Earth Hour, Economy Measures and Blowouts. 03/27/2010
   I just worked through ‘earth hour’. I did not turn our only electrical appliances we would normally be using, off. Well I never have more than two lights on (usually only one) in the house or caravan ever. Easy to do when there are only two of us, not a large family. If the TV is on, in our house, there is no other light on. I use shade trees, drapes and strategically opened or shut windows and adding or removing clothing and I use a water cooler for climate control. It has to extreme climate, for us to use electrically aided heating or cooling at our place. Our Total Gas and electrical bill is under $30. for a month when we are at home and we use fuel in a silent generator, solar and gas when we travel in the bush and that would be about the same. Total costs under $400. a year. But I do not 'do' winter, we travel north to avoid the cold and needing to run a heater all the time, not something you can do with a young family easily nor restrict the lighting as much as I can though solar units can easily run all lighting. Our largest costs involve our Toyota Troop carrier Workmate, V8 Diesel, Land Cruiser. This is a powerful vehicle that Reg and I, hope, will last us a lifetime, if we look after it. It is a fantastic dependable towing vehicle and I have a lot of cab space to work in, almost a room size section behind the driver’s seat, it is however one of the most expensive cars to get serviced and our last service costs were $1,200.aAnd I have been up for $1,150. Worth of tyres in the last couple of months, so that side of our lifestyle can be costly. Yet another auto insurance quote, arrived in the mail though I do not need to change, as we are gold card members with our current insurance company and get a great discount. I have always been loyal and gone to regular Toyota service centres but my neighbour and a few others are advising me to go to a recommended independent mechanic, they say I will save money and not lose any quality of service. I do not know, that is not an area I am expert in. Any advise on lowering car and travel, service costs without sacrificing quality are welcomed as that is definitely my budget blow out area. I have illustrated this post with some of my fridge magnets made from images of my art works.    Comments Comments are closed. |
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