Tag Archive for budget

ReStore Your Home

As you plan repairs and remodel, check to see if Habitat for Humanity has a ReStore in your community. They sell quality used and new goods and furniture at 50-70% off retail. Help the Earth, save money, and support a great cause, all at the same time.

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[For more easy, money-saving, Earth-friendly tips, download a FREE copy of Green Riches: Help the Earth & Your Budget. Go to www.Smashwords.com/books/view/7000 or your favorite e-book seller and download to your computer or e-book device. Totally free, with no strings attached.]

Cool AC Savings

Keep your AC unit cool.  Loosely cover the condenser or window-mounted unit (don’t restrict air-flow, which will increase electricity use); put an awning over it; or plant a tree that will shade the unit.  Any of these measures can save energy and up to 10% on your AC costs.

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[For more easy, money-saving, Earth-friendly tips, download a FREE copy of Green Riches: Help the Earth & Your Budget. Go to www.Smashwords.com/books/view/7000 or your favorite e-book seller and download to your computer or e-book device. Totally free, with no strings attached.]

Charity on a Budget

Yes, you’d love to give more, but what can you do on such a tight budget?  The answer: always keep others in mind.  Use coupons and set aside the savings until you have, say, $20 to donate to a charity.  Recycle often, keeping the money in a baggie in your purse—and give what you have to the next homeless person you meet.  Watch for good 2-for-1 sales and donate that second box of cereal or sack of flour to a food bank, the food collection at your place of worship, or a family you know who needs it.

If you go to garage sales, pick up clothing and household items in good condition to give to a shelter for battered women or an organization helping disaster victims.  Cashing in on a great sale on yarn?  Get extra and make items for layette programs sponsored by many churches. We don’t need to be rich to make a difference; we just need to watch for opportunities to help make life better for others.

Stop That Junk Mail Now!

Learn how to atop junk mail at Eco Cycle. Meanwhile, recycle it and newspapers.  Each mature tree this saves will consume thirteen pounds of carbon dioxide per year.  And the energy saved by recycling a single ton of paper can heat your home for six months.

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[For more easy, eco-friendly tips, download a FREE copy of Green Riches: Help the Earth & Your Budget. Go to www.Smashwords.com/books/ view/7000, choose a format, and download to your computer or ebook device.]

Free Book Download

Saturdays I call “Sensible Saturday” on my blog. It’s a day when I tell about new inventions or ideas aimed at saving our planet, or I give suggestions for little things anyone can do. Those suggestions are simple, easy, and often save money. If you’d like to try some of them, you can find an abundance of them in my FREE e-book, Green Riches: Help the Earth & Your Budget. More than 2200 people have already downloaded it. You can find it at your favorite e-book seller or go to Smashwords.com and search Jackie O’Donnell. Again, it’s totally free for you to download and use.

Produce Mesh

Those plastic mesh bags that produce comes in can be used for another purpose before they hit the trash can.  Take off any staples or labels, tie them into a tight knot (or series of         knots), and use them instead of pot scrubbers or steel wool pads.

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[For more easy, money-saving, Earth-friendly tips, download a FREE copy of Green Riches: Help the Earth & Your Budget. Go to www.Smashwords.com/books/view/7000 or your favorite e-book seller and download to your computer or e-book device. Totally free, with no strings attached.]

The Family Budget as a Weapon

Here, in the middle of the year, many of us are reviewing our family budget to make sure we’re okay until January.  This is a good time to take a close look, to see if our spending habits reflect what we say we believe.  For example, I believe in human dignity, so shouldn’t I stop buying at that huge discount chain that has been in the news often for mistreating and intimidating their non-documented immigrant employees?  I respect how hard local farmers work, so why not buy at farmers’ markets and through co-ops?  I may have to pay a little more.  But I can save money (and the environment) by walking or car-pooling sometimes.  Or by exchanging one night out a month for a family-centered game-night in.  I need to make my priorities clear to myself and to the stores and corporations I buy from.  They notice how we spend our money.  That makes our family budget a potential weapon of mass instruction!

 

Cheap Idea: Help Victims–But Not All

A new office is being created to help crime victims–but only the victims of immigrants.  It’s called Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement, or Voice.  This is a smart move on the Administration’s part because it’s far less costly than helping all victims of crime.  In fact, it will help the smallest group of victims.  That’s because, according to the CATO Institute, citing many studies, “With few exceptions, immigrants are less crime prone than natives or have no effect on crime rates.”

I’m not sure how this office will work.  I assume it would provide extra law enforcement to go after the immigrant perpetrators, then deport them.  I guess this will give victims some sort of “closure.”  Although it does help ICE, the agency it’s housed at–it should lead to discovery of more “Illegals” and their families so they can be deported.  Their hotline might be helpful to victims, although it doesn’t seem to me any different from calling the police.  It will provide jobs for 48 people (21 community-relations officers and 27 victim-assistance specialists).

They haven’t figured out a budget for it yet, but I’m confident that it will be cheap enough for all the good it will do.

 

United States of America, Inc.

We got our way, America!  All my life I’ve heard, “We need to run the government like a business.”  Now, with our new President, we’ll get a chance to see how well that works.

It will be interesting to see how USA, Inc. prospers as a business.  How it will market our “company” among all the other “companies” of the world.  How it will meet or change our company’s policies in regards to workforce discrimination in hiring, firing, promotions, wages, and benefits.  Whether it, like all major companies in good standing, will continue working for the good of the poor, vulnerable, and marginalized.  Whether it will establish (and stick to) adequate budgets to cover its plans and obligations, and how it will earn money to cover those budgets.  What its main products will be–peace, justice, human rights, a decent life for its employees, or fatter bank accounts for the few.

What will the board room look like, as department heads who have declared their desire to dissolve or greatly downsize and weaken their own departments, gather to discuss policy.  Will they listen to its 324,118,787 “stockholders”?  Will they vote to enact a major policy even though one member has tacked on an expensive, unrelated, or frivolous item into the proposal?  Will they, who are already quite rich, be willing to take a cut in their large paychecks if needed to help the company, its shareholders, and employees?

I wonder how USA, Inc. will deal with the other companies of the world.  Will we continue trying for an image of leadership, fairness, and opportunity for employees?  Will we court other companies as friends and business partners or isolate ourselves and demand that other companies beg to interact with us and our people, buy our products, and do what we say?  What tools will we use to enforce contracts–negotiation, compromise, logic, and reason, or knee-jerk reaction, blackmail, and deadly force?

Will USA rebuild its crumbling, endangered buildings (infrastructure) and grounds (Earth)?

In short, I’m curious to see how USA, Inc. keeps its eye on the goal of the long-term good of the company, its employees and stockholders, and all the other businesses of the world.

 

 

Easter-Basket Time!

Instead of using a plastic or processed wicker Easter basket, use a wooden one or reuse an old one (may need new coat of paint).  Or sew one out of fabric.  Or use something reusable, like a sand pail.

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[For more easy, money-saving, earth-friendly tips, download a FREE copy of Green Riches: Help the Earth & Your Budget. Go to www.Smashwords.com/books/view/7000 or your favorite e-book seller and download to your computer or e-book device. Totally free, with no strings attached.]