I’ve been spending a lot of time cleaning out my in-law’s old house so we can put it on the market, and I can’t believe how much STUFF they had socked away in the closets, basement, and attic.  Knick-Knacks, old toys from when my wife was a kid, mason jars full of buttons, maps of places they had never been to, and hundreds and hundreds of books.

Yesterday I spent the day painting and bagging up trash and while I was going through some stuff in the corner of the basement I found  3 years worth of telephone books (you know those big white pages/yellow pages they leave at your door every year).  The funny thing is they were never even used…the books were still in their original plastic wrapping!

That got me to thinking about how wasteful it is to print all those telephone books and deliver them to people who probably never even use them.  Times have changed and if you ask me the telephone book has outlived it’s usefulness.

What do you think?  If you need to find a business or look up a telephone number, do you pull out the old telephone book and start flipping through pages?  Or do you hop on the internet and have the info you need in a jiffy?  The phone book just can’t compete with the speed and efficiency of the internet (and that doesn’t even include the advantages to the environment).

Plus, the telephone book is limited to only your immediate area.  That’s all well and good if you’re looking for a local business, but what if I want to find a certified financial planner in Los Angeles, or a home inspector in Kalamazoo, or a home security system in Canada?  The telephone book would be absolutely useless, but the Google could give you an answer in about 5 seconds flat.

What do you think?  Has the time come for the telephone book to go the way of the dinosaurs?

In today’s economy, it can seem like being good to the environment is a luxury. Not many people can afford to outfit their houses with solar panels or geothermal heating, drive a hybrid car, or even shop in the organic produce department. But being good to the earth can also help you to keep more money in your checking account. There are many low-cost or money saving options out there that will make you feel good about your carbon footprint and your bank balance.

Home energy use is one of the easiest places to start your saving. We all know that it’s important to lower our consumption, but what may be surprising is how easy it can be. The Department of Energy’s website www.energysavers.gov outlines ways to minimize your energy use. Homeowners will often get more energy savings bang for their buck with the simpler, cheaper solutions. According to the Department of Energy, a caulk gun, some weather stripping, and an afternoon plugging drafts in the house can lead to as much as a 30% savings. If you have the time and money to add insulation to your attic, that will make another huge difference. But even if all you can do is lower the thermostat a couple of degrees and throw on the sweater Great-Aunt Gertrude knitted for you last Christmas, you will see a difference in your energy bill.

It may seem like the only way to drive environmentally is to buy a new, more fuel-efficient car. But keeping your current car on the road as long as possible is also a green-friendly choice. Carpooling, driving the speed limit, keeping your car in good working condition and making sure your tires are properly inflated are all obvious ways to help your fuel economy. In addition, planning out your trips before you make them and saving all of your errands for one day of the week will not only help your savings goals, it can also help save a great deal of frustration. Finally, keep your car in the garage every once in a while. Running errands on foot or bicycle can be a fun way to stay in touch with your neighbors while taking care of yourself, your planet, and your bottom line.

The list of produce that is most important to buy organic can be frustrating to those on a budget. The so-called “Dirty Dozen” features the produce that I personally buy most often. However, there are ways to improve the footprint your food consumption makes, without having to spend big bucks. For example, meal planning can take a huge bite out of the money-drain that is wasted food. Going to the grocery store with a plan and list in hand will cut down on impulse buys and make sure that every food item coming home will be eaten. Also, going “grocery shopping” in your own kitchen can turn up unexpected goodies. Every kitchen has frozen and canned items that have sat unused for untold months. Planning one meal a week around these freebies will save you money and possibly lead to a new favorite recipe.

Going green is ultimately a lifestyle choice, just like being frugal. No matter why you are interested in saving-for financial or environmental reasons-making little changes can lead to a big payoff.

This is a guest post by Philip Taylor of PT Money: Personal Finance. Visit his blog to learn to make more, save more, and spend more wisely. See Philip’s latest review of the best small business credit cards.

My wife and I haven’t had much success growing our own fruits and vegetables since we bought our house a few years ago. There are a ton of trees and we get very little direct sunlight. And since our yard backs up to a pond we have all sorts of animals running around including rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, raccoons, deer, and the occasional fox. As soon as we get some nice ripe tomatoes that are ready to be picked, they disappear. In fact about the only thing we’ve had luck with is some herbs like basil and parsley.

photo credit: tillwe

But despite our lack of success we understand the benefits of growing your own fruits and vegetables. If you don’t already have your own backyard garden, here are 4 benefits of gardening that should convince you to get started.

1. You can save money on groceries. For the price of a few small tomato plants you can have all the tomatoes you’ll need through the entire summer. And the same goes for green beans, squash, and whatever else you want to grow.

2. Fresh is best. Forget about sifting through piles of fruit that have been sitting around for a week or more and are no longer ripe. There’s no substitute for freshly picked foods delivered right from your garden to the dinner table.

3. When you grow your own, you know what’s in it. No unwanted pesticides, fertilizers, or contaminants in your food.

4. You’ll get off your butt and get some exercise. Gardening isn’t like running a marathon, but it does require a little elbow grease. A little fresh air and exercise could do you some good!

So what are you waiting for?  Grab some seeds or plants and start enjoying the benefits of gardening!

A few months ago I told you I was trying to cut back on the amount of disposable products we use in our home.   We figure we can do our small part to help the environment and save a little money at the same time.

But how much can you really save by eliminating or reducing the use of disposable products like paper towels, plastic cups,  and paper plates?

As it turns out quite a bit!

With kids and pets in the house we used to go through paper towels like crazy.   Every time there was a spill or mess to clean up we reached for the paper towels.  But then I decided to break that habit and reach for a washable towel or dish rag instead.

We’ve managed to cut back our paper towel usage dramatically.  We went from using a roll of paper towels every two days to using the same amount in 2 weeks!

At a roll per day over the course of a full year we would have used about 183 rolls.  But at a roll every two weeks we’ll only use 26 rolls!  That’s a difference of 157 rolls of paper towels!

How much does that actually save us?  Well I stopped in Target at lunch time and jotted down a few prices:

Bounty Paper Towels = $2.19 for a 70 count roll.

Target Brand = $3.49 for a 156 count roll.

Now this doesn’t take into account all the different multi-packs and varying price per unit but I didn’t really have time to sit in the aisle taking notes for an hour.  So for argument’s sake let’s just be conservative and say each roll would cost $2.

That means we will save $314 this year just by switching from paper towels to washable rags.

I still can’t believe we were spending that much money on something so stupid all this time.  Just goes to show you the importance of tracking your spending and always looking for new ways to save money.

When most people hear the words “green living” they think it means driving hybrid vehicles, installing solar panels on their roof,  or building a backyard wind farm to power their home.  While those are all noble efforts, they’re also pretty expensive.  But living a green lifestyle doesn’t mean you have to drop tens of thousands of dollars.  It’s more about making simple choices and subtle changes to your lifestyle that help reduce your impact on the environment.

Take your workplace for example.  Whether you work in a cubicle, a garage, a restaurant, a dentist’s office, or wherever…I guarantee you can find ways to reduce waste and conserve energy.  Let’s brainstorm a few ideas together shall we:

Starting a carpool with coworkers will keep a couple of cars off the road.  You’ll be saving money on gas while reducing nasty emissions that clog up the atmosphere.   Working from home a few days a week will have the same effect.

Use recycled or refillable ink cartridges in copy machines and printers.

Set up a recycling area and encourage employees to separate glass, plastics, and paper for recycling.

Send correspondence through email instead of a letter whenever possible.

Stop printing every email you get!  Most of it just ends up in the trash anyway so print only what you need.

Don’t just toss out your used printer paper.  Save it and use it for scrap and writing notes or shred it and use for packing material.

Switch to energy efficient light bulbs.  They cost more upfront but last longer and use only a fraction of the energy that traditional bulbs use.

Encourage employees to shut down or use power-saving modes on their computers each night.

Most of us drink coffee at work and all those paper and styrofoam cups are clogging up our landfills.  Ditch them for good and use a coffee mug instead.

If you’re an employer or office manager you can begin implementing these ideas right away.  If not, you’ll have to go to your boss and make some suggestions.  Emphasize the financial savings the company stands to gain and they’ll be more willing to hear you out.

These simple green living tips may not seem significant by themselves but if you add them all up they can have a huge impact on our environment as well as the company’s bottom line.

When I was a kid my dad was always complaining about how wasteful our family was.  He was always telling us to turn out the lights when we left a room, don’t take more food than we can eat, and stop wasting so many paper towels and napkins.

At the time he seemed like a cranky old miser, but now that I’m a dad myself and I have the responsibility of paying the bills each month I realize he was right.

In an effort to reduce our debt to more manageable levels I’ve been on a campaign of sorts to cut expenses and save money in any way I can.  My current target…disposable products like paper towels and plates and plastic cups.

Disposable products like these can be a huge time saver.  It’s a lot easier to just throw a plastic cup in the trash rather than having to wash it.  And paper towels come in often handy for quick spills that happen constantly when you have young children.

But there’s a price to pay for that convenience.  Just take a walk through the disposable products aisle of your local supermarket and you’ll see exactly what I mean.

Anyway, here’s the steps I’ve taken so far to minimize our use of diposable products and shave a few dollars off or grocery bills.

1. Our cat Jasmine eats 1 can of food each day.  She gets half in the morning and the other half in the evening.  During the day we had been using a plastic zip lock bag to store the half can of food that was left after her morning feeding.  I did away with the wasteful bags and picked up a small, reuseable tupperware container for 50 cents.  It saves us money everyday by eliminating the use of disposable bags.

2. Paper plates are awfully convenient, especially if you’re like me and despise doing dishes.  But they aren’t cheap and a family of five can go through them pretty quickly.  We still use paper plates occaisionally but by making an effort to bypass the paper and go with the real dishes instead we’ve been able to make them last a lot longer and limit the number we have to buy.

3. Those big red platic cups are great for parties and I also like to use them when I’m working in the yard or the garage so I don’t have to worry about breaking a glass.  But there’s no reason to throw them out.  We just wash them with the rest of our dishes and stack them neatly in the cabinet where they take up almost no room at all.

4. I still catch myself going for the paper towels when I spill some coffee on the counter or one of the kids knocks their drink over.  But most times I catch myself and whip out a dish towel instead.  Then I just toss the towel in the laundry room to be washed.  Yesterday I picked up a 12-pack of bar rags at Target for just a couple of bucks.  Those rags will clean up hundreds of messes and save me lots of hard-earned cash.

Think about some other ways you can limit or eliminate your use of disposable products.  Not only will you be saving money, you’ll also be helping to save the Earth by living a greener lifestyle.