Rich America

Are High(er) MPG Cars Worth the Money?

The Consumerist headlined a post the other day It Could Take Years For Some Fuel-Efficient Cars To Be Worth The Savings On Gas. The title was enough to annoy me.

It seems that some car makers produce higher MPG versions of their already fairly fuel-efficient offerings. And, of course, these special versions are a bit more expensive. Assuming that all a consumer is interested in is money (and not greenness) the question is whether or not that additional cost is justified by the savings on gas.

And there is an accepted and well justified right way to answer that question and others like it. Basically, and I will get to details in a moment, you consider the extra cost as a potential investment with a projected return and compare that to other investments you might otherwise make with the money.

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Frugal Friday, June 2012

Once again, the first Friday of the month is upon us. Time to review what we have learned about The Frugal Way in the past month.

We start with a warning. The recent IPO of a company called Facebook might inspire curiosity about its product, which is a website that may appear to be  free to use. (Other than showing you a tiny bit of advertizing that could not possibly generate enough revenue to justify a market cap of $60B, never mind the loopy $100B it went public at. We digress.) In fact, it is a scourge that will “push your savings to the edge of a dangerous precipice.”

You see, in the good old days big spenders were segregated away from the frugal types and we were not led to temptation by seeing their fancy vacations and store-bought clothes. Now, in this decadent digital age, we are “connected” to all sorts of people, some of whom post pictures of themselves on Facebook. So beware.

On to happier tips.

Mother’s Day once again fell in May this year, so there was the usual round-up of frugal gifts for the occasion. Most of them, a home-made card, a phone call, etc., were pretty obvious. But Yes I Am Cheap had a list that began with lottery tickets. “Nothing says, ‘I love you’ like the chance to win money.” How true.

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