Increased gas prices this year made our nation very conscience of how significant gasoline has been to our budgets and lives. Realizing our energy dependence, some of us tried alternative transportation and nifty ways to lower this dependence and cost.

Here are some tips on reducing your car’s traveling costs:

1. Buy gasoline at night or when it’s cool. Gas expands in the heat of the day, decreasing its density. Since gas pumps measure costs by volume not densities, buying gas when it’s hotter, costs you more.
2. An idle engine for one minute uses the same amount of gas when you start the engine. If your car won’t move for over a minute, turn off your engine.
3. Don’t rev your engine as it reduces oil pressure and wastes fuel.
4. Accelerate slowly from stops to maximize your carburetor’s efficiency. Your pedal should go down more than 1/4 of the way.
5. Don’t drive too fast. Driving at 55 mph is 21% more effective in your mileage than at 65 mph.
6. Stay clear from rough roads. Gravel roads can make you waste 30% of gas mileage.
7. Close your windows on the freeway. This will increase mileage efficiency by 10%.
8. Steady driving instead of slowing down and speeding up saves your brakes and gas.
9. Find better, shorter routes to save on distance. Driving on the inside of a circle reduces distance and gas usage.
10. Get regular tune ups, especially look at cleaning your air filter and inflating your tires.

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When you go to a new place, whether it’s a new country or a new corner, it’s great to know where to go and eat for fun and good deals as well as how to get there. This can really improve your trip as well as save you money. Here are some places that you can go for good suggestions if you don’t have that all knowing friend.

Trip Advisor–This is a great site to find out about flight deals, restaurant recommendations, and activities.

Lonely Planet–From travel guides for budgets on a shoestring to travel forums, this site is my first reference to cheap travel that I know I’d enjoy. I’ve started learning 3 languages from their guide books.

Yelp–Find recommended restaurants, beauty salons, and other businesses. This site has a uniquely real site with a suprisingly large amount of real reviews from real users.

Hostelword–This site has availabilities, reviews, and rankings for hostels and reasonable accomodations, including budget hotels, apartments and campsites.

Hostelbooker–This site ranks by friendliness of staff, efficiency, confort, cleanliness, location, and security.

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Finding a cool Halloween costume for a reasonable price often takes more work than expected. However, here are some cheapness tips so that you can be hip without wasting too much money and time.

Shopzilla is a good place to look for its variety of costumes and helpful search options by themes, eras, movie/tv inspired, horror, sexy, or gender. It would save you a lot of time to give you great ideas and compare what’s out there. You can find a $20 “party in your pants” costume (as seen above). Oh the women will swoon. Search here!

Or you can DIY and make your own ingenious costume. Here are some costumes that you could easily recreate.

• Farmer–get a straw hat and flannel. If you want to go crazy, get yourself a pony…
• Beauty pageant winner–wear your old prom dress and tiara and decorate a sash with a cool title!
• Pan handler–grab a shopping cart, get some clothes dirty and make sure to wear layers and dirty your hair.
• Cheerleader–get those pom poms and short skirts out!
• Tennis player–headbands and preppy clothes are a must.
• 80’s aerobic girl–wear those neon clothes out, headbands and torn shirts.
• Dead anything (dress up as a cheerleader, princess, or anything and put on cheap ghoulish makeup with fake blood)
• Ghosts–either cut out holes in your old sheets. Or, if you want to moderinze this look get some gnarly make up and clothes!
• Mummy–wrap yourself in toilet paper or rolls of gauze

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So who’s heard of Maslow?  As in, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?

This theory provides our most basic needs (physiological needs) to those higher inward thinking and feelings needs.  As you can see, one can only begin to consider safety needs once his physiological needs are adequately met.  First I’ll list some of my favorite exercise activities and then examine how these activities can satisfy many needs at one time — how’s that for efficiency?

BIKE RIDING: One of my very first loves — more active and enjoyable (and at times, more time and cost-efficient) than driving, and quicker than walking or running (often without the additional sweat).  Makes day trips possible.

Bikram Yoga: I was beguiled into taking part in this activity and now I love it!  However, membership is expensive and actually going there is not necessary, in my opinion, if you have the discipline.  The postures are great and challenging and even if you work on a few postures a couple times a day, you’ll notice the benefits.

Walking: For the times when you want to have greater control over your pace so you can window shop, closely examine flowers, take pictures, or just take time to closely examine different angles and perspectives, walking is great.  Depending on the speed at which you walk, you can even burn more calories than running (which is an activity I HATE)!

Let’s take a look at the various benefits the above activities provide:

1. Physiological: air (yup, or at least I’d hope), water, food (you should be consuming both of these if you’re participating in any physical activitity — if somehow you aren’t but can still run marathons, just shoot me an email and I promise I won’t sell your story to the media for millions of dollars), rest (you’ll be doing this as a result of the exercise), and exercise (straightforward)
2. Safety needs: none, but my middle name is “danger” anyway
3. Love and belonging: I’ve met my greatest friends through group bike rides and they continue to be a major part of my life.  Common hobbies and activities is where, I believe, the strongest relationships are formed because there exists a basis upon which you both derive a similar happiness.  Sweet.
4. Self-Esteem (1): Not necessarily accomplished, but when you look good, you feel good, and vise-versa.  I mean, would you rather be this?  (Though they must all have a decent amount of self-esteem — more than I’d have!)
5. Self-Esteem (2): FREEDOM!  The best part about exercise is feeling free — knowing that you can stretch yourself mentally and physically!  And more literally, getting out in the open for fresh air is rejuvenating and healthy!

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Now the internet has revolutionized many things. From researching politics to communicating with friends, it had made people’s lives easier in many ways, including finding fun and activities cheaply.

Utilize the internet to help you find the most fun and cheap activities! As person new to my area, I have been amazed at how many activities I have discovered online, many with free entertainment and events, and some even with free drinks or food. I have found surf competitions with many companies giving out samples, magazine kickoffs with free beer, mixed drinks and roast beef sandwiches. You just have to look! While traditional fun activities include going to the movie theatre, shopping, going out drinking or eating, these can cost you quite a bit a

Yelp–there are mixed-tape parties, events where hundreds of people dance the thriller dance, and block parties, are some events listed here for just this week.

Craigslist–find out where hot bands are playing, where to get free haircuts, and get activity buddies to go hiking or surfing.

Meetup–join wine appreciation groups, find a kickball team, or attend a meetup for art sessions. No membership fees required.

Couchsurfing–Meet other openminded people who especially like random fun activities and travel adventures.

Facebook–Facebook has an event section that’s especially good at finding what local activities your friends will go to as well.

Going.com–These have some cool events. However, there are limited geographic locations. Events focus on major cities, unfortunately.

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I can’t really opine on the real estate market — though I do know that thinking about this whole ugly mess with the subprime mortgage lending crisis, speculation, structured debt sold to unwary and all too willing home “owners” by “predator lenders” just puts a downer on my day that not even a fresh warm chai latte can allay. Don’t you sometimes want to just get away sometimes?

That was a rhetorical question, because of course you do…but how?

Prefabricated homes have been on my radar for a while now.  There’s this quixotic mystique about them — almost as if you can fold it up, pack it in the back of your trailer, transport it to where ever you’d like, and just settle.  Your first impressions of these prefabricated homes might be images of tiny shacks made of aluminum foil, but behold, enter modern technology and an increasing demand in Europe for them (and if Europe does it, it’s hip).

Apparently, this is a prefab house:

isn’t it wild?

of course, there are risks to consider — but imagine the fprefab possibilities (and potential risks): swimming pools and an assortment of furniture!

speaking of getting away, presumably for cheap, take a look at Megabus and see if it suits your needs.

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Hey!  I’m excited because I discovered two great things today (the latter two which are mentioned) that will help me save, and I’d like to share them with you.

1. If you haven’t heard, the market has been tanking lately.  Just check out Bloomberg.com, NYTimes.com, or even an obscure publication like the Oklahoma News (aptly titled NewsOK.com).  Talk about great deals — this is like getting a Prada bag (or whatever expensive thing that you never followed through in buying) at a 70% discount (assuming you pick solid securities), that is, a great quality item for a huge discount…just because everyone’s freaking out!
2. And to that point, TD Ameritrade is offering a month of free trades if you fund your account with $2,000.  However, you can withdraw that $2,000 in two months (if i remember correctly) without penalty.*  I think I’m going to take them up on that offer at some point, since who knows when the market will finally bottom out??
3. If you open an account with Schwab and receive electronic trade confirmations, you can lower the commission rate on your trades.*  I mean, this makes complete sense — fire a couple of people who are/where in charge of mailing out your statements, and you get the benefit!  Plus you save trees, and since when hasn’t that been hip?  (I actually need to check this out as well, because the commissions are potentially lower than Ameritrade’s — oh, the due diligence!)

If you’re excited about any great deals relating to the investing, leave em here!  (Of course, invest in your recommendation first so you can reap the benefits.)

*NOTE: these suggestions are in no way guarantees that the same deal exists for your particular situation.  Please contact the appropriate personnel to confirm.

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***WWW = world wide web, not World War III, as some have asked***

The world today (and when I say “today,” I mean as it has been for a decade or so) is a different place.  Commerce booms (assuming liquidity in the markets, which has been drying up as of late…but not for you, because you take advice from this blog, right?) in part due to increasingly efficient communications — much thanks to the World Wide Web!

I believe that Craigslist is a good example of that phenomenon.  Even in the rawest and most basic form, the internet forum, great things can be accomplished — ever heard of the guy who was eventually able to barter a paperclip for a house?  Read all about it here: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-04-16-paper-clip-barter_x.htm

However, you can use Craigslist on more lowkey basis, that is, for reasons other than acquiring real estate without incurring those nasty broker fees.  I myself am a frequent user of Craigslist, primarily for concert tickets.  Through diligent searches, I can often score myself great tickets to events that I wouldn’t consider purchasing if they were at face value.

HOWEVER, there are precautions one should take.  Here are some things that I’ve learned through my many experiences dealing with Craiglist, and through stories I’ve heard from others.  They may seem obvious, but surprisingly, many people don’t get these the first time around.  (I don’t think those people would include any of the readers of this blog — they’re astute enough to be reading, after all.)

1. DO NOT accept electronic tickets or anything but hard tickets.  E-tickets (those delivered via email which you download and print) are easily duplicated and distributed just as easily.  Someone can use the orginial print out and sell you a copy.  They get in line to the show before you do, and guess what, you’re screwed!
2. Meet the person in an open, public space where both parties are visible.  Because you never know what creeps roam the streets.
3. Don’t count on anyone following through on their offer.  Make offers with multiple parties.  This may seem shady, but there have been times where I have waited on an offer and bypassed better offers in order to honor the original…and guess what, was bailed on!  This goes both ways, when you are looking to sell and looking to buy.
4. Don’t feel bad about negotiating.  People sell on Craigslist for a reason, right?  Or else they’d sell on Ebay or through some other venue
5. Know what the ticket is really worth.  If the band only comes to your town once every five years, then it might be worth it to pay a premium.  However, if they’re coming back to the same venue soon enough, just make sure you jump on the next show.

Anyway, I know many people abhor CL and those who deal in it, especially when buying and selling tickets — but hey, it’s the rawest form of commerce, and you can score big!

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Many people are scared of cooking, and I think it’s because their expectations are too high.  They go to decent restaurants, and see a bunch of garnish and weirdly sliced pieces of meat, or just have a meal that’s so delicious (and undoubtedly filled with 3 sticks of butter, a pound of lard, and 3 cups heavy cream) that they assume that they can never do the same.  And these people shouldn’t — they can do better, with healthier ingredients and for less.

Cooking is about using simple ingredients and seasoning them correctly — this is my personal belief.  Everything else is just BS.  I’d like to share with you a few dishes that are delicious.  Please note that this is based on my personal experience and my own palate.

I’ve picked these recipes because not only are they simple and healthy, but there is not alot of maintenance involved.  You can leave this stuff sitting on the stove while you attend to your own business.  BUT this is no excuse to not be safe!

A TIP FROM BOSTON LOCALS: GO TO HAYMARKET on Fridays and Saturdays where you can get very cheap produce, most of which is in very good shape.  I’m talking $1 for 4 beautiful red peppers, roma tomatoes at $1 for 3 lbs, 6 peaches for $1, eggplant for $1, 5 earns of corn for $1, etc etc etc — this is where I shop and it’s been great.

1. Roasted Red Peppers: Ingredients: red peppers, salt, pepper, a roma tomato, oregano (dried), extra virgin olive oil — First, wash the red peppers.  Second, slice the red peppers whichever way you prefer.  Third, lightly coat the bottom of a skillet with EVOO and let it warm up a bit.  Fourth, put your red pepper slices on the skillet or low-medium heat, add some salt to bring out the sweet flavor and oregeno for herb fragrance.  Allow the slices of red pepper to sizzle until they get somewhat soft — make sure to toss/stir ever so often.  Take a taste — they shouldn’t be too crunch and bitter, but they should be getting soft and sweet (usually you’ll have to wait 10 minutes or so).  If you find that they’re getting a bit dry, cut up the roma tomato into cubes and add them to the skillet — this also intesifies the sweetness and allows them the two flavors to marry.  If youre satisfied with the sweetness of the red peppers, take them off the stove, and you’re done!  Add them to sandwiches, pastas, salads, and even with rice.  Theyre versatile and delicious!
2. Thai Tofu: Ingredients: tofu, peanut butter, sesame oil, EVOO, curry powder (optional), soy sauce (optional) — Spray some EVOO on a pan, allowing the pan to get hot.  Then throw slices of tofu on there the pan by turning the heat up very high, allowing the tofu so form a nice golden skin.
3. And similarly, Seasame Tofu and Cucumber Salad (uh, without the soy sauce eggs, please.)
4. Eggplant and Tomato Stew: recipe here — one of the best things about stews and soups, in my opinion, is that they don’t require too much oversight and maintenance.  chop up ingredients, throw them into a pot, and let simmer.  I love my stews and soups thick, so the longer i let them sit, the better they get.  Moreover, you can add and subtract as much as you’d like to the soups — often my mom would put carrots into the soup because that’s the only way we pesky kids would eat them.

Try the above — and best wishes!  Remember, one of the joys of cooking is experimenting ingredients and tailoring the dishes to your tastes!

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I love Apple and all (Apple computers that is, I have nothing against the fruit [best joke i can come up with today, sorry guys]) — but that company causes way too much drama.  Their innovation rattles markets and their back and forth with Microsoft with “I’m a PC” ads — to which Microsoft produced a hearty response, featuring none other than the alluring Skateboard P Williams — the dramatic blogged rumors about Steve Jobs’ heart failure, all seem fitting for such a hip brand.

However, oh readers, do not let this sway you into purchasing Apple’s new laptop, unveiled today. I think the mere fact that consumers get excited about a laptop that is under $1000 just because it’s made by Apple speaks to the “fashion” of the brand.  Which is not to say you don’t need it, that you won’t buy it for your kid sister, or that it’s a bad deal.  Just don’t these the hype influence you to the point of purchase without consideration of your own personal needs.

Sure, you can get just about anything with dozens of gigs and gadgets, but that doesn’t mean it will be practical for your needs.  So first, do a thorough search of laptops on the market and their prices.  Understand what you’re buying.

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