The northern Midwest often faces some very rough winters, often including periods of many days with temperatures below zero Fahrenheit (-18 Celsius). Since I’m about to face my first winter as a homeowner, I spent some time contacting many of the homeowners I know in the area and asking for tips on reducing winter heating bills, and I collected eight of the best.

Use a programmable thermostat Your house doesn’t need to be as warm at night as it does during the day, so install a programmable thermostat and use it to drop that temperature during the time when you’re asleep and when you’re not at home.

Wear clothes in layers This is extremely effective. Just wear lots of layers of clothes. I often wear a tee shirt, a long underwear/insulation shirt, a long-sleeved tee shirt, and a sweatshirt, and just peel off layers or add them as needed, and you can re-wear the outer shirts a few times without washing them.

Keep lots of blankets around Just keep a few blankets in each living room and bedroom so that you can cover up with them. Generally, I only really get cold when I sit still, and thus blankets help with that.

Air seal your home If the temperature difference between the inside of your house and the outside is seventy degrees, even a small air leak can make a huge difference in the amount of time your furnace has to run. Sometime in the fall (or even early in the winter), air seal your home. Go around your house looking for places where you can feel a draft or feel cold air leaking into your home, locate the source, and seal it. Here’s a guide for getting started.

Install EnergyStar windows When you replace your windows, spend a little extra and buy energy efficient windows that minimize the loss of heat through the windows. This also helps during the summer, where the efficient windows slow down the heat from entering your home from outside.

Cook at home Seriously, firing up your oven and baking a casserole makes for a cheaper meal than eating out, plus that heat spills over and helps with the heating of your home. While it’s not hugely efficient, you’re basically just taking advantage of the synergy between your oven and your furnace to your benefit.

Place a “solar collector” in your windows that collect sunlight. If you have windows that receive significant sunlight in the winter, put a simple “solar energy collector” in them to draw some of the heat. Just get some aluminum foil, some cardboard for backing, some black paint, and a bit of duct tape. Paint a big sheet of aluminum foil black, tape the black foil to the cardboard, then put this in the window with the black side facing out, leaving an inch at the top and bottom for air flow, by taping it to the window frame. This can generate some impressive heat, actually, and can help quite a bit for keeping rooms warm in the winter.

Don’t close off unused rooms. If you try to close off unused rooms in your house to save on heating, you’ll often find that the “cool” room isn’t that much cooler than before and your bill probably won’t change at all (and may even go up). Why? Your home’s heating system was designed to heat your whole house, for starters, and you’re also trying to leave a cold room inside your exterior walls, meaning it will draw heat from other rooms and cause them to chill quicker.

In the past, I have made many references to my preference for living in a small town over living in an urban area. For me, there’s no question - the advantages of small town rural life far outweigh the advantages of city living.

That’s not to say that I think city living is foolish - there are many benefits to living in a city that simply aren’t available in a rural area. The difference is priorities - which aspects of life are most important to you? The answer isn’t the same for everyone.

Earlier this week, when we looked at Kathy’s decision to move away from Washington D.C., it was clear that Kathy was ready for a change from her urban environment - and that’s a great thing to have really figured out what you want. She just needed a bit of encouragement.

However, there are a lot of people out there living in urban areas who are unhappy with their environs - and there are also a lot of people in rural areas who yearn for something different (I live very close to at least a few of these folks - they lived in a small town because they thought it would benefit their children, but they’re not happy with the tradeoffs).

Having said that, I tried to build a list of the most positive aspects of both urban and rural life, based on the aspects of each that I find most appealing. I’m quite sure the readers will throw in a lot more factors for each side.

One key thing: if you’re feeling unhappy with your environs, think of making a change. Read through this list and ask yourself which factors are most important to you. They’ll likely point you one way or another, either towards appreciating what you have now or encouraging you to make a move.

So, let’s get started.

Trent’s Top Advantages of City Life

Public transportation One of the biggest leashes around my neck is the requirement of owning a car to get anywhere. For example, I do not have a grocery store of any kind within walking distance of my house. The ability to just walk and use public transportation to get where you want to go is invaluable.

Cultural life If you value going to diverse concerts, attending art galleries on a very regular basis, and other such cultural trappings, city life is for you. I enjoy galleries, but I’m fine with just visiting two or three on a vacation. I do regret the lack of top-shelf concerts in Iowa, but it’s not quite as bad as it sounds - I did get to see Prince.

Diversity You get to meet a huge variety of people on a daily basis. Although it’s not a whitewash, most of the interior of the country is not incredibly diverse with the exception of the college towns. In smaller towns in particular, if you just glance at the surface, you’ll not see a wide diversity of opinion (it’s there, but not obvious).

Trent’s Top Advantages of Rural Life

Cost of living I fired up a cost of living calculator to get some real numbers:

To maintain the same standard of living, your salary of $85,000 in Boston, Massachusetts could decrease to $52,759 in Des Moines, Iowa
Stated another way, it’s 37.9% cheaper to live in Des Moines, Iowa than Boston, Massachusetts.

Enough said. I could go on and on about the inexpensiveness of the housing market, the fact that lower salaries means less of your money goes to the government, and so on. The difference is huge.

Space and nature From my house, I have cornfields directly to the west, a large wooded area to the northwest, a giant park several hundred feet due east, and there’s enough space between the houses in my area that kids play sports games between houses, let alone in their own backyard. I’m close to nature - it’s right out my back door - and I have plenty of room to do whatever I wish. The air is clean and never smoggy, and I can literally sit on my back porch with the lights off and see the Milky Way at night. All this and the low cost of living - I own this 2,000+ square foot house for less than $180K.

Independence In rural areas, you’re generally left alone to do whatever you want. There’s a strong libertarian streak in almost every rural area I’ve lived in. I have a giant compost bin in the back yard full of rotting material that I intend to put on my garden. I have the room to do this and the people that live near me don’t care too much.

Community At the same time, I’ve only lived in my current house for about three months and I already know about one hundred people on my block, many of them well enough that I talk to them several times a week. If I ever need something in a pinch, anything from a tool to a cup of sugar to a helping hand, I can practically just shout out what I need from the driveway and someone will help.

Hopefully, you can sit back, compare these lists (and the ideas that readers offer), and figure out for yourself which side of the fence appeals to you more. If you’re living on one side and you yearn strongly for the other situation, make the move. You’ll never regret it.

This post is part of The One Hour Project, in which you can spend just one hour to put your finances in a better place without a big lifestyle change, through frugality or other financial choices.

Preventative mainentance is a phrase that makes many homeowners’ eyes glaze over. For many busy people, there’s nothing more boring than going around your house doing various tasks that seem to not really be fixing anything.

On the other hand, look at the tale of my hot water heater. It’s about ready to go bad years before it should, but if the owner had just put in a few minutes a year, that heater would have kept running for many more years. If you can double the life of a piece of equipment in your house with just a few minutes’ work, that’s extremely cost-effective time.

In fact, not long ago, I compiled an extensive list of many, many possible home and auto maintenance tasks, almost to the point of overkill.

But how does one keep up with all of these tasks - or even remember to do them at all? The most effective way I’ve found to keep up to date with home maintenance tasks is to schedule them.

Here’s the game plan.

First, make a giant list of your home and auto maintenance tasks. You might want to use my earlier list for starters. You may have other ones that you find you need to be doing. Obviously, some are more important than others, but it’s always good to keep up maintenance on as much as you can to cut down on long term costs.

Next, figure out how often each task can be done. For example, I have three month air handling filters for my house, so this only needs to happen each season. Go through each item on your list and note how often it needs to be taken care of. Many things on that monthly maintenance list don’t have to happen on a monthly basis - instead, choose a regular basis that works for you, like every other month or every third month for some of the tasks.

Then take your event calendar and assign days for the tasks. I use Sunbird for my personal scheduler - it’s a free program you can get easily online - and I use it to schedule home and auto maintenance tasks. You might use Outlook instead, or use a planner or a wall calendar. Just mark down all of the days where you’ll do the tasks. I often put one simple task on a weeknight, like changing an air handling filter, and move the more complicated ones and the ones in multiples to the weekends.

It takes a bit of time to get this all set up, but the rewards are worth it. You don’t have to remember to do all of these things any more - instead, just glance at the calendar and then take care of the brief maintenance task. The end result? Your home - and the appliances in it - last a lot longer, and that saves you both headaches and money.

For the most part, I prefer doing home maintenance tasks myself rather than hire someone to do the tasks for me. It saves on labor costs and I often learn a new thing or two during the process.

Yesterday, I attempted to replace the leaky faucet on our kitchen sink. This is a process that’s pretty simple in theory - I watched my father change one in a jiffy before and the steps seemed simple. I even had the manual from the previous faucet, which made it pretty clear how to remove the old faucet.

So my wife and I selected our new faucet, took it home, and prepared to install it. I basically started going in reverse through the directions of installing the old faucet to remove it and at one point I broke a piece of it. No big deal, I thought as I kept going. The faucet is just going to the slag heap anyway.

Eventually, I crawled under the sink and started unscrewing bolts. Then I made a very foul discovery: the bolt attaching the faucet to the underside of the sink was on extremely tight - I had no leverage. So I headed to the hardware store to pick up a basin wrench to make things easier. I came back - still no budging. I finally began inspecting the bolt in detail and I realized that the original owners had mis-installed the faucet, making it very difficult to remove without either removing the entire sink or damaging things.

So, after burning an hour and a half and buying a basin wrench that I didn’t entirely need, I wound up on the phone with a plumber. The task had spiraled into something that was far beyond my comfort level for home repair, particularly considering it meant no kitchen sink in a house with a toddler and a newborn - not a good thing.

Net result: I wasted an hour and a half and potentially the cost of the basin wrench. I may be able to use the wrench in the future - my wife eventually wants a new faucet in one bathroom for aesthetic reasons - but it’s not useful for the purpose it was bought for.

This left me with a big question: did I make the right move in attempting at all? I’ve successfully completed lots of little home maintenance tasks like these, but I had never attempted a faucet before. Should I have called anyway?

Even though it was a failure, I think I made the right overall choice in not immediately calling for help. Self-sufficiency saves money - if I billed myself for that hour and a half at a plumber’s rate, that time was definitely worth my money. I did most of the work (and loud grumbling) while my wife and children were all napping, so it didn’t disrupt any family time, either.

This bad experience didn’t discourage me from trying other home maintenance tasks. I just need to keep a sense that if I get in over my head, I’m willing to call a professional, and that this type of thing is why I keep a home maintenance fund.

In fact, I’m already willing to tackle that bathroom faucet, even after this failure. With my wrenches in hand, I’ll get right under that sink.

A new graduate is wondering about the financial benefits of having a roommate - are they worth the drawbacks?

I’m finally at a place where I’m able to afford living alone - and though I much prefer the cost savings of having a roommate (about $400 a month) I’m heavily considering living alone. My only options are to a) live with someone I don’t know b) continue living with someone I know but am very unhappy living with (I now view the savings as a payment to myself for living with this person, like a job). I don’t know anyone who needs a roommate, or anyone who is moving to town within the timeframe that I’d be looking to move.

Faced with spending $400 “extra” a month to live alone, plus the upfront cost of buying things like a TV and furniture (all off craigslist or on sale, and nothing ridiculous like a 50″ plasma - going for the best combination of long term value and cost savings), what would you advise your readers to do? In other words, in situations like this, where does the “personal” get factored into the “finance”?

I have my own ideas about the subject, which pretty much amount to: I’m currently not happy where I live - I haven’t been happy for a good 5 months, yet am planning on staying to finish out the lease. I’m saving $400 a month now my living where I am and finishing my lease out, enabling me to pay off my credit card, build up my emergency fund some more (targeted to be at 1.5 months worth of expenses by the time I move out), and have the cash upfront to pay for my large purchases before moving out to my own apartment.

In my view - paying the $400 extra a month (this includes the increase in rent and utilities) will provide me with a much greater sense of peace with my overall life - something that is a source of constant stress now.

My personal philosophy is this: if you can take an action in your life to relieve a constant stress without seriously damaging your financial state, take it. This goes for everything from switching jobs to switching housing - anything that provides day-in day-out stress is a bad thing for your life in the long run because it has constant adverse effects on your mental and physical health. Those adverse effects keep you from performing at your optimum level and eventually can lead to illnesses - these are real financial effects in addition to the overall effect on well being.

Thus, my first point of advice to the reader is to move out of the current situation, whether now or at the end of the lease. Don’t renew the lease, no matter what. Look for some other housing for your own well being.

So now the question comes down to is the additional financial cost of living alone worth it? There’s no absolute answer to this question because it depends heavily on the individual and how well they get along with people they’re sharing a living space with. Here are some questions to consider if you’ve found yourself in a situation where you’re considering having a roommate:

What do I really want for housing? Some people are merely looking for a pillow upon which to lay their heads. If that’s all you really need, then many more possibilities open up for you. Generally, the more time you’ll be spending at your place of residence and the more possessions you have, the more strict you ought to be in selecting a living situation. I’ve lived in all varieties, from what amounted to a college place with several people jammed into a two bedroom apartment and all my possessions existing in two Tupperware tubs in the corner and a sleeping bag to the family home I live in now.

Would I feel safe, secure, and happy living with a stranger? For most people, the answer here is no. If you’re also saying “no,” then you probably don’t want to post or answer an ad asking for a roommate. In some situations, I’d be fine with this - if I didn’t have many belongings at all, for instance, and had a room that was lockable. I lived in a situation much like that in college with some people I didn’t know well at all (I knew some of the roommates before I moved in, but not all of them).

Would I feel safe, secure, and happy living with a specific person that I know? If you’re evaluating a roommate, ask yourself whether you would be fine sharing living spaces with that person. For example, if you’re a neat freak and this person leaves beer cans out all over the place, you may have problems. Similarly, if you go to bed at ten every night and this person jams to Norwegian death metal while playing World of Warcraft at two in the morning, you may have problems. Does the person have a drug problem or some unsavory relationships? Does this person have any odious personal habits that really bother you? Basically, if you’re thinking of sharing an apartment with someone and there are any big red flashing lights, don’t jump in.

Also, one major tip: lay everything on the table with your roommate. Seriously. If there’s something bothering you and you choose not to talk about it, you’re choosing to let that wound fester and grow far worse. If you think you’re pulling more than your fair share and it’s bothering you, say so. Just be calm and cool and civil about it. Most of the foul roommate situations I’ve seen were caused by expectations that weren’t clear to the other person - if you expect them to do something, at least have the guts to say so or else don’t expect it. If you follow that one little rule, your housing arrangement will go much better.

To me, choosing whether to have a roommate or not is a personal issue first, not a financial issue. There is no amount of savings worth making your day-to-day life completely miserable - it’s not even worth a serious distraction.

I had been considering writing a post about lawn care for a while now, but I had decided to wait until early spring to face the topic. That is, until a reader wrote to me with the following question:

I am curious about your opinion concerning lawn care. The weather in Indiana was a killer and my lawn suffered pretty bad. Not bad enough that I have to redo the whole thing, but there are lots of dead patches. As I was mowing my lawn this afternoon and muttering about the dead grass I wondered what you would do in this situation. How much time and money are you planning on putting into your grass? While I am not interested in having the best grass in the neighborhood, I do want it to be presentable. Thanks for your time.

Here’s my personal philosophy on lawn care.

First of all, how important is a gorgeous lawn to you? Some people may value it greatly; others might not care at all. Still others may have some rules set by their homeowners’ association (which should overrule anything I write here). The big question you need to answer is how important your lawn is in your life. Reading the above question makes me think that we’re in the same boat - we want a decent yard, but it doesn’t need to be gorgeous. My top priority, personally, is to have enough soft, green grass that my son can run around barefoot on it like I used to do in the summer (and still do, on occasion).

If you don’t really care about your lawn, most of this stuff won’t even apply to you. Just keep it mowed and that’ll be good enough. If it gets too bad, hire someone to do a one-time treatment. That will take care of many people’s yard needs.

Beyond that, the first thing I recommend is spending a weekend preparing your lawn in the early spring. This is something that my parents used to do in the front yard every single year.

First, dethatch it. I like doing it manually, myself. Just go to a hardware store and buy a dethatching rake, then go around and dethatch the yard. Thatch is that dead organic stuff that most yards have lower than the level of the grass, but higher than the dirt - you’ll see it if you spread the grass apart and see what looks like dead grass underneath. A dethatching rake is designed to pull that thatch up and expose the dirt. This gives the grass roots plenty of room to grow and form new blades.

The best way to dethatch is to do it in a group of two or three people, where one person runs the rake (the hardest manual labor part) and another person gathers up the thatch and disposes of it. Thatch makes for perfect stuff for a compost bin, by the way - another topic I’ll cover in the future.

Once you’ve dethatched, fertilize it. Basically, just grab a bag of fertilizer and spread it on your grass - you can use a spreader if you wish. Finely-sifted compost will work okay, but it’s often not rich enough in nitrogen to make for great grass fertilizer, so you end up having to use quite a lot of it to get a good effect. Either way, once you’ve spread the fertilizer, rake it in. I fertilize about three times a year.

After that, seed it. I usually seed the whole yard pretty thoroughly and especially in spots that are known to have weak grass.

I usually then water it with a sprinkler after seeding.

The whole process takes about a weekend for most yards, but when you’re done, the grass will look spectacular.

I also sprinkle the yard with water, but I don’t just have one that turns on at a certain time every day. I keep track of rain, and if it hasn’t rained (or I haven’t sprinkled) in three days, I’ll run the hose into the yard and attach the sprinkler to it. I move it about every fifteen minutes until the yard is covered (it’s a good thing to do right after a mowing, actually, when you’re doing other trimming).

Also, I use a mower that automatically mulches the grass, then I just leave it on the yard. It’s not noticeable and the clippings naturally improve the yard’s health. This is much more effective in early spring than in late summer, though, as by late summer usually a bit of thatch has built up.

I haven’t started this routine at my own home yet as we’ve lived there just about a month and a half, but this is the routine that I’m following and I’ve seen others use to great success. I consider it to be pretty inexpensive while also creating a nice lawn (and the thatch will fill up a big composter - in fact, I’m pretty sure our current composter will be filled two or three times with the thatch). This means that the grass is recycled and can save some money later on on garden fertilizer.

As a first-time homeowner, there are a lot of things going on in the house that were basically a mystery to me. Being the curious sort, I’ve wanted to understand why things are happening, how things work, and how I can keep them working well. This has resulted in a few interesting lessons that are well worth repeating here to help out any potential new homeowner who might be curious.

Get to know the people at your local hardware store. I’m serious - this has been invaluable. My town has a small hardware store in it and over the last month or so, I’ve probably stopped in there about twenty times. I told them right off the bat that I was a new homeowner and I was trying to figure things out, so now I have a good relationship with them. The prices for things are a bit high, but I usually buy stuff there because the advice is well worth the markup. Do this as soon as possible - I’m as serious as can be.

Drain your hot water heater at least every few months. About two weeks after we moved in, our hot water heater started making a percolating sound - that’s really the only word that described it. It sounded like large ping pong balls inside the heater. Now, I didn’t know the first thing about hot water heaters, but that sound was ominous, so I stopped by the local hardware store and asked about it. It turns out that one should drain their hot water heater every three months or so to prevent sediment buildup, which causes the noise and can lead to a heater breakdown over time. All you have to do is find the faucet at the bottom of the heater, attach a hose to it, run the other end of the hose to the floor drain (or another place where hot water can go), and run it. I used a five gallon bucket the first time. The water ran a lot of nasty looking colors (reds and browns and a bit of green) before eventually turning clear after filling up two buckets worth. I then closed the faucet and the heater’s noise is now nonexistent.

Check your furnace filter immediately - and probably change it. I knew that furnace filters needed to be checked monthly (and often replaced), but it didn’t occur to me to do this immediately. When I finally did it (about two weeks after moving in), the filter was beyond foul, as if they hadn’t changed it in the last several months before moving out. If you’re freshly into a house, check out the furnace filter as soon as possible. Don’t know what to get? All you have to do is mark down the dimensions of the filter (find the filter and look at the side of it) and get one of the same dimensions at the store.

Change all the lightbulbs (preferably to CFLs). This seems strange, but it was very worthwhile for me. Some of the bulbs had not been changed since the original homeowners moved in. Being neurotic about CFLs and energy conservation (and thus a cheaper energy bill). So, one afternoon I went around and changed every bulb in the house. Two of them were almost fused into the socket because they’d been in place for seven years or so - in one case, the bulb itself came off in my hand and it took extensive effort to get the metal piece of the bulb out of the socket. I recommend getting all new bulbs installed in a new house ASAP - and while you’re at it, just put in CFLs because they save a lot of energy and make for cheaper electric bills, both in terms of the lights themselves and the cooling as a result of the heat that incandescent bulbs put out.

Settle into maintenance routines. A lot of people feel overwhelmed by the amount of maintenance that needs to be done with a house. I’ve found myself that scheduling these home maintenance tasks really helps out with remembering to do them. Whenever I find something that needs to be done regularly (like draining the water heater), I just plan it in my scheduling program in perpetuity, then I just open the program every day. I use it to schedule every significant event in my life (birthdays, anniversaries, etc.), so it works well.

Define a cleaning plan. With two adults working full time and a toddler running amok, it’s easy to get the house messy and feel like there’s not enough time to clean it. What I did is define a cleaning schedule - one room a day, with two rooms on weekend days. That basically gives each room a thorough cleaning at least every two weeks. I usually schedule our high-use rooms weekly (living room, kitchen, family room, main floor bathroom) with the other rooms every other week and only doing the guest room before and after guest arrival. Doing this (and scheduling it) helps me keep the house clean.

Recently, two commenters disagreed strongly in a thread about 15 year versus 30 year mortgages. I thought they both made a worthwhile point in a way because they are both looking at risk, but in completely different ways.

Tristan wrote first:

Mortage=Risk,

No Mortgage=No Risk=No interest payments=you work for yourself not the bank.

Debt is never good. It’s enslavement. There is no true advantage to keeping debt.

This was followed by John:

Tristan,
“No mortgage = no risk” is absolutely, 100%, false. It’s actually possibly RISKIER than the stock market (with proper diversification). Because you’re tying up a huge portion of your money in a single investment, you could lose a huge portion of your money if that investment should decline in value for whatever reason. Yes, it’s less volatile than the stock market. But it’s not necessarily less risky. A lot of people are finally figuring that out in the current housing slump. A house is an investment and carries risk like any other investment. I’m worried that you aren’t evaluating risk properly, which could make you vulnerable.

You know what? They’re both right, but they’re both focused on different aspects of risk.

Tristan is focused on personal risk. If you have a debt on an item, that’s a risk - you risk foreclosure, repossession, or damaged credit if you can’t repay. Eliminating that debt largely eliminates that risk. Thus, in terms of direct threat to one’s way of life, debt itself is a risk.

John is focused on investment risk. Owning any asset with notable value is an investment risk, whether it be a home, a stock, a bond - anything. John sees that houses have investment risk just like stocks do, something that a lot of people seem to have forgotten recently as the housing market went bonkers. It’s also a risk from an investment perspective to have a significant part of your investment in one asset.

Tristan’s perspective is the Dave Ramsey perspective. The most important thing is to ensure that your personal ship is righted and you’re not in significant danger of debt swallowing you whole. Pay off all debts above all else, then worry about investing. This way, if something bad happens in your life, you don’t have repossession issues.

John’s perspective is the investor perspective (I was tempted to call it the Robert Kiyosaki perspective, but that’s wholly unfair description in some ways). He sees a house as an investment and sees the housing market having some serious issues, so he would not want to own a house as an investment.

Most likely, Tristan and John are in two completely different financial states and are looking at the risk that applies to that state. I’m betting Tristan has some significant debt load and is diligently trying to pay it off because he doesn’t have a large social safety net. I’d also bet that John has some experience with investing and probably has a larger net worth than Tristan, but is also older and has had more time to build it.

These two views on risk cause a strong disagreement, and it happens more often than you think. For example, in the recent debate about personal comfort and investment strategies, I am looking mostly at the personal comfort risk if an investment disrupts your personal comfort, get out of that investment because stress and lack of sleep are unhealthy physically and psychologically. Meanwhile, a lot of readers are looking primarily at the investment risk - bailing out when the market is sliding can be very financially risky. Which risk is more important? We could yell at each other all day about it and not really change each other’s minds. It depends on who you are.

What’s the point? Risk comes in a lot of different forms, and different forms of that risk monster scare different people. Any financial move you make has several aspects of risk to it. The key is to find the moves that have the least risk for you, and I think for Tristan and John, those moves in terms of a mortgage would be very different.

Personal finance is fun, isn’t it?