Be a Hero. "Save the Cash, Save the World"

Earth day is everyday as we should put it. We live on this Earth so we must treat our home with respect. Ok.. I may sound like a treehugger. Please take no offense. I love them! But I'm not totally green. I can't forego travelling just yet or eat everything that is organic. But I believe that helping to save the Earth can also save your money as well.

I found several money saving tips that can be used as tips to go green.

- Pack your own lunch : By packing your own lunch you can save at least $10 a meal. In addition to the money saved, it will cut back on the usage of the food packaging used by fast food joints. For example, the cafeteria in the company I work for does not offer biodegradable plastic utensils and serves the food in styrofoam packaging. Both will clog up the landfills. I might need to get on my soapbox at my company and push for biodegradable utensils.

- Change to CFL light bulbs : If everyone just changed one (only one) light bulb to the CFL light bulb in every household in the US, it will reduce the pollution as much as taking 1 million cars of the road for a year. That's a huge impact! From our personal experience, I can say that our energy bill is less once we started using CFL light bulbs. I still have several light to change. If I can just get Mr. Rojo to get over his fear of heights, I'll get those last few bulbs changed.

- Turn down your thermostat by 1 degree or more : We don't need to set the thermostat to 74 degree during Summer to feel comfortable and we don't need to set it to 70 degree during Winter to feel warmer either. By adjusting your thermostat by 1 degree, you will find that your energy bill will be reduced. The less energy you use, the less pollution generate from power company.

- Use less water : I live in Atlanta area where drought was and is a big deal for us. So I have become more conscience about water usage in our household. I wash the dishes by hand. I do our laundry in full load with cold water. I take a quick shower. Quite frankly, I wouldn't water my lawn if Mr. Rojo doesn't insist or the HOA won't send me any letters reminding us that our lawn looks so pathetic.

- Wrap up water heater and lower temperature setting : A water heater blanket costs less than $15 from Home Depot. It took me about 10 minutes to wrap it up and I can see the difference in our gas bill from the previous year. We also lowered the hot water temperature to 120 degree. This is done to save money as well as for safety reasons. It will reduce the risk of our kids burning themselves if they play with hot water.

- Grow your own herb garden : This is one of my newest experience. I don't have a green thumb. Unfortunately, I think every plant would rather die instead of live with me, but it's worth the try when you can buy a $0.99 seed bag and grow your own herb like basil, cilantro or tomato. You will have your own organic veggies and save a ton on your grocery. Plus it's a good science project to do with your school kids as well.

- Use reusable water bottle instead of plastic water bottle : I admit that we use to buy a case of water bottles for Miss J to pack for her school snack. With all the plastic bottles we went through with just one child in school, it would probably take 1,000 years for those bottles to decompose. So, we switched to use filter water and a reusable water bottle for her. A small step to take and a good opportunity to teach the new generation about the impacts of their choices.

- Use reusable grocery bag : Ok.. This option might not save you money but it sure helps save the environment. Plus you don't need to spend an arm or a leg for a reusable bag. You can pick it up from virtually any grocery stores now for $0.99 in most stores. Plus you can get a free bag from various sources. I got 2 free bags from Whole Food Market from their Earth Day. I also waited for another free one from Earthbound Farm. You can get one by taking a quiz here. Or you can use your artistic ability that has been hidden to good use and submit a design at Kroger for a free bag here. You must have a Kroger card and the free bag will be loaded to your Kroger card for you to pick up at the store once you have submitted the design.

- Consume less : Oh.. What a concept! Consuming less, saves you money. Also consuming less will produce less waste. It's like killing two birds with one stone. Except killing two birds wouldn't be very nice of me and to do it with a stone would be so barbaric. Plus my hand and eye coordination is horrible. The likelyhood of killing two birds with one... Sorry...

So there you have it. Some ways to save your wallet and save the world at the same time.