best. Seasoned salt works too. For a gourmet taste and impressing folks, get some truffle salt. Delicious! I sometimes spray some Pam to have it adhere even better.

I’m not a huge fan, so have never made buttered popcorn. I’m sure you could just melt some butter and pour it over. I’ve also seen special popcorn oil with “butter flavor”, whatever that is. There’s also butter-flavored sprays and popcorn toppers.

Cheese Popcorn
I like these Kernel’s Seasons line of popcorn toppings. White cheddar and nacho cheddar are good. They are really fine so you don’t need to use much, and they are low in calories (6 cal per 1/2 tsp, which is how much I use at once).

Kettle Corn
For every 1/2 cup of popcorn, add in 1/4 cup of plain white granulated sugar. The sugar will dissolve, and after adding some salt you’ll end up with the great salty-sweet taste of kettle corn! Did you know that most microwave versions of “kettle corn” don’t use real sugar because it burns?

Caramel Corn
Instead of plain white sugar above, use brown sugar. The molasses will make it taste amazingly like caramel corn. It takes some practice not to burn the sugar by tweaking the heat level. If you love the “Chicago mix” flavor combination like me, now you can make it yourself by making this and a batch of cheddar cheese popcorn.

Cost Breakdown

First are the retail prices in my area, per Safeway.com. A 30 oz. bottle of unpopped Orville Orville Redenbacher costs $7. A 3-pack of 3.3 oz (10 oz. total) microwave popcorn bags of the same brand costs $3.50. This means each microwave bag and costs $1.16, while the same amount (~5 tbsp) of plain kernels costs $0.56. Adding oil and sugar is another ~5 cents. If you went out and bought bulk popcorn you can get it for $1 per pound, making each serving about 15 cents.

Honestly, I can’t imagine going back to using the microwave, besides the ability to make it at an office or dorm room. I actually burn popcorn less when cooking it manually. Pre-packaged microwave popcorn also comes with preservatives, usually TBHQ. GetRichSlowly offers some tips on DIY microwave popcorn, but I say just use a pan. I do like the idea of not using any oil with a hot air popper, but that’s just one more kitchen appliance I don’t want to deal with.

All I can say is, if you like popcorn, try it!

Here is a 5-minute, 20-slide talk from a 2007 Ignite conference in which John Gruhl shares his tips on buying a new car from a dealer. It’s gotten over 250,000 views on YouTube, and includes a lot of the same tips you may have heard before but in a slightly difference package.

Here are the major bullet points to recap:

1. Obtain financing separately (I would add, or pay cash!)
2. Set aside two full weekends for buying a car.
3. Get competitive bids from several dealers.
4. Walk away if the deal changes.
5. Don’t buy any extras.

We decided to actually light up our house a little more this year, and were quickly faced with a decision: LED or old-school incandescent lights? Would the electricity savings of the LED lights make up for the added cost? Or is it purely an eco-friendly play? Then we realized that the true eco-friendly thing to do would be not to light up our house. Bah-humbug! Anyhow, some quick research led to the following energy savings comparison:

Factors

Amount of electricity used. Looking at the box of regular incandescent lights, they use 40.8 watts per 100 light strand (0.0408 kW). The 100-light strand of LEDs used 8 watts (0.008 kW). You should be able to find these on any box of lights, especially the traditional kind as they can draw too much current if you connect too many together.

Cost of electricity. Here is a link to the average cost of electricity by state. The nationwide average is 12 cents per kWh (kilowatt-hour), but can range from 9 cents in some states like West Virginia to 28 cents in Hawaii.

Time used. How many days x how many hours per day do you plan to run the lights. I figure 45 days from right before Thanksgiving until a little after New Years. From sunset to bedtime is about 6 hours. So that’s 45 days x 6 hours = 270 hours.

The Numbers

Conclusion

Using these numbers, it would be reasonable to say that each 100-light strand would save $1 in electricity per year. Costs will vary, but I saw a set of 100 of cheap incandescents for under $3 at the megastore, while the cheapest 100 LEDs cost closer to $12. The means it would take nearly a decade to break even on purely a electrical savings basis. Given my natural talent in creating tangles in these string lights, I don’t know if I can see them lasting that long. You definitely aren’t going to save the world by buying LED holiday lights.

If you already had a set of incandescents, I can’t imagine being able to justify throwing them out for a new set of LEDs, since even the LED lights are mostly made out of plastic and thus fossil fuels. Since we didn’t have any lights to start with, we just decided to buy a set of each (LED & old-school) to compare the “light quality”. The brightness of the two modern sets we bought were comparable, and look very similar from a distance.

Now, I’ve also seen the solar-powered LED light kits, but from the package they use less than 3 watts of energy, which means they are significantly dimmer. However, the lack of power plug does make it mighty convenient.