Jerry Loggins Notes » Money and Finances

Solar is made easy

Jerry — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 02:46:56 +0000

For years I’ve been waiting for a time when solar is made easy. Even though solar power has been available for a couple of decades now, the practicality of the technology being within the reach of the average American homeowner has yet to appear on the horizon. For as long as I can remember my wife has taken full advantage of the passive solar energy in the winter by opening the doors and curtains that face the sun during the day to allow the sun’s rays to warm up the house as much as possible, and making sure to close them all again when the sun started to wane. And in the summer, as much as we enjoy having a house full of sunlight, we pull down the window shades and close the doors to the hot sun, to help keep the house cool and to reduce the work and energy usage of the air conditioner.

Even so, we would ultimately like to take better advantage of the newest technology when it becomes within our financial reach, of putting solar panels on our roof to help reduce our electricity usage and to help heat and cool the house. Just the idea of not having to pay the electric company, or the gas company for our lights, heat, and air conditioning gets my juices flowing! My wife has even suggested that we look into getting a small windmill to see if we could generate our own electricity with it to help cut down on our electric bills. With so many people living in our house, and everyone being on a different schedule of wakefulness and sleeping, our lights and climate control are constantly going, so our bills for electricity and climate control are probably a lot higher than many families bills are.

American made products

Jerry — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 16:30:27 +0000

Many people that I know have vowed to “only buy American made products” in an effort to support our troubled economy. To be perfectly honest, I have tried very hard to live up to that ideal as well. To be honest, though, when shopping at the local stores to buy new clothes, I have not been able to stick to that ideal. Almost every item of clothing that I see for sale in the stores has been made in a foreign country. For a while I determined to simply not buy clothes for a while, so I could take my time finding American made products. Well, today I went shopping at a local supermarket and found that the store had a large number of clothing items for sale for only $1. Yes, I said $1. Brand new dress shirts, dress pants, sweaters, sweat shirts, all for $1. I have to say that at that point in time I did break down and buy a lot of the items that were on that sale. I did not even look at the tags to see where they were made. I feel guilty, but what can I say, they were a huge bargain and my family could use the new clothes. Can you say you would have acted differently?

Homes need safes

Jerry — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 17:08:27 +0000

The last time that my wife and I went for a week-long vacation trip, we had a close friend stay at our house to take care of the pets and the house. A few days after we had returned home my wife was telling me that she was very upset because she was missing some of her good jewelry. We looked high and low for the jewelry, but it was nowhere to be found. Eventually we decided that we were really rather foolish to have a house-sitter come into the house, and that were lucky that more things weren’t missing. I guess in this day and age it isn’t just stores and businesses that need safes, homes need safes too. Gone are the days when you could simply leave the doors unlocked and expect to come home to a completely un-touched and intact home.

So we have agreed that we need to start looking for the right kind of safe. I think that we should get one of the fireproof cannon safes that I found online last night. She wants to get a gun safe. Maybe we can find one safe that will serve both purposes!

Flat tire and found money

Jerry — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 23:09:04 +0000

Yesterday I was driving home to get my wife and take her to dinner and ran over a huge nail. Yeah, you guessed it, a flat tire! So I pulled over and put on my hazard lights. Said a couple of curse words and called my wife on my cell phone to tell her I was going to be late picking her up. Although I had to stand on the top of my truck bed, I’m lucky there was cell phone signal at all in that area – it is a notorious dead spot!

Anyway, I got out my tire jack and spare tire and got ready to change the tire. As I knelt down to start to remove the lug nuts I noticed something unusual – a $100 bill sitting there on the road! No houses or cars in sight, just a $100 bill! Well, you can imagine that I felt pretty good about that flat tire then! Well, maybe not so good, but that $100 bill sure helped to pay for the tire repair and give me a little extra money to take my wife out to eat!

Certified Mail

Jerry — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 23:33:42 +0000

Last November I sent out two packages certified mail, return receipt requested. That means that the person that I’m sending the package to is supposed to sign a card that says that it was received, and then the Post Office is supposed to return it to me. One of the packages went to New York, and the return card was signed on November 20, and I received the return card a few days later.

The second package was sent to Houston Texas. Last November mind you. It is now the month of February. What was in that package was a garment that needed to be altered. I have already received the altered garment back (and it’s fine thank you.) Yesterday I finally received that card from the Post Office telling me that the package had been delivered to Texas, but no one had signed or dated it! What’s up with that?