A great article on how to slow down spending habits. One idea I’ve already implemented: a 30 day wait list for toys. http://bit.ly/cbs2df
A great article on how to slow down spen
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Tag Archives: shopping
How Do You know If You Are Really Building “Green”?
One thing I have learned since we installed an electricity monitor in our home, is that I really had now idea which appliances were using the most electricity. Several years ago we installed compact florescent bulbs in the house to reduce our electricity usage. That did help, but I’ve discovered that we would have saved a lot more energy if everyone had simply shortened their daily showers by a couple of minutes. Taking a shorter shower would not have cost us any money (those compact florsent bulbs were very expensive 8 years ago), but as a family we would have used significantly less energy.
The same principle holds true when building or renovating a home. I never would have guesses that carpeting is several orders of magnitude more energy intensive to manufacture and install than ceramic tiles or hard wood floors. The 8 Minute TED Talk video below by Catherine Mohr provides some great non-intuitive examples from her home building project:
Shopping in Stores, but Purchasing Online… and Saving Lots of Money
Twice in the past two weeks, I’ve gone to stores in order to purchase specific items, but was been shocked at how high the in store prices were. Both times I quickly pulled out my iPhone and checked the price of the item I needed to purchase at Amazon.ca, and then purchased it online while still in the store.
On my first shopping trip I was looking for toner for my Lexmark 250DN. At Staples, the toner I needed cost $150! Can you believe that! I only paid $250 for the printer, and now they want to charge me $150 for the toner. A quick check at Amazon.ca showed the exact same toner costing $105. I ended up saving $45 dollars. If I had just purchased it directly from Amazon in the first place, I would have saved another $5 or more in gas for the trip to the store.
The second “in store, online purchase” incident took place last night. Our son had asked us to purchase Assassin’s Creed 2 for the xBox 360 for him. At EB Games in our local shopping mall, they were asking $70 for the game. My iPhone informed me that Amazon.ca was selling the game for $57. The kicker was that they didn’t even have the game in stock, so I simply purchased it from Amazon.ca as we walked away from the store. I later learned that if you purchased the game from the EB Games online store you would only have to pay $60 (plus shipping… no shipping charges with the Amazon purchase).
New iPhone programs are making this type of comparison shopping easier and easier. RedLaser for example lets you scan bar codes and look up pricing (american pricing only for the time being). SnapTell is another program that allows you to take pictures of products and get Amazon.com pricing for them, along with product reviews. The product review can be very helpful, especially if you are not very familiar with the product you are trying to purchase.
There is real value in being able to go to a store and consult with someone about the purchase you are going to make. There is also real value in being able to take something home right a way, if you need it in a hurry. If I’m not in a hurry, and I feel that the price difference is too great, I for one am not afraid to walk away from a store and make my purchase online.
Make Your Own Custom Map on Google Maps!
Want to make your own map with custom pins showing important locations (important to you in any case). How about custom directions? Look no further than Google’s “My Maps”. All you need is a Google account, and then surf on over to Google Maps, and click on to “My Maps” (you’ll be prompted to sign on if you are not already).
You can just have fun playing around with the maps, or possibly do something more useful:
- You can send people directions to a party or event.
- Give conference attendees directions to hotels, restaurants, or other places of interest.
- Want to create a Sight seeing tour? Now’s your chance.
- Plot Crime rate statistics.
- Identify Neighborhood watch homes.
- Paper Route delivery (or non-delivery) map.
- Cool photo album, with pins put in where the pictures were taken.
Some of the features that could come in handy depending how how you want to use the system:
- Maps can be made public or private.
- You can draw lines on the map (sometimes the routes it suggests, just aren’t right!).
- You can embed pictures or videos in the pop-outs from pins.
- Email your maps to friends.
- Embed maps in a web page.
Lastly, here is a map of my neighborhood in Victoria, BC., complete with all the important locations to our family. Enjoy!
Would you be Happier if you had More Money?
I read an interesting article a few weeks ago. The title caught my attention. It was called, “Would You Be Happier If You Were Richer?” I know that sometimes I think I’d be happier if I had a bit more money in my pocket. So what did the researchers find out? The article said that people who are struggling to put a roof over their head and food on their table typically saw an increase in happiness as their income increased. Their happiness continued to increase until the per-capita house hold income reached $12,000 (This is for the United States, in US dollars). After that point there was virtually no increase in reported happiness as income rose above that level. On a graph, happiness increased steadily with income, until the $12,000 per person mark, and then it went almost completely flat.
A different research group also took a look at lottery winners in Great Britain. Interestingly he found that in the case of people who won large lotteries (over $200,000); they reported a significant increase in happiness immediately after winning, but within a year, most were back to the same level of happiness that they were at before winning.
Both of these studies confirm what I saw a number of years ago while I was living in Brazil. Most of the people I worked with would be considered “poor” if they lived in Canada, but most were quite happy in spite of their relative lack of material possessions.
What this tells me is that if someone is unhappy with a little bit of money (once their basic needs are met), then there is a very good chance that they will be unhappy with a lot of money. It turns out that money doesn’t buy happiness in the long run. I better get back to work so I can afford my gym membership 
…
