This time the money issues are not mine, my poor mom has once again been screwed by my step dad’s job. He probably will not get a pay check at all next week as he took a large run that took too long to do. I hate trucking companies, they don’t pay until you deliver so you get crap if you take the long runs. Unfortunately my step dad does not see that or just doesn’t care. I’m hoping it the first.

So anyway we are lucky as I got my student loan refund so I can now pay my mom’s phone internet and satellite bill. It’s not much and it’s all in one bill so it’s cheep. I was paying it for a while anyway as I have to have the internet to make money. I just wish there was a way out of this. My mom may look into refinancing the house as the local banks are still able and willing to lend money and the house is worth a lot more then she owes. I guess that’s the good thing with living in Michigan, because home prices never got very high they have not dropped drastically so people who have been able to make their payments still have homes that are worth close to what they owe. At least if they haven’t refinanced them at all. I’m hoping she can do it as we want to change our propane heater and hot water to electric, this will save us about $2000 just this year. It cost $1000 to fill our propane tank and we have to do that every month during the winter. That is a lot of money as it’s about 4-5 months sometimes. With any luck she can do this and get enough to pay off the two cars and 2 other loans she has. Then that mortgage is all she will owe. I know everyone is doing bad, but it’s so hard to see someone who has worked so hard and has dealt with so much to get to the point where we had a little extra only now to see all of it disappear because other people don’t know what they can afford.

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One thing that I have always wanted to put into a home I will eventually own is a tankless water heater. There are many good reasons to use one, they heat water fast so you don’t have to wait for it. Also you never run out of hot water. It’s also nice because a tankless water heater can save you cash too. The energy used to run a tankless heater is much less then is used to run a regular water heater. Instead of energy used to heat gallons of water several times a day you only need to heat what you are going to use that minute.

This helps not only you get ready for your day quicker, but lowers the emissions from our energy use. It also will help lower your electric or heating bill depending on what type of energy you use to heat your water. Example, my mom has propane, she has no choice unless she switches to electric. So if she installed a tankless heater she could save hundreds of dollars off her propane bill. Now thats a nice idea.

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I was reading on yahoo today about earth hour, an hour where cities turn of all lights to major attractions and monuments. They also encourage people and businesses to do the same. I thought that would be fun to participate in. I can live for an hour without my computer, it will happen at 11am EST and I will be turning off my computer for the hour and doing something else for that time.

Unfortunately we can’t turn off everything as our heat right now comes from a combination of electric and propane and it really won’t be warm enough to turn that all off, but lights I think we can do. I think this would work better if we all did it at night in our time zone or at least in our countries. I think it would have more of an effect that way. Just my opinion though.

Are you going to participate?

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