Boston Gal's Open Wallet

• Raise my 401(k) contribution percentage by my raise amount. We get our raises mid-year so I will not know the amount until June, 2006.


• Continue to add to and grow my home improvement fund


• Contribute $4,000 to ROTH IRA for 2006


• Continue to pay all credit card bills off monthly


• Invest some money into my paid-off 2000 Jetta to keep it running smoothly. New tires are needed within the next 6 months, and it is time for a full tune-up and check-out by a mechanic.

• Free Energy Saver Bulb I requested in early November
• $5 Starbucks Gift Card for writing 5 local business reviews
• Campus Ladies Party Screening Kit

Labels: Cool Gardening

Refrigerators and Freezers
Leave enough space between your refrigerator and the walls or cabinets so air can circulate around the condenser coils. Trapped heat increases energy consumption.

For food safety keep your refrigerator between 36° and 40° F and your freezer between 0° and 5° F. A refrigerator that is colder than safety dictates uses up to 25 percent more energy, and will freeze your milk and lettuce.

As your food budget permits, keep your freezer and refrigerator full-but not so full that air can't circulate. The mass of cold items inside will help your refrigerator recover each time the door is opened. Here's a hint: If your refrigerator is nearly empty, store water-filled containers inside.

Check door seals regularly to make sure they're airtight. To test them, close the door on a dollar bill and try to pull it out. (Larger bills are harder to come by, but work just as well!) If the dollar slides out easily, you're wasting energy and money.

Unless it has untold sentimental value, get rid of that older, energy-hogging second refrigerator in your garage! It's costing you about $120 a year to operate. One large refrigerator is cheaper to run than two smaller ones. (Warning: If you get rid of an older refrigerator or freezer, please dispose of it properly, and make sure the door is removed so children cannot be trapped inside.)

If you're thinking about purchasing a new refrigerator-freezer or a separate freezer, check the annual energy cost on the Energy Guide label to find the most economical buy.

Side-by-side refrigerators use approximately 7 percent to 13 percent more energy than similar-sized models with the freezer on top.

Chest freezers are typically more efficient than upright freezers, because they're better insulated and cold air doesn't spill out when the door is opened.

Brush or vacuum dirty refrigerator or freezer coils. You'll improve your appliance's efficiency by as much as 30 percent.

Religious denominations are focusing on their traditional specialties in disaster relief. They include Southern Baptists (chain sawing for debris removal), United Methodists (tracking the needs of families), Seventh Day Adventists (warehousing supplies) and Church of the Brethren (emergency child care), according to Kevin King of the Mennonites (building trades).

Volunteers include Old Order Amish, who shun modern conveniences and still dress as they did centuries ago; hippies of the Rainbow Family, a 1960s-style, back-to-the-land group that established a soup kitchen and medical tent in a park east of the French Quarter; and planners from the Urban Land Institute, a non-profit research group that waived its usual fee to study rebuilding New Orleans.

Abstract:
This paper challenges the common assumption that economic agents know their tastes. After reviewing previous research showing that valuation of ordinary products and experiences can be manipulated by non normative cues, we present three studies showing that in some cases people do not even have a pre existing sense of whether an experience is good or bad even when they have experienced a sample of it.

In Twains words, Tom had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.

There are no mysteries in what painting a fence entails. Hence, Tom's law challenges the intuition that whether a familiar activity or experience is pleasant or unpleasant is a self-evident matter at least to the person participating in that activity. If true, Tom's law would pose a fundamental challenge to economics. In a world where people don't reliably know what they like, it cannot be assumed that voluntary trades will improve well-being or that markets will increase welfare.

If you had to pass an investor "survival" test, could you? Probably not without professional help, the results of a new survey suggest. Conducted for Securities Investor Protection Corp., it sought to determine who had the skills to build their savings into a retirement nest egg. Eighty-three percent of respondents flunked both sections of the test: one measuring basic knowledge (such as how sales fees work) and the other measuring behavior. (Example: Have you ever read a prospectus?)

Given the choice between cutting back or living well, a growing number of people are choosing to take on a second job. The number of Americans with full-time jobs taking on part-time work during the holiday season jumped nearly 9 percent to 12.2 million people over the past three years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

''A large number of these people are college-educated, middle income and above," said Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. ''They are looking to recoup their standard of living."

But many Americans are finding it difficult to afford the kind of lifestyle they enjoy as they confront a burden of mounting debt, stagnant wages, higher energy prices, and rising interest rates.

A 30-year-old should build investment assets. A 50-year-old, on the other hand, needs to put emphasis on debt reduction because all but the most affluent should plan to eliminate debt service by the time they retire.

Do the math
The double whammy of a falling rental market and slowing prices puts the squeeze on real estate investors who plunged into the market during the past year or two.

An investor who bought a two-bedroom, condo apartment in Boston last year, might have spent about $800,000 for it.

If he financed 80 percent of the purchase price for 30 years at 5.5 percent, his mortgage payment is about $3,600. Add in $500 in common charges and $200 in property taxes and insurance, and the monthly nut comes to $4,300.

Even if he can rent for substantially more than the Boston metro-area average of $1,266 for a two-bedroom apartment, he's still in a deep hole. And if he was counting getting bailed out by rising prices, forget it; the latest housing price data shows Boston housing appreciating only in the mid-single digits, and the growth rate may slow even more in 2006.

Katherine Brookins, who owns several rental units in Boston, has advised other landlords to pay down their mortgages if they can. "You aren't going to be getting the rents," she says, which make it difficult to keep cash flow positive. Eliminating a mortgage payment can turn a monthly loss into a profit.

Quick Tip: When buying bagels in bulk at a destination shop like Finagle A Bagel ask for freezer bags (Finagle will give them to you if you ask). As soon as you get home cut the bagels in half, place in bag, and pop into freezer. When you are ready to eat one, take bagel out of freezer and put immediately into toaster and toast (don't defrost or worse put in microwave).

Whenever these certificates hit my inbox I make a habit of immediately logging into my Amazon.com account and storing the card in my account. That way next time I shop on the site I will see the card and use it instead of having it languish in my inbox where it could easily get lost and forgotten.

Typically, we look for one-third of assets in real estate, one-third in retirement accounts and one-third in "other" investments, not retirement accounts.