Wouldn’t that be wonderful, getting oil from algae instead of fossil fuels!

I try really hard to be an example for my children, and to show them the importance of saving money. We have a “coupon clipping hour” every Sunday afternoon, where we all gather around the table and cut out our coupons for the week. We make our grocery list based on what’s on sale, and we’ve turned it in to a little game. The person who can make the most creative meal plan with the fewest amount of ingredients wins. Bonus points if all of those items are on sale, and extra bonus points if the meal ends up being delicious. I think it does a lot to really instill the value of money in them, and we actually all have a lot of fun every Sunday sitting around the table together. I was talking to a friend recently though who convinced me that saving money is not only about clipping coupons. It’s about making wiser choices with your money across the board. She even called shop electric companies in texas to see if she could get a more affordable energy provider, and she ended up saving a ton of money. I wonder if I could convince one of my kids to make the call for me…they really love to save money!

So, as much as I don’t like to think about buying new clothes, I will be having to be hitting the Internet sales and see what I can come up with for good looking clothes that won’t cost an arm and a leg!

My biggest concern about buying glasses over the Internet is getting them to fit on my face once they arrive.  I have a very short temple, for one thing.  I don’t know how that issue (if it even IS an issue!) would be taken care of in the case of buying glasses over the Internet.

I’ve been hearing that they have been discussed on popular radio shows, and that they were mentioned in an article that was discussing ways to save money on eye care in the New York Times newspaper as a good place to get cheap back-up glasses. I checked out their website and found that they had over 200 pairs of glasses for $6.95! And I actually did see a couple of good looking pairs of $6.95 glasses that I would consider buying. I like the shape and the color; they are very much like what I already wear. Pretty soon it will be time for me to get a new pair of glasses, so I will be checking them out for sure!

I know that one way to save money on auto insurance is to raise the deductible, but that is not a step that I want to take. With my luck, I’d probably raise the deductible and then within the week I’d have some crazy thing happen and end up paying something extra out of pocket!

One way that I know I can save money on the insurance is to drop the collision coverage on the car that gets stored in the winter. Just drop it during the storage time, and keep the comprehensive. As long as the car is in the storage barn it’s not going to be colliding with anything!

One thing that annoys me is when I try to set up autopay with a company and they require that you download a form, fill it out and mail it in with a voided check. If I wanted to do all of that, I wouldn’t be trying to sign up for autopay in the first place! So I arrange with my bank’s BillPay service to send those payments in for me. There is more than one way to skin a cat!

I always feel like in the middle of a television filming set of scrubs!  Today I saw a few nurses eating lunch at the table next to mine, and one of them was wearing a cute set of scrubs – it was tailored and looked good on him.  I asked him where he had found that set of scrubs and he wrote down this web address on a napkin for me: http://www.blueskyscrubs.com/categories/Scrubs/Scrubs-for-Men/. 

I went to that website and browsed around and found a great page full of really nice-looking lanyards.  I’ve often wondered where people could get nice looking lanyards – well they have them there!  They cost a lot more than I had anticipated, though,

When I was taking college courses a few years ago I did take one course in marketing, and found it to be fun and interesting.  Something that I think that I would enjoy learning more about!

Unfortunately I keep hearing on the news about how most of the local brick and mortar colleges are drastically increasing their tuition rates, so I am going to look at online degree programs in marketing to see if I can just do it all online.  I’m beyond the point of wanting to live in a dorm with a bunch of rowdy teenagers, and I just want to learn my stuff and market myself into a marketing job! 

After all, I think that sales and services are the two areas where employment will continue to grow.  And I’ve always had good luck in any job that involved sales.  Maybe with a degree in it I’ll be able to get a better paying job!

I think it would be great if more attention was focused on how rewarding a nonprofit career can be to a person.  One of the problems with non profit jobs, though, is the general idea that the jobs themselves are low paying.  And that may be true.  I think that has a lot to do with the obscenely low minimum wage laws in this country.  People cannot survive on minimum wage, and that is a crying shame.  One thing is for sure though, I’m glad that I’m not the one in charge of fixing all of this country’s problems!