Car Safety and Saving Money
Tags: gas savings, saving money
We all know that good tyres are essential to driving safely. They can affect steering, ride and handling, emergency braking stopping distances, acceleration and our car's fuel consumption.
The Law
Did you know that you could be fined and receive 3 penalty points on your license if you have:
- Car tyres with tread worn to below 1.6mm.
- A mix of radial and cross ply tyres.
- Over or under-inflated tyres.
- Tyres with cuts, lumps, bulges or tears;
- The wrong sort of tyre fitted to a vehicle or trailer.
It has been months since I replace virtually every incandescent light bulb in my house with the new energy saving compact flourescent (CFL) lights.
There was an ad in our local paper the other for a company that would come over and free of charge they will take your old engery wasting refrigerator away and recycle it. A perfect idea for a blog post on saving money. How much of a difference does an old refrigerator make? An article on CNN today oddly enough gives the straight facts. If you ditch your pre-1993 fridge, you'll save enough on energy costs to buy coffee for nearly 80 days. Refrigerators qualified under the new Energy Star guidelines use less energy than a 75-watt light bulb left on full time. If your current model was built before 1993, it costs at least double to run than new Energy Star-rated models of the same size. That's and impressive savings no matter how you look at it.
I came across this the other day and I thought it might interest you. It's called Kill-A-Watt and is from 
It's come down to this, people are turning to Scooters to fight the high cost of gas. With gas prices hitting $4 - $5 a gallon motor bike and scooter sales have been reported to be brisk this spring. Why not? If you can get 75-120 miles per gallon it makes perfect sense. Low end Scooters can be picked up for as low as $800 and range up to $8,000 for a top of the line model. Certainly something nice could be found for $2,000. Reports indicate that they will pay for themselves in fuel saving over the first to three years that you own one.
I have a bachelor friend that is constantly complaining about the number of phone soliciters that call him. I suggested that he cancel his line and get a cell phone. When I think about it, my tip was also a good one to save him money. You can get cell phones with services pretty cheap these days. Cell phone companies are fighting for your business. When is the last time your phone company offered you a good deal when your term ended? Never. You have been paying the same amount of money since the day you signed up with them. It's something to think about, unless you are a 14 year old girl that is on the phone for six hours a night you really don't need a lan line. Shop around by looking at flyers, search online and even scour through ebay for a used phone and then find a package. I am sure you will find something that will offer you what you need for less than what you are paying now. 
A quick scan around some of the majors news sites on the web today I saw a few articles talking about proposed electricity rates coming this summer. Not only are you paying more at the pumps for gas but the high cost of fuel is also going to mean higher electricity rates. "Dominion Virginia Power announced yesterday that it would seek permission to raise electricity rates 18 percent this summer to make customers pay for part of the increased cost of coal and other fuels." The message should be clear to us. Now more than ever we have to change our habits to cut down on our hydro bills. It's scary to think just how much of our pay check will be going to gas for our cars and our utility bills. There are a number of tips on how to save on your utility bills and car costs within this blog. Please have a read over them and feel free to suggest other tips that you may come across.
I have been surfing around the internet looking at lots of different sites and I am seeing threads on forums, blog posts and journal enteries detailing what they are going to spend their stimulus check on. Sure it's free money and a good chace to pick up that LCD TV or that iPod or that top of line Cell Phone. Those that are looking to save some money or get themselves out of debt shouldn't be looking at what they can spend it on but how they can use it to improve their financial situation. If you are sitting with maxed out credit cards, bad debt or house that is in bad need of repair you should rethink how you are going to spend that money. The government Stimulus Check provides a great opportunity to pay down one of those high interest credit cards, get your bad credit back on track or replace some of those old windows or appliances that are killing your heating and hydro bill every month. I know what you are saying, I have to live to and it's nice to enjoy it but that's looking at the small picture. Use it wisely today so that you can enjoy more of those things in future. Having a nice LCD Big Screen TV doesn't do you much good if you can't pay your cable bill.
