Pecuniarities

For the lucky few who have extra leisure time this summer, I thought I’d put together some suggestions for productive and fun activities that will help enhance your personal, academic and/or professional life. Some of these suggestions are addressed as if to young people (students, adolescents, etc.) but can also apply to grown-ups.
My suggestions are [...]

As of this writing, “No-Air Conditioning Summer” is over for us (thank goodness!), but before I talk about how and why it ended, I thought I’d offer some tips on staying cool for those who either choose to or have to live without A/C for frugality’s sake or due to power outages, etc.
Before we begin, [...]

First of all, I think it very likely that our seemingly endless summer of “No A/C” will soon be coming to an end. But more on that later. Let’s start at the beginning.
No-Heat Winters
When we moved into our house in the Mojave Desert in December 2006, we arrived late at night and therefore had to [...]

When our A/C went out two Sundays ago, my first reaction was panic. We live in the desert where we have been experiencing triple digit temperatures and we have esteemed air conditioning as one of the dire necessities of life. So when our central air went out last weekend, my first thought was that we [...]

Apologies for not posting anything of substance yesterday or today, but due to feeling a little under the weather these few days, I thought I would post a summary of recommended reading for those of you who are new to this blog, and a few news items from the personal finance blogosphere.
From Our Fourpence Worth

Father’s [...]

There is nothing like a vacation with the whole family. Four-legged family members add a lot of fun to the trip, but they also add a lot of work and responsibility. (I’m thinking maybe each two legs is the equivalent of one two-legged person’s worth of energy.)
As I mentioned in my previous post, Frugal Travel [...]

How to keep your home cool with basic scientific principles and thermodynamics. Save money on utilities and air conditioning with logical and simple methods.