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 New! (December 27) We are now indexing 1,000 blogs! Also, we're announcing a previously undocumented feature already in use on a few
personal finance blogs.
Viewing entries forView all blogs (popular) | Personal finance (popular) | Real estate (popular) | Investing (popular) | Visit Items 1 - 25 of 112
    Thursday, July 3, 2020 To Repair or Not To Repair... (14 clicks)
From MoneyChangesThings - view blog entries - visit this blog
July 3, 2020 at 6:12 pm ET In our system, imported items are cheap and American labor is expensive. Things break and it's "not worth it" to repair them, since the bill exceeds the value of the item, presuming the item is replaceable. With electronics, one generally replaces the item with something cheaper AND more powerful.This calculus is predicated on the price of items, but sometimes this way of assigning value doesn't make any sense. I grabbed a skirt off a rack 2 seasons ago. It caught my eye because the colors and patterns delighted me, the style flattered (that alone is becoming a rare shopping feat), ... (more) Tuesday, July 1, 2020 From MoneyChangesThings - view blog entries - visit this blog
July 1, 2020 at 12:51 pm ET When you're friends with a blogger, you know that your conversation might end up as a post. Talking this morning to my friend Nancy (also a blogger, by the way), just such an anecdote surfaced . Nancy's mother Bev passed away last fall in her mid-70's. She was a lively, highly-accomplished dynamo who managed everything, including her death, in a no-nonsense way. During her last year the family gathered often and had many good times together.Her family will soon have a ritual to dedicate a bench in Bev's memory from which to take in a beautiful view ... (more) Monday, June 30, 2020 Extreme Oil Prices: Good News, Bad News (4 clicks)
From MoneyChangesThings - view blog entries - visit this blog
June 30, 2020 at 2:11 pm ET As a long-time environmentalist, it feels like the mass media and the eco-press have pretty much merged. Huffington Post has a green page. The NYTimes has a green blog. Last week's issue of The Economist's is titled THE FUTURE OF ENERGY! Suddenly, really basic actions long advocated by environmentalist like decreased driving and using less packaging are news; this is great, as far as many of us are concerned. Banning plastic bags, recycling, and mass transit are all generating headlines. My heart rejoices, but the bad news is that it will hurt poor people, ... (more) Thursday, June 26, 2020 From MoneyChangesThings - view blog entries - visit this blog
June 26, 2020 at 9:16 pm ET Now that I'm working in MicroFinance (YAY! I love it!), I have heard the basic explanation countless times, from Muhammed Yunus on down: small sums of money lent to hardworking poor women can increase their productivity enough to help them move up the ladder out of the cycle of grinding poverty, and bring their kids along with them. Today I heard an engaging presentation by Preeth Gowdar from the Lok Foundation on their microfinance work. These talks are always inspiring, but I especially loved today's. Preeth told us about a woman who scratched out a subsistence ... (more) Wednesday, June 25, 2020 TableSharing: A New Trend at the CoffeeHouse (4 clicks)
From MoneyChangesThings - view blog entries - visit this blog
June 25, 2020 at 10:47 am ET Unclear how we ever lived without The High Point, our indie coffee house. Great pastry, coffee, and ambiance. Part of the coziness is that it's a tiny space. Since it's booming, this can become frustrating, but enlarging isn't an option and moving could kill the whole thing, since it's near our food co-op, independent bookstore, environmental home store, and yoga studio - all the necessities of a proper progressive lifestyle.I just noticed little signs they place on a few of the larger tables, designating them "Shared Tables". As in, at these tables you can't ... (more) Monday, June 23, 2020 From MoneyChangesThings - view blog entries - visit this blog
June 23, 2020 at 10:42 pm ET This morning an article in the NYTimes reports that Ivy League schools are becoming concerned that nearly 1/4 of their classes are heading into investment banking, hedge funds, and consulting - is this really the best way to use the privilege of a topnotch education? Check out another elite institution's best and brightest: Amy Smith at MIT runs a lab devoted to designs which solve real-world problems, especially those of the people who make the Bottom of the Pyramid on planet earth. This is a totally inspiring video on what happens when top minds work not on Enron ... (more) Meat as a Treat, not an Entitlement (12 clicks)
From MoneyChangesThings - view blog entries - visit this blog
June 23, 2020 at 10:19 am ET Back in the day, Frances Moore Lappe's classic Diet for a Small Planet preached the Gospel of vegetable protein being nearly sufficient for most people. A generation later, there are billions of more people on the planet, 2/3 of Americans are overweight, and global warming is the issue of our time. So her message is as timely as ever.This summer I plan to go vegetarian. My intent is to eat fish once a week. It's pleasant in the summer, with so much fruit and vegetable abundance, but still, it's not simple to eat a simpler diet. ... (more) Friday, June 20, 2020 From MoneyChangesThings - view blog entries - visit this blog
June 20, 2020 at 9:00 am ET This shot was taken at a new Costco near the New Jersey shore. What is it about "fuel efficient" that these SUV drivers don't understand?! I love that Costco striped these parking spots in bright green and marked them "FUEL EFFICIENT CARE AND CARPOOL PARKING", right near the entrance. (I recently read that this past year only one new mall was built in the USA, but that's mostly because big box stores have edged out malls....)These goodwill green policies are hard to enforce, but they're effective conscious raisers. Though they can create bad news, too. If ... (more) Monday, June 16, 2020 A Soup Kittchen Banquet: A Rabbi's Legacy (4 clicks)
From MoneyChangesThings - view blog entries - visit this blog
June 16, 2020 at 11:28 pm ET Last month I read a lovely story in the NYTimes about Masbia, a kosher soup kitchen in an ultra-religious neighborhood in Brooklyn. "Masbia" means satisfying. Once a year there's a steak dinner provided at Masbia, and let me tell you - kosher steak is expensive. The occasion of this gastronomic largesse? The yahrtseit, the anniversary of the death, of "Grand Rabbi Yeshaya Steiner of Kerestir, Hungary, who died in 1925 and who was known for feeding the hungry and other acts of charity." The story focused on the diners - proud people, down on their ... (more) Wednesday, June 11, 2020 From MoneyChangesThings - view blog entries - visit this blog
June 11, 2020 at 4:19 pm ET Since I've canceled most catalogs, I now actually read some of the corporate glossies which arrive here. Whether they're from an insurance company, accounting firm, or a health provider, you can guess they're going to have an article on environmental issues - at long last, people are paying attention. Gas at $4 a gallon, oil at $140 a barrel, heat waves + tornadoes + earthquakes all seem to be combining to get mass media attention.I was pretty amazed to read in the UPS glossy that Costco has an electronics recycling program where UPS will pick up your old ... (more) Thursday, June 5, 2020 NextBus: The Future Already Exists! (5 clicks)
From MoneyChangesThings - view blog entries - visit this blog
June 5, 2020 at 4:38 pm ET A few months ago while waiting for the bus, I analyzed all the deterrents for people like me who have cars but are committed to mass transit and are using trains and buses more. Trains run on a reasonably reliable schedule, but buses seem much less predictable, since traffic is such a huge variable. It's incredibly stressful to walk a mile to the #9 bus stop and then not know how long I'll be waiting. Since there are only 2 an hour midday, I could possibly have just missed one; that means 29 minutes of standing and ... (more) Monday, May 26, 2020 From MoneyChangesThings - view blog entries - visit this blog
May 26, 2020 at 9:34 am ET Great story in the New York Times today about Oberlin College's sustainable living house, SEED - Student Experiment in Ecological Design. Oberlin made an old, rundown house available for this purpose, and first students did an energy-efficiency retrofit. When they moved in, they gradually experimented in a myriad of ways to reduce their personal and home ecological footprint. You can read the details at their own site. My favorite image is the students sharing the living room to study in the evenings, so they don't all use lights in each individual room. Sounds so Little ... (more) Thursday, May 22, 2020 From MoneyChangesThings - view blog entries - visit this blog
May 22, 2020 at 9:10 am ET Last night we surprised my son by showing up at his 25th birthday get-together, attending the Phillies-Nationals ballgame at the Nationals' beautiful new stadium. The Phillies won big-time, so Happy Birthday Zach! It's awesome to see the Capitol in the cityscape from the park, and they shoot of fireworks when you get to "the rockets' red glare", and even "bombs bursting in air" in the Star Spangled Banner. (I think they should substitute a release of peace doves for the bombs bursting in air, but it's a nice feeling place all around.)The stadium has impressively green kudos which are ... (more) Monday, May 19, 2020 From MoneyChangesThings - view blog entries - visit this blog
May 19, 2020 at 10:32 pm ET Last week I drove round trip to pick up my college student daughter. I rarely drive long distances; mostly I do short urban runs which get terrible mileage. My Subaru Forester can only go about 250 miles a tank for local driving. I watch the tripometer pretty closely because I've run out of gas a few times - the gas gauge was defective. It's been replaced, but I still pay attention.I drove 60 MPH consistently, and used the strategies you read about to improve mileage - take your foot off the gas and coast, instead of breaking ... (more) Wednesday, May 14, 2020 From MoneyChangesThings - view blog entries - visit this blog
May 14, 2020 at 10:55 am ET As any baby boomer parent can tell you, this generation of students has crammed a remarkably huge amount more stuff into their dorm rooms than we did - even though the miniaturization of college life is better now with Ipods and laptops. The deal now is that your order your kids' "necessities" through a big box store and pick them up at the closest store to your campus. This is incredibly easy at the beginning of the term, but poses enormous challenges at the end of term. Typical problems are lamps and rugs - too large and ... (more) Tuesday, May 13, 2020 From MoneyChangesThings - view blog entries - visit this blog
May 13, 2020 at 9:01 am ET Yet another offer to cash in expiring air miles for magazine subscriptions arrived. The deal lover in me carefully looked at the two dozen choices; fortunately the realist in me piped up: "You don't even read the magazines you already subscribe to!" so a new plan was hatched. I couldn't let those Miles go to waste!I posted them on my local freecycle, specifying that the miles were enough for a bunch of subscriptions and I wanted them to go to a school or community group. I quickly heard from a public high school librarian, sent her my ... (more) Sunday, May 11, 2020 From MoneyChangesThings - view blog entries - visit this blog
May 11, 2020 at 9:17 am ET While Mother's Day is grossly commercialized, it's still nice to express appreciation and connect with parents. I realized a few days ago that we actually have developed a nice counter-cultural Mother's Day ritual. My son calls and we make fun of the consumerist orgy of bubble bath, jewelry, cheesy cards, and general guilt-inducing marketing strategies around this manufactured holiday. And we also note how it sets moms up for feeling dissed if their kids don't buy into it and how children can lose a lot of points on this holiday. Mother's Day is a silly as ... (more) Friday, May 9, 2020 From MoneyChangesThings - view blog entries - visit this blog
May 9, 2020 at 5:41 pm ET A few posts ago I went off about Vermont Country Store sending me a letter demanding I contact them in order to stay off their mailing list, based on my having registered, through Catalog Choice, to stop receiving their catalogs. This blatant undermining of CatalogChoice really pissed me off.Therefore I feel honor bound to also point out the better route to go: Crate & Barrel's recent email to me. It's perfect. They acknowledged and honored my wish not to receive catalogs, and they made a lot of points with me on this one. (Note the smarts ... (more) Wednesday, May 7, 2020 From MoneyChangesThings - view blog entries - visit this blog
May 7, 2020 at 1:27 pm ET It's great to be featured at Get Rich Slowly, since J.D.'s terrific blog on sound finances and money decisions has a gazillion readers. Yesterday I was a guest columnist there, writing about the pros and cons of wedding registries. There are 125+ comments, a lot for a typical post, so this hit a nerve. I had complained about numerous aspects of wedding registries and the greedy, bossy/directed tone many of them project to invited guests. People really shouted out about this, with dueling etiquette "rules" and very differing ideas about the significance of gifts. At ... (more) Tuesday, May 6, 2020 Reducing Your Paperwork Footprint (1 click)
From MoneyChangesThings - view blog entries - visit this blog
May 6, 2020 at 8:31 am ET Check out this cool website which calculates just how many resources are consumed by billing you for your consumption! PayItGreen! instructs you in how to cut back on the endless reams of paper from bills and payments, with encouragement to go electronic. It can save you time and postage, but this initiative is from an alliance of financial service providers, since it saves them a lot of money in paper, printing, and postage. (Since they generally provide a return mail envelope, and checks aren't terribly expensive, I wouldn't tout this as a big $ saver for the ... (more) Sunday, May 4, 2020 From MoneyChangesThings - view blog entries - visit this blog
May 4, 2020 at 11:04 pm ET That the world is facing climate crisis caused by human inputs is not news. That we are living beyond our planet's ability to absorb carbon is not news. That we are facing likely shortages of fossil fuels and a huge run up in their prices is not news. But it sure does seem like people, in the absence of sensible policies (like the European Union has adopted) are very slow to adapt by actually using less energy and paying attention to their personal and household carbon footprint.Juneau, Alaska, has seen how to get folks to decrease their ... (more) Wednesday, April 30, 2020 From MoneyChangesThings - view blog entries - visit this blog
April 30, 2020 at 8:14 pm ET I am a huge fan of Catalog Choice - I go there a few times a week to decline catalogs. Their "inventory" continues to expand, and my catalog load continues to shrink. There are a few catalog mailings which I cannot shake however - Dell Computers, in particular, sends me constant mailings despite my having signed up five different names and addresses with Catalog Choice. The ones to my deceased father are particularly annoying. So Dell, if you read what people write about you, PAY ATTENTION!The way CC works is that you can track your removal ... (more) Tuesday, April 29, 2020 Put a CFL Bulb in Your Refrigerator: DUH! (2 clicks)
From MoneyChangesThings - view blog entries - visit this blog
April 29, 2020 at 10:04 am ET Don't get me started on the planned obsolescence of appliances! The only upside of this intentionally wasteful design/production system is that the newer appliances are more efficient. Our pathetic refrigerator stopped freezing again, so NewRefridgeTime had arrived. A quick survey of EnergyStar refrigerators which fit the space yielded one choice. It arrived yesterday.To my amazement, there were 3 incandescent bulbs inside it! Incandescents take about 4 times the energy as CFL's, and also last about 1/7 as long. I don't often burn out refrigerator bulbs, but still, why waste all that electricity, if you've ... (more) Sunday, April 27, 2020 The Perfect Counter Compost Collector (18 clicks)
From MoneyChangesThings - view blog entries - visit this blog
April 27, 2020 at 10:23 pm ET This week being Earth Week, lots of stores have been running specials on eco-items. The most ecologically responsible thing we can all do is to STOP buying new stuff, so I try not to pitch purchases on my blog, unless an item has really contributed to my quality of life. My counter swing-top mini-can has been just such an object. I saw one at my brother's and looked high and low until I found one online from a food service catalog; when I saw one advertised in the NYTimes, I decided it was useful to share it.This ... (more) The Perfect Counter Compost Collector (9 clicks)
From MoneyChangesThings - view blog entries - visit this blog
April 27, 2020 at 10:23 pm ET ... (more) Items 1 - 25 of 112
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