Ecofrugal exercise

It will probably come as a shock to absolutely no one that I have never had a gym membership. This is partly because I'm cheap and partly because, frankly, I'm not that into exercise. I wouldn't call myself sedentary, but I like to keep my physical activity low-key. I have my dance practice once a week, and I go for long walks—around an hour a day, weather permitting, which I combine with running any errands I need to take care of in town. And until a few years ago, that was it.

As fitness routines go, this was okay for cardio, but pretty short on strength and flexibility. And the older I got, the more I started hearing about how important it is to include some strength training in your routine so your muscles don't shrivel up and die. (The word the articles typically use is "atrophy," but that basically means "shrivel up and die.") And when COVID hit in 2020 and I found myself stuck at home with plenty of extra time on my hands, I decided to start doing the 7-Minute Workout. 

In case you've never heard of this routine, it's just a sequence of a dozen exercises that you can do at home with no equipment except a sturdy chair, such as push-ups, jumping jacks, and squats. You do each exercise for just 30 seconds before moving on to the next one, working out each part of your body in turn. Serious fitness buffs say that to get a real workout, you should go through the whole rotation multiple times, but I made up my mind at the outset that I wasn't going to listen to them. I knew I could convince myself to spend 7 minutes a day sweating and panting, but if I tried to force myself to stick with it for 14 or 21 minutes, I'd start skipping it because I was too busy, too tired, too depressed, et cetera. The way I figured it, a 7-minute workout I'd actually do was better than a 14- or 21-minute workout I'd keep meaning to do.

I must know myself pretty well, because I have indeed stuck with this routine for the past five years, only occasionally skipping a day due to illness, injury, or lack of time. Over the years, I have made a few minor modifications to the routine. I do the exercises in a different order, building up from the ones I find a bit easier to the harder ones. I've also switched out the crunches and the forward plank, which seemed to aggravate my notalgia paresthetica, for reverse planks, which are supposed to help with it. After reading an article that lauded the one-leg rise as one of the most beneficial exercises for older adults, I subbed it in for the wall sit, which I'd always found somewhere between painful and boring. And I've tacked on a series of stretches to the end of the routine—some for my legs, some for my back. So it's now more like 15 minutes in total, but only 7 minutes of the real high-intensity stuff.

Another advantage of this workout is that I can do it at any time of the year, rain or shine. The same doesn't hold true for walking, which is still my main form of exercise. I manage to fit in a walk most days, but sometimes it's just too cold, too hot, too wet, or too windy. I didn't realize just how often I was skipping or curtailing my daily walk until I signed up last fall for CashWalk, a little app that rewards you for your daily steps with points that you can cash in for gift cards. (In order to claim your points, you also have to view ads, because that's how the app gets the money to pay you with, but you don't have to pay attention to them.) There were a surprising number of days I didn't even hit the 6,000-step mark—and while that's partly because the app only counts steps I take while carrying my phone, and partly because the phone is cranky and sometimes fails to record steps properly, I knew I couldn't blame it entirely on that.

So this year, as one of my New Year's resolutions, I vowed that I would get at least a modest 49,000 steps per week, regardless of the weather. The first day it was too cold to walk outside, I tried walking indoors instead, doing laps around our big downstairs room while carrying my phone. This got boring pretty fast, so I started amusing myself by watching YouTube videos on the phone while walking. That made it more fun, but unfortunately, holding the phone steady so I could see the videos interfered with its pedometer function. I'd watch a 5-minute video, all the while walking at a pace of at least 100 steps per minute, and then pull up the app to find that it had recorded less than 100 steps total.

Eventually, it occurred to me that I should just watch the videos on my office computer instead while walking in place in front of it. When I do it this way, either holding the phone in my hand or sticking it in my pocket, I get a pretty accurate count of my steps. I can trot in place at a rate of around 180 steps per minute, so it only takes me about 40 minutes—two longish videos or five to six short ones—to get in my daily steps. 

This "walk and watch" routine is at least as good a workout as walking on a treadmill at a gym, and a lot less hassle. I don't have to go anywhere, I don't have to wait my turn for a machine, and I get to watch whatever I want while I do it. (My favorites include SciShow, Good Mythical Morning, The Icing Artist, various scam-baiters, and clips from Taskmaster.) And best of all, I'm actually earning a few bucks a month for my efforts with my handy app instead of shelling out $10 to $100 per month to a gym. After all, if I'm the one putting in the work, why should I have to pay someone else for it?

Ten climate tidbits for 2023

This weekend was the annual (virtual) fall conference for Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL), a climate group I've been involved with since 2020. Like last year's conference, this one didn't really give me any broad new insights about climate problems and solutions, but it supplied several interesting nuggets of information worth sharing. This year's ten tidbits are:

1. Language matters. The keynote speaker at Saturday's session was commentator and activist Van Jones. He's worked with people on both sides of the aisle and says that both groups often "get hung up on language." He gave the example of police reform: conservatives didn't want to listen to talk about "injustice" in the penal system, but were often open to the same policies when they were framed in terms of "liberty." He argued that similarly, they would be willing to move on climate policies if they were framed as being about "pollution" or "helping farmers" or "protecting God's creation" rather than "climate." He admitted that it's stupid for the word "climate" to be politically charged, but given that it is, it would be even stupider to insist on using it if it makes it harder to address the problem.

2. People do have their own facts. Senator Pat Moynihan famously said, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." But at the time he said it, the media landscape was very different from today's. Everyone got their news from the same local papers and major TV networks. Nowadays, your social media feed and your Google search results will show you different facts depending on your political orientation. Type "gun" into Google and it will auto-fill "gun rights" if you're on the right and "gun control" if you're on the left. Consequently, each side is getting an incomplete picture of every issue and is often unaware that the other group's facts exist. So when you're talking politics with someone who seems blind to the facts, Jones says, you have to remember "They're not in the same movie as you." To communicate better with them, talk less and listen more to figure out what their starting point is.

3. Red states benefit most from IRA incentives. Last year's Inflation Reduction Act was short on sticks and heavy on carrots: subsidies to build and install clean energy infrastructure across the country. And the benefits are accruing overwhelmingly to red states. They have plenty of open land on which to place new solar and wind farms, and their lower taxes and wages make them attractive sites for new battery plants. Jones thinks this is good news, as voters will look more favorably on the clean energy transition if it puts money in their pockets.

4. Politicians respond to RAP. That's Jones's shorthand for "reward and punishment," which he says carry a lot more weight with legislators than logical argument. You're much less likely to convince them by talking about the perils of climate change or the benefits of clean energy than by showing them polling numbers on how popular climate policies are or how many voters are swayed by climate issues. Therefore, Jones suggests, if you have an extra hour to spend preparing for a lobby meeting, spend it learning more about the politics of an issue, rather than the policy. As he points out, "We already know the policy."

5. Van Jones reads graphic novels. As interesting as I found Jones's speech, at once point I found myself distracted by the background on his Zoom screen. I enlarged the picture to get a closer look at his bookshelf and, sure enough, there was a copy of Watchmen and several volumes of The Sandman that I recognized from their distinctive covers. He's not just a policy nerd; he's a nerd nerd!

6. Renewable energy is growing amazingly fast. Following the keynote address, there was a "good news" session with a CCL policy maven who had some mind-blowing stats to share on clean energy. Did you know that nearly half of all solar capacity ever installed in the U.S., since the dawn of time, was added in the last three years? Or that 75% of all electric vehicles ever sold in the country were sold in the past three years? In 2010, less than 1% of all new cars sold in the U.S. were electric; now it's 10%, and if we manage to get permitting reform passed to improve the electrical grid, by 2030 it could be anywhere from 40% to 60%. Likewise, with permitting reform, we could install twice as much new wind and solar capacity in the next three years as we did in the last three—quadrupling the amount we had three years ago.

8. Goofing around is good for your health. The next panel I attended was on "resilient climateering" (a portmanteau word the presenter made from "climate" and "Mouseketeers"). According to her, playfulness has a wide array of mental health benefits. She had sources (which I unfortunately didn't manage to get the links for) to show that it releases endorphins and endogenous (self-made) opioids, which I didn't even know were a thing; stimulates nerve growth in areas of emotion and decision making; and even reduces dementia. I don't know how much of that is true, but it certainly couldn't hoit!

9. Stress can shut you down. One source from the "climateering" presentation that I did find a copy of was this polyvagal chart showing how stress affects the body. Most of the time, when we talk about feeling stressed, we're talking about the effects in the yellow zone: increasing levels of anger and fear, increases in heart rate and blood pressure, dry mouth, heavy breathing. All these are signs of hyperarousal: the familiar fight-or-flight reaction. But when stress is intense or prolonged enough, it can cause just the opposite effect: hypoarousal. At this stage, we stop trying to fight or flee and just give up. This red zone is associated with feelings of despair, numbness, or shame; physically, most of the body's processes slow down as it pumps out extra endorphins to block out pain and, basically, prepare for the end. We all know about the negative effects of spending too much time in the yellow zone, but the red zone is really bad news. Probably best to keep an eye on those yellow signs and avoid getting to that point.

10. Climate deniers can change. Honestly, I didn't feel like I learned that much from the "CCL Group Leaders Tell All" session. It was basically just leaders of several different CCL chapters talking about how they got into the job and how they do it—info I don't expect to need, since I'm not interested in being one. But one of the group leaders had an origin story that interested me. His parents were—to an extent, still are—climate deniers, and he was brought up to think human-made climate change was a big lie. But his parents also taught him to stand up for what he believes in, and in high school he came to realize that he believed in the dangers of climate change. So he became involved with climate and, as a freshman at Michigan, joined the college's CCL chapter, of which he's not a co-leader. And his parents, remarkably, have not only been supportive; they've also been willing to talk with him about the issue. They may not be believers yet, but he thinks they're gradually changing their views, and they even support some of CCL's policies. And the reason for this, he thinks, was their personal connection to him. It's harder to dismiss "the other side" when it includes your kid—or your parent, your sibling, your spouse, or your good friend. When someone you care about is involved with an issue, you may disagree with their views, but you can't just reject them without consideration.

And maybe that's the most important lesson from this year's conference, one that all the speakers echoed in some way or another: build connections first. Build connections with legislators, connections with friends, connections with other climate activists, instead of just leaping into facts and arguments. Because it's much easier to tell your story in a way people will hear if you know who's listening.

Thrift Week (in one day) 2023: Stuff Green People Hate

If you've been reading my blog for several years, you may have noticed that I did not run my usual Thrift Week series this past week, as I have done every January since 2010. And you might reasonably have suspected that after 13 years, I had simply run out of good ideas for a whole week's worth of related posts. But actually, that wasn't the problem; I still had several possibilities in the pipeline that could have worked. The fact is that last Tuesday, when my birthday (which is also Ben Franklin's birthday and thus the official start of Thrift Week) rolled around, I happened to be busy with other stuff, and I just forgot.

Having remembered about this just now, on what would normally be the last day of Thrift Week, it seems a bit silly to start a weeklong series at this point. So, for this year only, I'm going to compromise by condensing a whole Thrift Week into a single post. Instead of seven short-to-medium posts on a single ecofrugal topic, you'll get one long post covering all seven ideas in list form. And the topic I've chosen for this Thrift Week blitz is: The Seven Least Ecofrugal Things You Can Buy. (It's sort of the anti-ecofrugal counterpart to my Stuff Green People Like series.)

When I first jotted down this idea, I planned to lead off the series with a Keurig coffee maker. This seemed like the perfect example of an anti-ecofrugal product, since it's both expensive and wasteful. The machines themselves start at $80, while a drip or French press coffeemaker can cost less than $20. Then there's the cost of the K-cups: $19.99 for 22 K-cups of Starbucks Breakfast Blend coffee, or 91 cents per cup. Compare that with the cost of the same coffee in whole bean form at Walmart: $13.24 for 18 ounces, which works out to 25 cents per cup assuming 47 cups per pound. On top of that, the K-cups are neither recyclable nor compostable, while the leftover grounds and filter from a press or drip machine (or my trusty Aeropress) can go straight into the compost bin. And they don't even make good coffee.

But this week's Washington Post presented an article on the topic that contradicted this view. As I noted last week, you probably can't read the article if you're not a subscriber, but the headline sums it up: "Single-use coffee pods have surprising environmental benefits over other brewing methods." It points to an environmental analysis published in The Conversation (which you can read with no paywall) that compared the carbon footprints of different brewing methods and found that the biggest factors are the coffee itself and the energy used to heat the water. The least wasteful method, assuming you use the recommended amounts of both, is instant coffee (though taste-wise it has even less to recommend it than the pods). But the much-maligned pod machine actually comes in second, since it limits the amount of coffee and water used per cup. The most wasteful method is the standard drip machine, which both uses the most ground coffee per cup and uses extra electricity to keep the pot warm. (The analysis didn't cover the Aeropress, but it did list the amount of coffee used in each method: 25 grams per cup for drip, 17 grams for a French press, 14 for a pod machine like the Keurig, and 12 for instant. I just now measured the amount I use in my Aeropress and it was 15 grams, so I'm doing about as well as a Keurig without all the plastic waste.)

This just goes to show that figuring out a product's ecological footprint can sometimes be a tricky business. So for my Least Ecofrugal list, I'm going to stick strictly to things that are so clearly wasteful (of money and everything else) that there's no realistic chance some smart bunch of scientists is going to come along and prove otherwise. And by that strict standard, my seven choices are:

1. A high-end sports car. I was originally going to say an SUV, since these vehicles are not only gas-guzzlers but are also more expensive to own than most other vehicles. But I have to concede that the data shows they are indeed safer for drivers (though they make the road less safe for everyone else). Sports cars don't offer even that benefit. 

In a 2019 Insider article on the nine most expensive vehicles to own, five of the nine were sports models. And on a 2021 list of the least fuel-efficient cars you can buy, sports cars also dominate. Some models are more efficient than others, but unless you're going for an all-electric (and really expensive) Tesla, they're never going to compete with a fuel-efficient sedan.

2. A boat. Everything that's wasteful about cars goes double for boats. I'm not talking about a little canoe here, obviously, but a big boat that costs money to fuel, maintain, dock, and insure. A longstanding joke among the yacht set is that owning a yacht is like standing in a cold shower tearing up hundred-dollar bills.

How many hundreds are we talking here? Well, according to Deep Sailing, the cost of boat ownership can be anywhere from $450 for a speedboat to $250,000 for a big yacht—per month. However, Watercraft 101 puts the cost much lower, saying that a boat that costs $20,000 to buy up-front will probably cost less than $3,000 per year to own. And Born Again Boating splits the difference, saying that a 23-foot boat will cost around $30,000 in its first year and $15,000 per year after that. The cost seems to depend a lot on what kind of boat it is and how it's financed. 

But here's the thing: unless you fish or run a ferry for a living, you don't actually need to own a boat at all. Unlike a car, a boat is used mainly for recreation, not transportation. So both the cost of ownership and the environmental cost of the boat's emissions are entirely unnecessary.

3. Cigarettes. This one's a no-brainer. At an average cost of $8 per pack, a pack-a-day smoker would spend over $2,900 per year on cigarettes alone. But that cost is just the tip of the iceberg. Smokers also pay significantly more for health care, health insurance, and home insurance, and they're less productive at work, reducing their ability to earn. According to a WalletHub study, the lifetime cost of being a smoker can be anywhere from $2.2 to $4.1 million. And from an environmental standpoint, tobacco not only pollutes the air that nonsmokers have to breathe, it's also responsible for habitat loss; soil degradation; pesticide pollution; deforestation; significant costs in water, energy, and transportation; and, of course, discarded cigarette butts all over the place.

4. Diamonds. You know who came up with the "rule" that a diamond engagement ring should cost two months' salary for the groom? Big surprise: it was the DeBeers diamond cartel, which has kept the price of diamonds artificially high for decades by deliberately restricting supply. One hundred years ago, most engagement rings didn't have diamonds in them at all. Then DeBeers launched a successful campaign to convince husbands-to-be that the only proper ring was a diamond, and moreover, a diamond costing a month's salary. This was such a success that DeBeers later bumped the figure up to two months' salary in the U.S. and three months' salary in Japan.

By 2021, according to The Knot, the average cost of an engagement ring in the U.S. had reached $6,000. (Granted, this figure may be skewed upward based on the magazine's readership.) And what do you get for that $6,000? Not an investment that produces any sort of return. Not an asset that you can sell for a profit, since the recipient is obviously expected to keep the ring as long as the marriage lasts. And definitely not a happier marriage, since a 2014 Emory University study found that the couples who spent most on their rings (between $2,000 and $4,000 in 2014 dollars) had a 30 percent higher risk of divorce than those who chose more affordable rings ($500 to $2,000). 

A big diamond ring is a pretty ornament and a status symbol, but it provides no tangible benefits whatsoever. And given all the environmental and human rights abuses associated with diamond mining, you're probably doing both the earth and your wallet a favor by choosing an old-fashioned ring with a different type of stone—or a modern one with a lab-created diamond. Or, if you're willing to break with this not-so-old tradition, doing what we did and skipping the engagement ring entirely.

5. An expensive wedding. You know what else that Emory study found increased the risk of divorce? Expensive weddings. Couples who spent between $10,000 and $20,000 on their weddings were 29 percent likelier to end up divorced than those who spent between $5,000 and $10,000; couples who spent over $20,000 increased their divorce rates by a whopping 46 percent. By contrast, couples who spent less than $5,000 (like us) actually reduced their risk. Couples who spent even less than we did—$1,000 or less—cut their divorce rate nearly in half. (Having a big wedding, with lots of guests, did not pose the same dangers: the couples with the most wedding guests actually had a lower risk of divorce than those with the fewest. Apparently, the real mistake is spending a lot of money on each guest.)

A frugal wedding like ours also eliminates many of the environmental costs associated with traditional weddings: elaborate invitations, single-use decorations, pesticide-laden cut flowers, gas-guzzling limos, and even one-use-only wedding attire. We didn't have any of that stuff, and we're still together after 18 years, so it clearly didn't hurt us any.

6. Marble countertops. I've complained before about the ubiquity and price of granite countertops, but marble is even worse. It's even more expensive than granite, at $15 to $190 per square foot, and even harder to care for. Since it's porous, you have to not only seal it but also use special, non-abrasive cleaners to avoid scratching it. It's also vulnerable to chipping and etching from acid. And it has all the same environmental problems from quarrying and transporting the heavy stone that granite does.

7. The latest smartphone. After many years of not owning a smartphone at all, I've finally come to accept that the benefits of these little gadgets outweigh their drawbacks. But there's a big difference between owning a smartphone and buying a new top-of-the-line phone every year. 

The financial costs are obvious. The latest, greatest iPhone has a starting price of $1,100; the latest Samsung Galaxy model costs $1,200. You could get around half of that price back by trading in last year's model, but you're still paying over $500 per year for new phones (not even counting the cost of the service). By contrast, my first smartphone, a bottom-of-the-line Motorola, cost $130, and I'd still be using it now if it hadn't developed a problem that I was unable to fix. 

But worse still is the environmental toll. Producing all those new phones requires a lot of rare materials like lithium, cobalt, and gold. Mining these materials is environmentally destructive, and disposing of them is hazardous. And while old smartphones can be reused and recycled, many users simply discard them when they upgrade.

It's clearly better for the environment to buy a decent phone, hang onto it as long as possible, and make sure it gets recycled when it finally becomes unusable. And it will clearly save you a bundle, too.

***

So there you have it: my selections for the seven least ecofrugal consumer purchases. If you think any of my choices are unreasonable, or if you think there's something even worse that I left off the list, let me know in the comments.

That's it until next Thrift Week, when I promise to be a little more on the ball about starting on the 17th. (This time, I'll get Google to remind me about it ahead of time.)

Money Crashers: 15 Ways to Save Money on Medical Expenses & Health Care Costs

The U.S. health care system is a mess. It's a chaotic hodgepodge of competing private insurers that all cover different things at different facilities. As a result, even with insurance, medical bills can often add up to thousands of dollars.

In my latest Money Crashers piece, I explore strategies can help you keep your health care costs under control. They range from choosing the right insurance plan to saving on prescription drugs to practicing preventive care. They're not a solution to our horrendous health care system, but they can help you survive in it.

 
15 Ways to Save Money on Medical Expenses & Health Care Costs

 

One new Money Crashers article, plus a podcast mention

Just a quick post here regarding my latest Money Crashers article on emergency room costs. I've already covered the benefits of going to urgent care instead of the ER when that's an option, but when it's not, there are various ways to minimize the expense. Some are things you can do before an emergency occurs, like figuring out ahead of time which local hospitals charge least for different procedures. Some can be done during your visit, like refusing unnecessary drugs and equipment. And some are for afterward, like getting an itemized bill and checking it carefully for errors. Check them all out here: 13 Ways to Save Money at the Emergency Room (ER)

Also, the Faithful on the Clock podcast is making mention of one of my earlier articles, 7 Important Financial Tips from the Bible. Check it out if that's your jam.

Money Crashers: 3 new articles

A quick update here to tell you about my three latest pieces on Money Crashers. The first is about one of my favorite subjects, books — specifically, books to teach kids about money. I already have a piece on the best personal finance books for adults, and there's an upcoming one about the best books for younger children, but this one focuses on the tween and teen set: ages 11 to 20. 

These days, schools are teaching kids this age the facts of life about sex, but not about money, so it's up to parents to fill in the gap. My folks did this decades ago by giving me a subscription to Penny Power magazine, a version of Consumer Reports for kids. But that magazine is now sadly defunct, so books are the best way to go, and these seven books are the most-recommended of all. Together, they cover every aspect of financial life, from splitting the check at a restaurant from starting a business. With one exception ("Rich Dad, Poor Dad for Kids," which I included because of its popularity but honestly don't think much of), these are all books I wish I'd had the chance to read at this age.

Best Personal Finance Books for Young Adults (Teens and Tweens)

The second is on a topic I've frankly been a little behind the curve on: money transfer apps. The only one I currently use is PayPal, and according to my research, it's a good one overall — but there are lots of other options that can be better for specific uses, from splitting the check with friends to sending money overseas. No matter where and how you want to send money, there's bound to be an app here that works for you.

The Best Money Transfer Apps for Sending and Receiving Cash of 2022

And finally, there's a piece on the boring but highly necessary topic of health insurance. I've written on this subject before, but this piece covers the absolute basics: what health insurance actually does, what terms like "deductible" and "coinsurance" mean, what an insurance policy is required by law to cover, and what kind of limits insurers tend to place on their coverage to keep costs down. It goes into the many different types of health insurance in the higgledy-piggledy U.S. health-care system, from Medicare to HMOs, and answers some basic questions about what health insurance costs and how to get it. It's everything you always wanted to know about health insurance but weren't sure how to ask.

What Is Health Insurance and How Does It Work? 

Money Crashers: How to Get Affordable Mental Health Care

Just a quick post about my latest Money Crashers article,  which is about finding affordable mental health care.

This is a particularly timely piece, since the pandemic has taken a toll on everyone's mental health. And at the same time, it's also made it harder to get out of the house for treatment. All this is bad enough for people with health insurance (which can still be very restrictive about which therapists you can see); for those without any, it's even worse. 

So this article covers a variety of resources you can use to get mental health care on a budget. It includes in-person therapy, telehealth, free alternatives like hot lines and support groups, community mental health clinics, and the new therapy apps that I keep hearing ads for on podcasts.

Therapy Without Insurance – How to Get Affordable Mental Health Care

Money Crashers: 2 health care articles and one on debt settlement

Money Crashers has published three of my articles in the past week. The first is not so much a new article as a spin-off from an old one: my piece on debt settlement from last year. The editors decided to split this into two articles, one on when debt settlement is a good idea and one on the nuts and bolts of how to do it. So the old URL now directs you to the article on the "how," and the new one on the "why" is here:

When Is Debt Settlement a Good Idea – Disadvantages and How It Works

The other two pieces are on health care, and they approach it from two different angles. The latest one is on how to choose the best health insurance plan out of the array of options that your insurer or your state health exchange offers. I walk you through the various factors to consider — premiums, out-of -pocket costs, provider network — and how to balance them to choose the best plan for your family.

How to Choose the Best Health Insurance Plan for Your Family

And the other attacks the problem from the other side of the coin: what to do if you're one of the nearly 30 million Americans without health insurance. I outline the various places to get care without it — including subsidized health clinics, retail clinics, direct primary care, telehealth, free health screenings, Hill-Burton hospitals, urgent care centers, and hospital ERs — with their costs, pros, and cons. And I examine some other ways to save, from the common (discount medical plans) to the obscure (clinical drug trials).

How to Get Affordable Medical Care Without Health Insurance

 

Money Crashers: How to Get Help Paying Your Medicare Premiums and Other Costs

Money Crashers has just posted the third article of my four-part series on Medicare. I didn't set out to write a four-part series, mind you: I was supposed to write just one article providing a general overview of the program and how to enroll. But enrollment proved to be such a complicated topic that I ended up splitting it off into its own article.

Then I started on the first article, planning to include such information as what Medicare is, how it's funded, what it costs for users, who's eligible, what all the different parts are for, and how to choose coverage. But before long, it became clear that the material on Medicare costs was going to be long enough to make a separate article, so I split that one off as well.

In my first draft of that piece, I noted that out-of-pocket costs for Medicare are more than some patients can afford and included some info on programs to help with payment. But my editor decided that this, too, was a big enough topic to turn into a separate piece. So I went in, cut out that section, moved it to a separate article, and expanded it to provide more detail on these various types of programs: Medicaid, Medicare Savings Programs, Extra Help, and PACE.

This is that third article. The fourth of the series, covering the topic of how to enroll, is still to come, and it's a doozy. I mean, if you thought doing your taxes was complicated, you ain't seen nothing yet.

How to Get Help Paying Your Medicare Premiums and Other Costs

 

Money Crashers: 15 Types of Birth Control (Contraception) and How to Choose

Money Crashers has finally published an article of mine that's been in the works for a while. As you may recall, back in my article on the pink tax — the extra cost women pay for many products — I mentioned birth control as a cost mainly borne by women. I didn't have the space in that article to compare the costs of different birth control methods in detail, but it seemed like a topic worth discussing. So I ended up creating a separate piece devoted entirely to the subject of birth control.

In it, I compare the many different methods available for women (and the very few currently available for men) not only in terms of cost, but also in efficacy, health effects, and ease of use. Then I discuss how to evaluate your own needs and figure out how these factors balance out for you.

15 Types of Birth Control (Contraception) and How to Choose

Money Crashers: How Much Does Medicare Cost?

Back in December, I had a piece published on Money Crashers that was meant to provide a broad overview of the Medicare system. However, this turned out to be a much bigger topic than my editors had anticipated, and so the single article ended up being split into four different pieces. The first piece, which you've seen, was about the Medicare system, the second was on how to enroll, and the last two were on costs — what they are and how to manage them.

Two of those pieces are still in the pipeline, but the one on Medicare costs has just been published. It's a more complicated topic than you might think, covering all the different parts of Medicare and all the different costs — premiums, coinsurance, deductibles — associated with each. It's not exactly a cheerful subject, but forewarned is forearmed, and one of the later articles will offer more concrete advice on ways to reduce the costs.

How Much Does Medicare Cost? – Parts A, B, D, Advantage & Medigap

 

The toothbrush dilemma solved

Last week, I installed the last of the replacement heads I had stored up for our Fuchs Ecotek toothbrushes. I'd known this day was coming for about a year, ever since I went looking for information about where to buy the Ecotek and discovered that it was no longer available. And I'd found two possible alternatives to replace it: the Greener Step Snap toothbrush, a similar plastic replaceable-head model, and the various brands of bamboo-handled toothbrushes available online. But I hadn't been sure which was the more ecofrugal alternative. The bamboo brushes were definitely cheaper, even with shipping costs, but which was greener? Was it better to discard an entire toothbrush made primarily of bamboo (but with non-compostable nylon bristles) every three months, or just the head of a plastic toothbrush? As I wondered in my original blog entry on the topic, "How do you even compare the two?"

Well, as it turns out, a team of British and Irish researchers with a lot more resources than I have to devote to the subject have figured out how. They did a complete lifecycle analysis of four different kinds of toothbrushes — electric, single-use plastic, replaceable-head plastic, and single-use bamboo — and compared their "Disability-Adjusted Life Years," or DALYs. That's the number of years (or in this case, hours) of life that each toothbrush would cost a human population in illness, disability, and death. This factors in all forms of pollution, including greenhouse gases, as well as costs such as water use, to figure out exactly which kind is the most sustainable overall. (If you don't want to read the whole study, you can read a summary here.)

The upshot is, measured in DALYs, the reusable-head toothbrush is definitively better than the bamboo one. It does have a larger carbon footprint, but only by a tiny bit, and its water footprint is significantly lower. However, both of them are much better than a single-use plastic toothbrush, as it's the plastic handle that has the biggest ecological footprint. And they are both an order of magnitude better than an electric toothbrush on pretty much every measurable dimension. (Of course, you could argue that an electric toothbrush has human health benefits not measured by this study, based on this study that shows it does a better job of preventing cavities. But dentists interviewed by Consumer Reports say the type of brush you use matters far less than your brushing technique and how often you replace it.)

Now, I should point out that just because a reusable-head toothbrush is the most sustainable of all existing options doesn't mean it's the best of all possible toothbrushes. The researchers also evaluated alternatives possible alternatives like:

• A single-use bioplastic toothbrush. This was not better than a single-use plastic handle, because it reduced the carbon footprint only slightly and increased DALYs significantly.
• Toothbrushes packaged in large cardboard boxes rather than individual blister packs. This is an improvement over the single-use plastic brushes we have now, but it doesn't reduce carbon footprint significantly.
  
• A toothbrush with a reusable handle made of aluminum rather than plastic. This significantly reduces both DALYs and carbon footprint, but not by as much as...
• A recycling scheme that allows both plastic toothbrushes and their packaging to be returned to the manufacturer and recycled, with new toothbrushes being made of 90% recycled plastic.
  

This hypothetical recycled toothbrush could reduce both carbon footprint and DALYs by a considerable margin. However, nothing like it currently exists. I've actually discovered a Mexican company that seems to be working on it, but their product, the Everloop toothbrush, doesn't appear to be available yet. So for now, at least, the plastic reusable-head toothbrush is the best we can do.

Which is why Brian and I are now the proud owners of a pair of Greener Step toothbrushes. I chose the "Value 12 pack" with two handles (we choose green and orange, though you can also go for red and blue) and a dozen snap-in heads. That cost us $19.95 (including shipping), for cost of $1.66 per brush. Brian's, the orange one, has already been deployed in our DIY hacked toothbrush holder; I'm sticking with my old Ecotek for now, since it has this brand-new head that it would be a shame to waste. But once that wears out, I'll switch to the green toothbrush, and probably change the head in Brian's at around the same time. Assuming we continue replacing the heads every three months, these should last us about a year and a half.

And if, for some reason, the Greener Step is no longer available at that point, I'll know I can simply order a pack of bamboo-handled toothbrushes that are almost as good, rather than having to go an another deep dive looking for a new sustainable option. (Or, who knows — maybe the Everloop will be on the market by then, and I can give that a try.)

Money Crashers: 4 new articles

Several of my new articles for Money Crashers dropped yesterday and today, covering a variety of topics. First up is a piece on home power generators — specifically, on whether buying one to deal with disasters like the recent crisis in Texas is a good idea for you. I explored this idea myself during a series of rolling (and totally unpredictable) blackouts in 2014, and I concluded that the answer was no; we didn't have a reasonable place to set up a portable generator, nor to store it and the fuel for it, and a standby one would be far too expensive a solution for what was, for us, a fairly infrequent problem. This article walks you through the same process I went through to reach this conclusion, covering the pros and cons of owning a generator and the questions you should ask to determine if it's right for you. I also discuss several alternatives to consider for getting through a blackout, such as the gas heater we eventually ended up with. (And in case you decide a generator is the right choice for you, there's a companion article to this one due out soon on how to buy one.)

Should I Buy a Backup Standby Power Generator for My Home?

The next two articles deal with the cost of long-term care and how to deal with it. According to HHS, Americans over 65 have a 70% chance of needing long-term care at some point in their lives, and the costs can be astronomical — anywhere from $1,603 to $8,821 per month, based on a Genworth study from 2020. The first of the two articles focuses on ways to reduce this cost, such as relying on family members for care (which can take a toll on their mental health and yours), government aid programs, relocation, and long-term care insurance. (This, too, can be quite costly, so the article also explores ways to keep the premiums down as much as possible.) The second article approaches the topic from a more long-term perspective, discussing how you can plan ahead to deal with your costs, using products like insurance, annuities, or reverse mortgages. Between the two, they offer a complete primer on how to protect yourself from catastrophic costs.

How to Lower Long-Term Care Costs (Nursing Homes & Insurance)

Long-Term Care Options and How to Plan for the Costs

Finally, an article on a topic dear to my heart: podcasts. I'm a regular consumer of podcasts, listening to one every day in the shower. (In fact, I now have so many I listen to regularly that during the winter, when I don't always shower every day, I have trouble keeping up.) Many of my favorite podcasts are about economics, but I know many other people would rather learn about money on a more personal level: how they can use it to their best advantage for particular personal goals. The podcasts in this roundup can help. Whatever your goals — getting out of debt, earning more money, choosing investments, retiring early — there’s a podcast out there that can help you reach them, and this article can tell you where to find it. 

15 Best Financial Podcasts About Money, Business & Investing in 2021

Money Crashers: COBRA Health Insurance Guide

Just a quick update here to let you know about my latest Money Crashers article. It's about COBRA, which I kind of doubt is all that useful for anyone these days, since an ACA marketplace health plan — even without subsidies — is almost always cheaper than paying for your old workplace plan without your employer's help. But there are some cases in which it could possibly be worth the money, and this article explains what they are, along with other details such as who's eligible for the program and how to enroll. Here it is:

COBRA Health Insurance Guide – Continue Coverage After Ending a Job

Money Crashers: Three unrelated articles

Money Crashers has popped up three of my articles in the past week, all on quite different topics.

Article #1 is the first in a series of pieces I'm doing on Medicare. Originally, my editor asked me for just one article providing an overview of this government program and the process of signing up, and as I got into it, I discovered just how ludicrously complicated it is. I mean, doing your taxes is hard, but at least there's software for that; for Medicare, all the government provides is a grotesque kludge of a website that has the information you need to navigate the system scattered across dozens of different pages with no coherent path through it.

So I ended up writing not one, but four articles that try to provide the kind of clear, comprehensive explanation the government so noticeably fails to provide. This is the first of the four: an outline of the ins and outs of the Medicare system. It explains who is eligible for Medicare, how the program is funded, what all the different parts of Medicare (Part A, Part B, Part D, Medicare Advantage, and Medigap) are for, and how to choose the coverage you need. In future articles, I'll tackle the topics of what Medicare costs, ways to reduce the cost, and how to enroll — a process that's far more complicated than you might expect.

What Is Medicare – How It Works & What It Covers

The second piece deals with a lighter topic: streaming video services. I originally wrote this piece years ago, but like many of my articles, it sat unpublished until this spring, when my editors discovered that it had suddenly become highly topical. So they told me to quickly bring the old piece up to date so they could get it up onto the site — and then, apparently, they forgot about it until this month, when I suddenly got notice that it had been published and I should check to make sure all the info in it was still correct. It wasn't, but I did yet another quick edit to bring it up to date once more, and the revised piece now offers a comparison of the top streaming services: what content and features they offer, what they cost, and what kind of viewer would get the most out of them.

Best Video Streaming Services of 2020 (On-Demand & Live)

Lastly, we have a piece on another topic that's become highly relevant during the pandemic: restaurant delivery. These days, ordering is the new dining out, but surprisingly, it's often more expensive than the old dining out — partly because of delivery and service fees, and partly because the takeout menu itself is sometimes priced higher than the dine-in one. In this piece, I outline ways to keep your takeout food budget under control, which fall into three main categories: placing a cheaper order, controlling delivery fees, and taking advantage of discounts wherever possible.

18 Ways to Save Money on Restaurant Food Delivery & Takeout

Money Crashers: Two health insurance articles

Money Crashers has popped up two of my articles in the past few days. Both deal with the topic of health insurance, but from very different angles.

The first article is a broad overview of the Medicaid program: how it works, who is helped by it, what its critics (on the left and right) have to say about it, how justified those criticisms are, and what could be done to make the program more sustainable in the future.

What Is Medicaid – How It Works, Criticisms & Future

The second piece is about private health insurance — which, for most of us, means workplace health plans. It walks you through the complex process of choosing the right plan for yourself and your family, from the general (how health insurance and health insurance marketplaces work) to the nitty-gritty details of comparing types of plans, costs, and coverage.

How to Choose the Best Health Insurance Plan for Your Family

Hope this information is helpful for you during this season of peace, joy, and open enrollment.

Money Crashers: 7 Ways to Reduce Prescription Drug Costs Regardless of Health Insurance

Here's the companion piece I promised you to my earlier article on affording health care without insurance. This one focuses on the cost of prescription drugs, which often aren't covered even for people with insurance. In 2018, nearly 30% of American adults didn’t take their medications as prescribed because of the cost, and about 30% of them say their condition got worse as a result. My article covers better ways to save, including generic drugs, samples, price comparison sites, charitable pharmacies, state aid programs, and drug discount cards.

7 Ways to Reduce Prescription Drug Costs Regardless of Health Insurance

Ecofrugality in the time of COVID, part 2

Today, my weekly "The Goods" newsletter from Vox contained this headline: "Do you really have to wash your mask after every use? Short answer: Yes." This puzzled me, because as far as I know, there's really no evidence to support this particular piece of advice. Think about it for a minute: If you're outside, maintaining a six-foot distance from other people, then there should be no way for their germs to get onto your mask — even onto the outside surface of it — in any detectable amount. Even if you're in a store and coming within six feet of other people, as long as they're all wearing masks too — which, by law, they have to be here in New Jersey — then their germs shouldn't be getting onto your mask.

Even if there's still a tiny, theoretical risk that germs could somehow get onto your mask just from briefly passing someone else on the street, that risk is no greater for your mask than for the rest of your clothes. Yet no one is suggesting that you have to immediately take off and wash all your clothes after coming inside and then wash your hands and change into clean clothes, lest the germs from your clothes somehow get onto your hands and from there into your body. This kind of precaution makes sense if you're a doctor who's been in contact with sick people all day, but I haven't heard anyone advocating it for ordinary people just going out for a walk or a trip to the store. So why is it necessary for masks?

On top of that, based on what we now know about the virus, it seems that COVID isn't likely to spread through contact with objects at all. The CDC website now says, "The primary and most important mode of transmission for COVID-19 is through close contact from person-to-person," and while it adds that "it may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes," I'm not aware of any evidence that the virus actually does spread this way.

In fact, according to one idea floated last week in the New England Journal of Medicine, one benefit of masks could actually be that they don't block out every single virus. The authors speculated that wearing masks that screen out some, but not all, viral particles could allow people to become inoculated against the virus through low-dose exposure, increasing the chances that their immune system will learn to recognize it without their actually needing to be exposed to enough of it to make them sick. Granted, this hypothesis hasn't been and probably can't be tested, but if it's right, it would mean that being hyper-sensitive about washing masks after every use is not only unnecessary but counterproductive.

Even the Vox article itself conceded that, since surface transmission isn't common, "The recommendation to wash your mask comes out of an abundance of caution." And yet the headline sends exactly the opposite message: You must, yes MUST, wash your mask EVERY SINGLE TIME you use it. And you must not touch it at all while wearing it. And when removing it, you must touch only the ear loops, not the surface. And you must immediately wash your hands afterwards. And you mustn't wear that mask again until it's been washed — and oh, by the way, a mask will only remain effective for about 50 washings, or 100 if it's air-dried. After that, you have to buy a new one.

Reading this article really pissed me off, and at first I wasn't sure why. I mean, sure, what they're recommending may be unnecessary, but is it really harmful? How can "an abundance of caution" be a bad thing?

Thinking it over, I discovered the main thing that bothers me about this: It's anti-ecofrugal.

Consider: if you have to wear a fresh mask every time you go out (not to mention putting on a fresh one if yours gets wet from rain, sweat, or exhaled moisture), then you have two choices. First, you can wear disposable masks, which use up more resources and create more waste than cloth ones. Or, second, you can have a large enough supply of reusable masks to wear a fresh one (or two) every day between loads of laundry. This, in turn, means you either have to buy your masks by the dozen or wash your clothes every couple of days, doing smaller loads if necessary, to ensure you always have a clean one. And even if you have a different mask for every day of the week, you'll still need to invest in new ones after a year, since they're no good after 50 washings. No matter what you choose, you have to spend more money and use more resources than if you simply had two or three masks and wore the same one until it got dirty.

And here's the thing: I would still be willing to do all this, even though it goes against my environmental instincts, if there were clear evidence that, by doing so, I would be helping to contain the virus. In that case, I would see it as a worthwhile sacrifice, much like not seeing my friends in person for months and not touching anyone outside my family and crossing the street every time I come near another person on the sidewalk. But in fact, there is no clear evidence that this abundantly cautious behavior makes a difference. Wearing masks absolutely makes a difference. But there's no evidence that requiring fresh masks every time makes more of a difference than reusing the same mask.

And this is just one way out of many that ecofrugal behaviors are being actively discouraged, if not outright banned, during this pandemic for little or no benefit. I still can't take my reusable cup to Starbucks (though I could if I lived in Europe, Africa, or the Middle East); I have to take a single-use cup that can never be recycled. I still can't take a reusable bag to Trader Joe's; every time I shop there, I have to take one or more of their paper bags, which are even worse for the environment than single-use plastic ones. Despite the increasing evidence that COVID does not spread through contact with objects, businesses are continuing to require practices that are bad for the environment and unlikely to have any effect on health — focusing even more on them than on practices that do actually help, like limiting the number of customers in the store at a time.

Moreover, the cost to the environment isn't the only problem these strict policies create. For example, much as I dislike the added cost of buying more masks and doing more laundry, I can at least afford it. But there are many people, even in this wealthy nation, who can't easily afford it, especially with unemployment as high as it is now. For these people, these strict guidelines are a serious hardship — one that could make them less willing to wear masks at all. After all, if the only right way to wear a mask is to wear a clean one every time you leave the house, and to keep it on continuously until you return home, and to avoid touching it at all, and to change it (while somehow not touching it) any time it gets wet, and to take it off as soon as you get home and then wash your hands immediately, then if there's any single one of those rules you can't comply with, you're liable to think, "Well, wearing a mask is just impossible for me." By trying to get Americans to adhere to the strictest possible guidelines "out of an abundance of caution," these doctors may actually be making us all less safe by reducing compliance.

Let me be absolutely clear about this: I am not taking an extreme libertarian stance against all steps people, businesses, and governments are taking to contain the virus. I am absolutely for any measures to do so that truly are supported by the science, such as wearing masks, maintaining physical distance, and contact tracing. What I can't get behind is imposing rules that have no science behind them, that reduce the chances people will comply with the rules that do have science behind them, and that waste money and natural resources in the process.

Money Crashers: How to Get Affordable Medical Care Without Health Insurance

Ten years after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, there are still over 27.5 million Americans without health insurance. Some of them are trapped in the coverage gap caused when states refused to expand their Medicaid programs, making it impossible to get an insurance subsidy if your income is too low (because that makes tons of sense). Others have been caught by the family glitch that shuts spouses and children out of subsidies as long as the primary earner in the family has access to affordable coverage for themselves. And some probably could afford insurance, but weighing the cost, they've decided to take their chances going without it.

For all these folks, all health-care costs are out-of-pocket costs. Many of them rely on the emergency room as their primary source of care, since ERs must treat all patients regardless of their ability to pay. However, that doesn't stop them from sending a bill — and it'll be a big one, since the ER is just about the most expensive place possible to get treatment.

So, for anything that isn't a true emergency, it makes much more sense to look for other alternatives first. There are many cheaper sources of care for people without insurance, including free and low-cost health clinics, retail clinics, direct primary care, telemedicine, and urgent care centers. And these folks can sometimes lower their bills still more through medical discount plans, health-care sharing ministries, or clinical trials.

Yes, our health-care system remains broken. But until we can find a way to fix it, at least you can try to avoid letting it break you.

How to Get Affordable Medical Care Without Health Insurance

Money Crashers: How to Choose the Right Bicycle

Here's another new Money Crashers piece on the topic of shopping for a new bicycle. When I say "new," I really mean "new to you," since secondhand bikes are a perfectly acceptable option (especially if every time you shell out money for a nice new bike, someone steals it, which is what keeps happening to Brian). But whether you're buying new or used, you need to get the right type of bicycle. Bikes come in many different flavors — racing bikes, mountain bikes, cruisers — and each one has its own strong and weak points. So, to choose the bike that’s best for you, your first question should be, "What am I using it for?"

I start out with a loose classification of the major types of bikes, discussing what each variety is good for and what it costs. Then I go into specific features that you might want based on your riding preferences, such as suspension, brake type, and an electric motor. And lastly, I outline the process for choosing a new bike that's right for you: determining your needs and budget, testing different models, and getting the best price.

How to Choose the Right Bicycle – Different Types of Bikes