Round-up: quiz yourself!

And... I'm about to head off on vacation again. (I love having 23 vacation days!) See you in a week.

• Check out the Smart Cart Quiz! How much do you know about the social and environmental impact of what you buy? As you answer each question, you'll get links to get more information or take action, too.
• The Simple Dollar has Fourteen Techniques for Improving Your Work-Life Balance
• The Festival of Frugality No. 139: The Michael Phelps Edition was at Our Fourpence Worth. I liked Reached Financial Independence. Now What? at SavingAdvice.com.

The true costs of driving-- how much could you save on transportation?

Could you save money by switching from a driving commute to a transit (and/or carpool/biking/walking) commute? There are more costs to be considered than simply the price of gas, and these calculators will help you figure them out:

• For a simple approach, the American Public Transit Association has a handy calculator which lets you plug in your commute mileage and enter the precise gas prices, MPG, parking costs, and public transit costs that fit your situation. It also includes (based on the size of your car) an estimate of the increased expenses per mile you drive for maintenance and tires, an important addition that often gets left out of back-of-the-envelope calculations. Check it out here.
• This calculator is similar to APTA's, but lets you customize the value for maintenance/tires, and has a field for per-mile savings on depreciation/insurance/taxes/financing.
  
• If you want to get more detailed there's a really cool "Car-Free Diet" website (sponsored by Arlington, VA but it works fine for people anywhere.) It not only explores the cost of driving vs transit/carpool/walking/biking, but also the calories you could burn by walking or biking, and the environmental benefits as well. It's extremely customizable-- from picking the actual make, model, and year of your car, to entering up to 3 different driving routes at a time, to including your weight and age for the calorie-burning calculations! Then you can see numbers and graphs for the money saved, calories burned, and CO2 emissions reduced if you changed each trip to transit, carpooling, biking, walking, or telework (ie "What if I took transit to work twice a week and walked to the grocery store on Sundays?") It's a pretty incredible tool-- check it out here!
• And if you want to take it a step farther and really explore the externalities (costs that are borne by people other than yourself) of your driving, try this calculator called The True Cost of Driving. Not only does it add a few other factors to your personal driving costs such accounting for the average cost per mile of car accidents (health care and property damage), but it also lays out things like how much the government pays for highway maintenance, repairs, and waste clean-up per mile driven; a variety of pollution impacts per mile driven; and a bundle of other effects your driving has on society.

How much does your transprotation cost you? Have you run the numbers recently? How do you do your calculations? Is there anything these calculators are missing?

If you're thinking about switching, check out:

• Paying for transit with pre-tax money
• Free cab rides home in emergencies
• Financial incentives for new carpoolers
  

Round-up: contentment!

I wish I was as content as the people featured in this week's round-up. I'm not... but I'm working on it!

• This quote (via this post at My Two Dollars) really struck me when I saw it last week: “He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.“ - Socrates
• On that note, there's The art of being perfectly content at Blunt Money.
• And then the Festival of Frugality #137 was at Frugal Homemaker Plus; there were some really great posts, including The Finer Things In Life from SavingAdvice.com. (She's content too!)
  

Carnival of Ethics, Values and Personal Finance (August 2008)

Here's the latest version of the Carnival of Ethics, Values and Personal Finance:

• Peter presents Help Those Less Fortunate & And Make Money With Microloans posted at Bible Money Matters.
• Toni Graybill presents What is wealth? posted at Maximize Health and Wealth.
• Betsy Teutsch presents To Repair or Not To Repair... posted at Money Changes Things.
  
• David Gross presents War tax resistance: conscientious objection or civil disobedience? posted at The Picket Line.
• Cash Money Life presents Should the Current Economy Affect How Much You Tip? posted at Cash Money Life.
  
• ChristianPF presents Is buying the iPhone a sin? posted at Money in the Bible | Christian Personal Finance Blog.
• Rebecca Newburn presents August Thriving in the Burbs Newsletter posted at Thriving in the 'Burbs
• Scott Allen presents James D. Brausch, Glyphius and Shilling posted at About.com Entrepreneur's Guide.

Thanks, and submit for next time by clicking here!

Technorati tags: ethics, values & personal finance, blog carnival.

Link round-up: the "Can you help my zucchini plant?" edition

I'm getting mixed results from my container garden.  My tomatoes are growing and reddening and the first ones will probably be ready to eat within the week (yay!)  But my zucchini plant, on the other hand, has not grown a single female flower, which means no chance for zucchini to grow.  I know that it's fairly common for there to be only male flowers for the first couple of weeks, but it's been about a month now and still no females.  I'll make the most of it by eating the many tasty male flowers that keep blooming, but does anyone have any advice, or am I just doomed to a zucchini-less plant?

 

Anyway, on to the links:

 

• I've seen this story linked a number of times lately, about a family downsizing their home and selling the proceeds to charity.  Here's FMF's take, When is Enough Enough?
• I liked Blunt Money's post Of personal legends.  "When he was a child, that man wanted to travel too. But, he decided first to buy his bakery and put some money aside. When he's an old man, he's going to spend a month in Africa. He never realized that people are capable at anytime of their lives of doing what they dream of."
• Then there's Dangerous Norms: When a Treat Becomes a Routine Matter, a guest post at Get Rich Slowly that's by Trent of The Simple Dollar.
• Wondering where all the women are in the personal finance blogosphere?  There's a near-comprehensive list up:  Wise Bread Spotlight: List of Top Personal Finance Blogs by Women

Get free cab fare home in these 50+ cities/counties with Guaranteed Ride Home programs

If you commute to work any way other than driving solo-- if you take mass transit, bike, walk, or carpool-- then you should investigate if your local transit agency or your employer offers a Guaranteed Ride Home program that'll pay for taxi rides home if your usual arrangements fall through. And if you are a solo driver who's thinking about switching over but afraid of what'll happen in emergencies, well, you should read on too!

Guaranteed Ride Home (or Emergency Ride Home) programs are designed to get commuters off the road and onto public transit or another method of transportation, by helping assuage fears about how to get home in emergency circumstances. They are often sponsored by counties, cities, or transit agencies, but may also be sponsored by individual employers. If you enroll in such a program, then the sponsor will cover the costs of you getting home if unexpected circumstances interfere with your regular plans. Each program has its own rules, but typically "emergencies" are defined as unpredictable events like illness/injury of yourself or a family member, unscheduled overtime (verified by your employer), an emergency at your home (like a flood/break-in/fire/etc), or the early departure of your carpool driver. Covered events for bikers and walkers may also include severe weather.

If you register for the program, you'll qualify for a set number of trips home per year (often two to six.) If an emergency arises, typically you call the Guaranteed Ride Home coordinator and they'll call you a cab, although in some programs you can skip that step and just call the cab yourself (either filing for reimbursement later or using some sort of voucher.) Some programs cover the tip, some don't. They may also cover the costs of a stop at your child's school or daycare on the way home.

So without further ado, here are links to more than 50 Guaranteed Ride Home programs in more than 30 states across the U.S. (If yours isn't included, try searching for one anyway, since I certainly might have missed it.) There are also many employer-sponsored Guaranteed Ride Home programs, so you can check to see if your employer sponsors one (or advocate for it if they don't!)

AZ:
Tucson, AZ

CA:
Alameda County
Contra Costa County
Los Angeles County
Monterey County
Orange County
Riverside County
San Bernadino County
Ventura County
Sacramento
San Diego

CO:
Denver

DC:
Washington DC

DE:
Delaware

FL:
Broward County
Miami Dade County
Palm Beach County
Volusia County
Tampa Bay area

GA:
Atlanta

ID:
Boise

IL:
Madison County

IN:
Southeastern Indiana

IA:
Des Moines

KY:
Northern Kentucky
Northern Kentucky
Louisville

ME:
Maine

MD:
see DC

MI:
Southeast Michigan

MO:
Kansas City
St. Louis

MN:
Minneapolis/St Paul

MT:
Missoula

NV:
Southern Nevada

NH:
Upper Valley (New Hampshire and Vermont)

NM:
Albuquerque
Santa Fe

NY:
NYC

NC:
Charlotte
Durham County
Orange County
Wake County

OH:
Southwest Ohio
Central Ohio

OR:
Eugene/Springfield metropolitan area

PA:
Southeastern Pennsylvania

RI:Rhode Island

TN:
Anderson County
Blount County
Knox County
Loudon County
Jefferson County
Sevier County

TX:
Houston
Austin

VT:
Vermont

VA:
Frederick County
Middle Peninsula
Roanoke Valley
Charlottesville

WA:
Kitsap County

WI:
Washington County
Madison