Is there an app for ecofrugality?

There are all kinds of useful tools to support an ecofrugal lifestyle. In some of my Thrift Week series, for instance, I've discussed my favorite ecofrugal books, websites, and recipes. Now that I've finally entered the 21st century and acquired a smartphone, I've realized I should add apps to the list as well. 

Over the past year, I've tested out several apps that looked like they could be handy for ecofrugal folks. As it turned out, most of them weren't all that useful for me, but that doesn't necessarily mean they wouldn't be for you. It all depends on where you live and what you want your ecofrugal life to look like—something that, as I've noted before, will vary from person to person.

Ecofrugal App #1: Buy Nothing

For over 15 years, Brian and I have been avid users of Freecycle. We use it mostly to get rid of stuff we no longer need, but we've also acquired a variety of useful items through the site, from a bicycle to, literally, the kitchen sink. So when I started hearing about another giveaway network called the Buy Nothing Project, I figured it would be worthwhile to check it out. 

When I first learned about the Buy Nothing Project, around 2021, it existed mostly on Facebook. There were thousands of local Buy Nothing groups across the country and around the world where people could offer or request items from each other, just as they do on Freecycle. However, the organization had recently developed its own app and was encouraging people to migrate their groups onto that platform. So when I decided to give Buy Nothing a shot, I downloaded the app and signed up for the nearest group in my area. 

Unfortunately, it turned out to be a bit of a wasteland. Practically no one ever posted anything on the site, and only a few people seemed to be using it at all. Eventually, I figured out that most people in my area were ignoring the app and continuing to post on the local Facebook group. So I joined the group, which I now check whenever I happen to be on Facebook, and deleted the app. 

Verdict: For me, the Buy Nothing app was not at all useful. The Facebook group is somewhat more so; it gets a lot more traffic, and I occasionally see an offer for something that I might be able to use or a request for something I might be able to provide. But so far, I have never actually obtained or donated anything via the group. The local Freecycle group, which is considerably larger and busier, remains my go-to site for disposing of excess stuff. But your mileage, naturally, may vary. It's quite possible that your area has a bustling Buy Nothing community, either on Facebook or on the app, and nobody at all on Freecycle. So check out both to decide whether either one, or both, is worth your time.

Ecofrugal App #2: Faircado

I can't remember exactly where I first heard about the Faircado app and browser extension. I may have seen it mentioned in a newsletter or just happened to run across a mention of it online. In any case, the idea behind it struck me as a sound one: make it easier for people to find secondhand clothing by popping up listings for used versions of items they shop for online. Since I do most of my online shopping on my computer rather than my phone, I installed the Firefox browser extension rather than the app.

Over the next few months, the add-on appeared to be working as designed. That is, whenever I visited a clothing store online, it would dutifully pop up a list of suggestions for secondhand alternatives to whatever I was looking at. Unfortunately, these suggestions were generally not useful for me, and for a very specific reason: the company that runs Faircado is based in Germany. Consequently, most of the secondhand garments it found for me were listed on European sites. Shipping them to the U.S. would have more than doubled their price (not to mention their carbon footprint). The extension did pop up a few items from U.S. sellers, but there was no way to filter the list to see only those items. Eventually, I got frustrated and removed the browser extension.

Verdict: This app was not useful for me, and I don't think it would be for other U.S. shoppers. I'll keep an eye on the Faircado website to see if it ever rolls out a "search by location" feature, and if it does, perhaps I'll consider reinstalling it.

Ecofrugal App #3: Too Good to Go

I learned about the Too Good to Go app from the Washington Post's Climate Coach column. Its purpose is to help grocery stores and eateries dispose of perishable food they have left at the end of the day, rather than sending it to the landfill to produce methane. You can use the app to purchase a "surprise bag" of leftovers from a nearby establishment. The prices are fairly low—in my area, they typically range from $4 to $6—but you never know exactly what you're going to get for that amount. Consequently, it's hard to evaluate whether you're getting a good deal or not. Ya pays yer money, ya takes yer chances.

Columnist Michael Coren says he "fed [his] family for days" using food salvaged from the trash with the help of this and a similar app called Flashfood. The business model for Flashfood sounded a bit more useful to me: Coren called it "a discount grocery shelf" from which you can select fresh produce and other perishables at up to 50 percent off the original price. But unfortunately, when I consulted the Flashfood website, it said it didn't have any participating stores in my area. So I decided to give To Good to Go a try instead. 

I downloaded the free app and found that there were several local establishments signed up on it, but they were mostly bakeries and pizza places. That didn't look too useful for us, since Brian makes all our pizza and baked goods from scratch—probably for less than it would cost to buy from the app. There was only one nearby grocery store signed up on the app: the George Street Co-Op in New Brunswick, which offers up bags of its worse-for-wear organic produce for $4 at the end of each day. The problem is that you have to order your bag after 5pm and come to pick it up between 7pm and 8pm. That's not a very convenient hour for us to head out for a walk of around 45 minutes each way, particularly in the wintertime. So to take advantage of these produce deals, we'd have to make a special trip by car to pick them up—not exactly an eco-friendly way to acquire groceries.

Still, I felt like I shouldn't give up on the To Good to Go app without trying it at least once. So one Monday evening, when we were planning to go play board games at a local bar called Pino's, I ordered a surprise bag from Salonika, a Greek deli and grocery just a short distance from our house. We'd be passing right by it on our way to Pino's, just at the designated hour for pickups, and we could share whatever goodies the bag contained with our gaming buddies, thus reducing the hazard to our own waistlines of coming home with a whole bag crammed with rich pastries.

As it turned out, our surprise bag wasn't quite so naughty as all that. For $6, I got just two pieces of savory pastry: one largish portion of spanakopita (spinach pie) and another of cheese pie. These proved a bit awkward to share with our fellow gamers; since we had just two large pieces rather than several small ones, I had to get out my little pocketknife so people could hack pieces off. But folks seemed to enjoy the cheese pie, and Brian and I enjoyed the spanakopita later at home. Still, I didn't feel like I'd gotten that much of a bargain for my $6, and I didn't feel all that inclined to repeat the experience.

Verdict: For us, this app isn't very useful. We'd probably use it more if we lived close enough to the  George Street Co-op to take advantage of its cheap produce deals, but in our location, there's just not enough of anything we can reasonably use. I haven't deleted the app yet, but I probably won't keep it much longer.

Ecofrugal App #4: Gem.app

I learned about Gem.app just within the past couple of weeks. My phone or my computer popped up some story about secondhand clothing, and along with all the references to specific secondhand marketplaces I was already familiar with (Poshmark, eBay, Mercari), it mentioned Gem.app as a tool for searching all those marketplaces. Unlike Faircado, Gem doesn't automatically pop up search results whenever you're shopping; you have to physically go to the app or the website and do a search. But with that one search, you can find clothes from all the secondhand sites at once, rather than laboriously searching one at a time.

As I mentioned, I tend to shop with my computer more than my phone, so I haven't installed the actual Gem app. But I have used the Gem.app website several times, and I must say, it makes shopping secondhand much, much easier. Not only can I find items from many stores at once, Gem's search algorithm gives me much more useful results than those on most individual sites. If I do a search on eBay or Etsy for "women's colorful sweater," I'll find some things that fit that description, but many more that aren't sweaters, aren't colorful, and/or aren't for women. On Gem.app, all the results are, in fact, colorful women's sweaters, and I can narrow those results based on size, price, brand, and other criteria.

Verdict: This one's a keeper. I've haven't actually found anything I want yet through the Gem app, but I now waste much less time scrolling through pictures of things I don't want. Instead of hunting fruitlessly through page after page on eBay and Mercari, I can do a quick search on Gem and, if I don't see anything I like, plan to try again another day. And I imagine anyone else of an ecofrugal bent would find it equally useful.

More climate solutions

Last week, while celebrating the fact that our country finally, finally managed to pass meaningful climate legislation, I also stressed that the new law itself wasn't going to be enough. We still need to keep up efforts to decarbonize our economy at all levels of government, and in the private sector as well. So what's next? Which new approaches will do most to help us cut carbon emissions, and draw down existing emissions, as fast as possible?

Glad you asked! Back in January, in an effort to fight off climate despair, I posted a small roundup of five ideas that had the potential to be game changers on climate. Here are four more — this time, complete with some suggestions on how to help them along.

Game changer #6: Fake meat

Last month, I read a piece in Knowable magazine that posed the question, "How sustainable are fake meats?" The answer turns out to be, "Maybe not as sustainable as other plant-based proteins, but way better than real meat." Measured in kilograms of CO2 equivalent per gram of protein, plant-based faux meats are much better than beef, better than pork or chicken, and in some cases, even better than eggs. They're not as carbon-light as tofu, pulses (legumes), or peas, but they're not that far behind. They use much less water, too. And in terms of land use, they're actually more sustainable.

How much could this help the climate? Quite a bit. According to the article, 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from livestock. Replacing the meat we eat now with faux meat could cut that figure by anywhere from 53% (for pork) to 93% (for beef). So if you figure 70% on average, that's about a tenth of all our greenhouse gas emissions gone.

What's holding it back? Two things: quality and cost. At present, there are good plant-based substitutes for ground beef and chicken nuggets, but not for the good stuff, like steak and chicken breast. And because these meats are pretty cheap, the plant-based versions are currently more expensive.

How can you help make it happen? This one's easy. Fun, even. Just start sampling the wide variety of tasty plant-based meats out there until you find one you really like, and then sub it in for real meat whenever possible. 

Game changer #7: Superhot rock energy

Besides being a really good name for a band, superhot rock energy is "the carbon-free energy resource you've never heard of," according to the Clean Air Task Force (CATF). See, we already know that there's an essentially limitless source of heat energy in the earth's mantle, but the problem is tapping into it. Traditional geothermal energy relies on natural sources of underground steam, which you only find where there are hot spots quite close to the surface. But there are few such locations, which greatly limits its potential as an energy source.

For superhot rock energy, you have to go deeper into the earth's crust, down to the regions where everything is hot. Then you drill wells and inject water to pick up that heat and carry it back to the surface, where you can use it to generate power. It can also serve to split apart water for clean hydrogen fuel. 

How much could this help the climate? It could be huge. We're talking unlimited power that's available basically anywhere, anytime. All you have to do is build the power plants (or repurpose existing fossil-fuel plants) to tap into it. 

What's holding it back? First of all, these wells need to be really deep, and they're in areas that are, by definition, very hot. So we need new techniques and new materials to make it work. And second, you need to figure out how to do it without setting off earthquakes in the process, the way fracking can.

How can you help make it happen? You can donate to organizations (such as CATF) that are working to make this new clean energy source a reality. And in the meantime, you can read up on it, so when climate skeptics start whining about how renewable energy is unreliable because sometimes the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing, you can say, "Well, actually..." and take the wind right out of their sails.

Game changer #8: Plastic-to-graphene recycling

This idea is about as ecofrugal as you can get. It's about turning something harmful that no one wants (plastic waste) into something incredibly useful that everyone wants. According to Design News, scientists at Rice University have figured out how to recycle waste plastic into graphene, a material that's a useful part of electronics, concrete, new plastics, and all kinds of other stuff. And better still, their technique is considerably cheaper than current methods of making graphene.

How much could this help the climate? So, plastic waste isn't just ugly and toxic and harmful to wildlife. It's all of those things, but it's also a threat to the atmosphere because when it ends up in the oceans, microbes digest it and in the process convert oxygen to carbon dioxide. Plastic that ends up in landfills can break down into methane, which is even more harmful. Turning plastic into graphene not only eliminates these emissions sources but also reduces the need for environmentally harmful graphite mining. It's not clear from the article just how big an impact it could have, but considering all the other problems plastic waste creates, having less of it (and better yet, turning it into something useful) is clearly a Very Good Thing.

What's holding it back? Mostly the fact that the idea is so new. The paper announcing it came out less than two years ago, so it will take time to scale it up. But the team at Rice is already getting started, working with Ford Motors to recycle the plastic parts of deceased Ford F-150s.

How can you help make it happen? Well, you could consider a Ford for your next vehicle. But for now, you can probably do more good by reducing plastic waste in other ways, like giving up stupid bottled water.

Game changer #9: Leaner, cleaner, greener air conditioning

Living on a warming planet makes us all more and more dependent on air conditioning — but the more we use air conditioning to cool ourselves, the more we heat the planet. The electricity it uses is part of the problem, but we can fix that by making the power grid greener. The bigger problem is that the coolants in most air conditioners are themselves potent greenhouse gases, and there's no way to keep them perfectly contained. It's an environmental catch-22.

But that may not be the case much longer. A recent Vox article talks about new, experimental air conditioners that could completely change the way we cool ourselves. For instance, a company called Blue Frontier has developed an air conditioner based on a "liquid dessicant": a highly concentrated salt solution that absorbs moisture from indoor air, then releases it outdoors. (A video from a rival company, Advantix, shows how this works.) Another company, Transaera, uses "a novel sponge-like material" to snork up moisture from the air, then recycles the heat thrown off by the machine to dry it out again. And the British company Barocal is using "barocaloric cooling," which depends on a material that heats up as pressure is applied to it and cools off when the pressure is released.

How much could this help the climate? If an A/C unit runs on 100 percent renewable energy, and if it stays completely sealed, it does very little damage. However, those conditions seldom apply. According to the World Economic Forum, if we could replace today's conventional air conditioners with new designs that cut emissions by four-fifths (which these experimental models do), it could eliminate emissions of as much as 100 gigatons of CO2 equivalent by 2050.

What's holding it back? The technology is there, but it's very new. It will take time and money to scale it up.

How can you help make it happen? Unfortunately, you can't buy one of these new, hyper-efficient air conditioners today, and you won't be able to any time in the next few years. But you can follow the news of these companies, as well as the Global Cooling Prize, which helps support new cooling technologies like these. And if you get a chance to invest in them or otherwise support their work, go for it. It'll help bring these technologies to market faster, and given how much the world needs them, it'll probably pay off in the long run.

Money Crashers: Two inflation articles

Just a quick update to fill you in on my two most recent articles at Money Crashers. The first is a quick "explainer" on inflation, a much-discussed topic in the news these days. It covers all the basics about causes inflation, what its effects can be, how it's measured, some historical examples, and the monetary policy tools the Fed uses to combat it. So the next time someone (inevitably) starts grumbling about inflation, you'll be able to join intelligently in the conversation.

What Is Inflation (Definition) – Causes & Effects of Rate on Prices & Interest

One particular form of inflation a lot of people are worrying about is rising gas prices. One way to deal with them is to use a gas savings app, which helps you find the cheapest gas station in your area and fill up your tank for less. For my second piece, I compare the features of six top gas savings apps to help you find the one that's best for you.

The Best Apps to Find Cheap Gas Stations & Save Money On Fuel

Money Crashers: 3 new articles

Money Crashers has popped up three of my articles in the past couple of days, all on quite different topics. The first is about reuse centers like the Habitat for Humanity Restore, which served us so well when we remodeled our downstairs bathroom ten years back. The piece explains how reuse centers (and architectural salvage stores, a related type of store that focuses more on unique, high-end pieces) work, the pros and cons of shopping there, and how to find one near you.

How to Shop at Reuse Centers & Architectural Salvage Stores to Save on Home Improvement

The second piece is about another topic we have some experience with, refurbished electronics. When I bought my old Mac (the one I finally replaced this year), I bought a refurbished one-year-old model, not as a way to save money, but because it was the only way to get a Mac with a CD drive, which I still needed, and without the latest OS, Lion, which was full of bugs. However, "refurbs" offer other benefits too, including the warranties and tech support you'd expect on a new device with prices up to 50% lower. In my piece, I explain how refurbs differ from both new and used goods, where you can find them, and how to get the best deals.

Should I Buy Refurbished Electronics? – How It’s Different From New & Used

Finally, a piece on a somewhat less gripping topic: bank accounts. This is simply a primer on the four common types of bank accounts — checking accounts, savings accounts, money market accounts, and CDs — and how they differ. I cover the pros and cons of each account type in detail, plus the subcategories within each type, and how to decide which type of account you need.

4 Different Types of Bank Accounts Explained

Ecofrugal computing

I've known for over a year that my old Mac Mini, bought in 2011, was on its last legs. I'd been having more and more trouble as the years went by with software freezing and crashing, and this year it finally reached a point where a program I needed for work was so slow to use that I was probably wasting an hour out of each workday just waiting for documents to load. I'd already upgraded this machine to the limit of its capacity, so the only option left was to replace it. The question was, what with?

One thing I knew for sure was that I wasn't going to buy another Mac. I'd been a loyal Apple user for over 30 years, but of late, Apple seems to have practically lost interest in making computers; the company has discovered that the real money is in making phones and other gadgets that people can be persuaded to replace every year. And to the extent that it still makes computers, it seems to want to use the same business model with those, forcing users to replace their computers and/or software as often as possible. It's no longer even trying to maintain back-compatibility, so each time a new version of the OS comes out, software that ran on the last version becomes unusable. And with each new model, it offers newer, faster, "better" interfaces and ditches the old ones that many users are still relying on. This was already a problem when I bought this Mac ten years ago, and I found that the new Mac Minis not only lacked a CD drive — on the grounds that CD technology was obsolete, which is questionable even now and certainly wasn't true then — but the latest version of MacOS, called Lion, broke all my software (and there was no way to "downgrade" the system to an older version). At the time, I dealt with these problems by returning the new Mac and buying a year-old one that still had a CD drive and was running the previous OS. But there would be no getting around them now.

So, with Apple off the table, I was pretty much constrained to buy a Windows machine. (A Chrome or Linux box might actually be able to run all the software I needed to use for work, but not the Filemaker program I need for my volunteer job.) But Windows machines come in many types and sizes: laptops, full-size PCs, mini PCs, all-in-ones. To meet my needs as ecofrugally as possible, I wanted one I could keep using for as long as possible: one that would be not only adequate but ample for everything I currently need it to do, and that could be upgraded easily in future to keep it running for at least ten years (like my old Mac and the one before it).

I ruled out the idea of an all-in-one right away, since having the monitor and the CPU in one unit means that if either one fails, the whole thing fails. Besides, there's no point in paying extra for a machine with a built-in monitor when I already have a perfectly good one. I didn't give serious consideration to a full-size PC, either. They're the easiest type of machine to upgrade, but also the most power-hungry, and it's pretty much impossible to take one with you on a trip — something I normally need to do once a year so that I can keep up with my volunteer job (which requires special software) during our Christmas vacation.

The idea of a laptop was somewhat tempting, as it would be nice to have the option of working outside on a beautiful, sunny day instead of being stuck in my home office. However, I had to admit that I wouldn't really get that much benefit from portability. I never travel for work, and the one time a year (in normal years) that I need to take a computer on vacation, I have everything I need to hook up a PC to waiting at the journey's end. And given that laptops cost more for the same amount of computing power, have wussy keyboards and trackpads instead of mice, are easier to damage, and are harder to upgrade, it seemed clear they weren't a truly ecofrugal choice.

So it seemed clear that I'd get the most bang for my buck with a mini PC like the one I was replacing. The Wirecutter report on this type of computer confirmed that "they’re more than powerful enough for web browsing, basic photo and video editing, and working in documents or large spreadsheets." The only task they can't really handle is high-end gaming, which I never do anyway. And while their small size "prevents much expansion," you can at least upgrade the memory and storage, and sometimes even the processor. 

At that point, it was just a question of finding the right model. The Wirecutter report recommended several models, three of which ran on Windows. Of the three, the "for DIYers" pick — a build-your-own Intel NUC — clearly offered the best bang for the buck. For roughly the same $700 I'd paid for my old Mac, we could put together a complete system with "twice as much memory and storage as in the preconfigured systems we recommend," plus a copy of Microsoft Office thrown in. It would take a little more work to get it up and running, but nothing Brian's mad tech skills couldn't handle. And it would be even smaller and easier to transport on vacation than my old Mac.

So, about six weeks ago, we ordered all the necessary pieces (CPU, hard drive, memory, software) on NewEgg. Brian spent an evening installing all the parts, and over the past month we've been gradually getting the new system up and running. We hooked up the two computers side by side to facilitate the process of transferring files over, and we're still holding on to the old one to make absolutely sure we have everything working on the new one. It's also taking more adjustment than I expected to get used to doing things on Windows. I had to unlearn decades-old habits about simple things like navigating the file system, and I'm still figuring out how to handle more complex tasks like doing backups. In some cases, I had to pick up new software because the Windows versions of the programs I was using, such as iTunes, were so buggy. And my eyes still haven't really adjusted to the Windows interface, which even after several weeks still looks cluttered, blocky, and hard to read.

But on the plus side, I'm no longer wasting an hour a day on stuck computer processes. And if all goes well, this new computer should serve me another ten years, by which time I hope I'll either get used to it or figure out how to change the things I don't like.

Money Crashers: 13 Best Cheap Cellphone Plans That Will Save You Money

When I finally decided, two and a half years ago, to give in and get a smartphone, I made a point of choosing the most bare-bones plan I could find to go with it. I didn't need or want unlimited data; in fact, I preferred having severely limited data, because it would prevent me from spending all my time in public staring at my phone and ignoring people and events around me. And also, I didn't want to spend the money.

Now, I realize not everyone's priorities are the same as mine. Some people don't have landlines and rely on their cell phone as their primary way of communicating with people; some even don't have computers at home and rely on it as their primary way of getting information. For them, unlimited data — or at least a generous amount of it — is a higher priority. But the one thing I think we can all agree on is that we'd rather not pay any more for it than we have to.

To that end, I've written a piece for Money Crashers on how to spend less on your cellphone plan. I list numerous alternatives to the "big three" (AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon), outline their pros and cons, and offer some pointers on how to choose the best provider for you. Because even if you do want to be glued to your phone in public, there's no reason to spend $100 a month for the privilege.

13 Best Cheap Cellphone Plans That Will Save You Money

Cheap tools for role-playing games: Pandemic edition

First of all, my apologies for not putting up a new post last week (aside from my usual updates about what I've written for Money Crashers). My excuse is that I had to spend most of the weekend at a conference for the Citizens' Climate Lobby — the organization I joined back in January that's working to get the Energy Innovation and Climate Dividend Act passed. I should add that, in a normal year, I probably wouldn't have gone to this conference at all, since it would have taken place in Washington, DC. Traveling and hanging out in a large crowd of strangers are two of the things I find most stressful, and I certainly wouldn't be willing to sacrifice an entire weekend (including part of Friday), not to mention the dollar cost of the tickets, all for the sake of learning a couple of things that I could just as easily read about online. But this year, on account of COVID, the conference was entirely online, so instead of losing the whole weekend, I lost only Saturday afternoon and most of Sunday afternoon. Plus there was no travel, no crowding, and no rushing around. In short, this conference, which would have been a huge hassle in person, was only a minor hassle in its online format.

I bring this up because it's such a rarity: an activity that was actually easier and more agreeable to take part in online. Sadly, the same cannot be said of any of our normal social activities. We were never really social butterflies, but we had our few regular gatherings: Morris dance practice on Thursdays, the occasional concert at the Troubadour, board game nights every couple of weeks, and of course, our two RPG (role-playing game) campaigns. When the Great Isolation began in March, all these forms of social activity became off-limits, and we've had to either do without altogether or make do with online substitutes that can't really measure up to the real thing.

Still, an inferior substitute is far better than no social activity at all, and so we've muddled through as best we could with what we had available. For instance, we had to set aside all those nifty and inexpensive minis Brian had designed for his Wildemount campaign — along with the Wildemount campaign itself, since the local game store we'd gone out of our way to order the book from shut down when the quarantine started. (It seems to be open again now, but our order apparently got lost in the shuffle, as they never called to notify us about it.) So instead, we ordered a copy of the Eberron campaign guide from big old, mean old, corporate old Barnes & Noble, and Brian began running a new, socially distanced Ebberon campaign.

To make this work, we needed a couple of different technological tools. First, we needed a way to see and hear each other online. We started out using Discord for this purpose, but it proved to be kind of buggy. For many of us, video didn't work at all; the computer would just freeze whenever we tried it, so we ended up with audio only, which wasn't a very satisfying substitute for a social gathering. Eventually, we switched over to Zoom, the new standard for all forms of human interaction, and that worked better — not perfectly, but adequately most of the time. Its biggest downside is that the free version of it kicks you out of your meeting after 40 minutes, but since our group has one corporate user and one academic user who can set up meetings of indefinite length, we got around that problem easily.

Finding a way to visualize battle scenes proved a bit harder. Our first approach was to try out a Google Jamboard, which Brian and I had tried in our other campaign. This is basically just a big online notepad where members of a group can insert text and images. Brian would use the pen feature to hand-draw a map, and we'd use two sets of sticky notes to represent our characters: one to show the initiative order, and one to show our actual locations on the map relative to the monsters and each other. As you can see from the screenshot below, this could get a bit confusing.

We considered moving to a more sophisticated "virtual tabletop" designed specifically for online gaming, such as Fantasy Grounds and Roll20, which would have made it easier to incorporate maps, monsters, and other artwork from the official Dungeons & Dragons sourcebooks. These systems also include other handy features for gaming, such as storing the game rules and character sheets right in the app and doing the math for you automatically whenever you roll dice to swing a sword or sling a spell. But they had two problems: first, they were fairly resource-intensive pieces of software, and given theamount of trouble we'd had using just the Jamboard and Discord at the same time, we feared they would tax our systems too heavily. And second, both of them (at least at the time) charged a monthly subscription fee, which every member of our party would need to pay in order to use it. Given the relative infrequency with which we actually managed to get everyone together for a game session, we didn't think it would be worth the cost. (Since then, both systems have changed their pricing model; Fantasy Grounds gives a choice of a one-time fee or a subscription, and Roll20 lets you sign up for free and instead charges a one-time fee for each game sourcebook you add content from.)

But then I discovered Foundry VTT (for Virtual Table Top). I think it was the Dungeons & Dragons group on Reddit that turned me on to it, but regardless, it was a literal game changer.

For one thing, this system offered maps not merely as good as, but actually better than the fancy, three-dimensional Dwarven Forge battle maps that we routinely salivate over when watching Critical Role. Better how, you ask? Simple: these maps can not only show the terrain in detail, but can show each individual player a different view of it, reflecting exactly what their character would be able to see from their current position. If your view of something is blocked by a wall, you don't have to ask the dungeon master, "Can I see that from where I am?"; you just look at the map, and what you see is what you get. If your character has darkvision, they can see in the dark while other characters are blind; if your character is flying, the software keeps track of how their perspective would change based on how high up they are. Light sources within a room and even background noises, such as a crackling fire or the roar of a tavern crowd, fade in and out as you pass through.

And that's only the beginning of what Foundry VTT can do. It can automatically measure the radius of a spell for you, so you don't have to get out a ruler to see who would and wouldn't be hit by your fireball. It can automatically do the math when you make a roll to hit, to damage, or to use an ability. It can keep track of your character's hit points and spell slots, so you don't have to mark them separately on paper — and it can do the same with the monsters you're fighting. It can track initiative order, so you always know whose turn it is. It can import maps you've drawn in another program, or provide you with tools to create them within the app. It can even provide audio and video connections within the app, so you don't need to keep a separate Zoom window open (though we haven't tried this feature yet for fear it would overtax our systems).

OK, you may be asking, but can't Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds do all this too? Well, yes, they can certainly do at least most of it. What really made Foundry VTT superior for us was its pricing model. Because to use it, you need only one copy of the software, owned by only one person in the group. That person then turns the computer that has the software into their own private server, and everyone else can log in from there. So for a one-time expense of 50 bucks, you can use this software with anyone you want, basically forever.

Now, there may be a few features that aren't quite as easy to use in Foundry VTT as they are in Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds. For instance, you can use Foundry VTT with any game system, but the flip side of this is that it doesn't contain a lot of pre-loaded content — maps, characters, rules, monsters — for any one system, such as D&D. There's a small library of pre-loaded monsters and maps available, but if you want to use anything fancier, you have to key it in yourself. But this honestly isn't that hard to do. You can also import your maps from anywhere you like and adjust them to fit a standard grid, after which you can add walls, light sources, or whatever other features you want your terrain to have. So while you don't have as much ready-made stuff to use, you can also add your own stuff in basically any form you like. (Brian has added some maps copied from the sourcebooks, made some — like the airship below — himself, and borrowed some from other players who made them available online.)

Which brings us to this additional technological tool we've been thinking about adding to our lineup: Game Master Engine. I learned about this one from Reddit as well, in a post by its creator on the D&D subreddit. It's a tool for creating 3-D maps of indoor and outdoor terrain, which you can then export as PNG files to any virtual tabletop you use — including Foundry VTT. And when I say maps, I mean really elaborate, beautiful maps with tons of options. You can not only choose all sorts of terrain, you can add animated features like misty waterfalls, crackling campfires, and wind-stirred trees. You can import character and monster minis. You can change the time of day, the weather, and the colors. And that's just in the basic version of the software, which — did I mention? — is completely free.

The only catch, as far as I can tell, is that it only works on Windows machines. But Brian happens to have one of those, so we really have nothing to lose by testing it out. Other Redditors who have tried it say it is just as easy to work with as the video makes it look, but if it turns out not to be all that handy for us, oh well, it didn't cost us anything. And if we try it and find it's very handy, we can shell out a mere 15 bucks extra to upgrade to the "pro" version, which has a bunch of additional assets.

In fact, our new online maps are so handy and full-featured, we might even want to continue using them once (if the gods be pleased) we can actually sit down around a real gaming table again. Admittedly, this would be tricky; first we'd have to find a way to put a screen on the table where everyone, including the dungeon master, could see it, and then we'd have to figure out how to switch back and forth between characters to get the different perspectives on the scene. (We could do it by each logging in separately and looking at our own screens, but sitting around a table with our faces buried in separate screens would kind of take out most of the social element of the game.) It certainly wouldn't be as easy as moving around paper minis on our picture-frame battle map.

But if we can find a way to make it work, it would be one more example of something that actually got better as a result of our time in isolation. And goodness knows we could use more of those.

The end of a grudge (or, how we made up with Verizon)

It's been over seven years since Brian and I first switched our phone service over from Verizon to Optimum after being, not to put too fine a point on it, screwed over in the matter of a basic repair. We've known for six of those seven years that we could actually have saved money by switching both our phone and Internet back to Verizon, but our experience with them had been so crappy that we were willing to pay an extra $531 per year for service that we considered more reliable.

However, over the course of those six years, this decision came to look more and more questionable. Not only did Optimum keep raising our rates, its service also left more and more to be desired. They made it very difficult for us to cancel our TV service at the end of the promotional period, they refused to let me download any of my stored emails when I switched email clients, and our connection has been unstable on multiple occasions. Meanwhile, Verizon not only started offering FiOS service in our area but kept offering us increasingly tempting prices for it.

All this left me wondering: What exactly are the limits of our grudge against Verizon? Yes, they have screwed us over repeatedly in the past, but does that mean that Optimum automatically gets a complete free pass for screwing us over in the present? At what point do we decide it's just not worth it anymore?

Well, I now know the answer to that question. Because last July, I received in quick succession a bill from Optimum for a whopping $131.66 and an offer from Verizon to provide us with phone and email service, plus a year of Disney+ streaming thrown in, for $60 a month — less than half as much. And given that Verizon consistently got better ratings than Optimum in customer satisfaction surveys — at JD Power, US News, and and HighSpeedInternet, to name a few — this decision seemed like a no-brainer.

Since our previous experiences with Verizon had made us cautious, we deliberately didn't call Optimum to cancel our service until our Verizon service was up and running and we could confirm that it was working correctly. And, as we guessed, the transition wasn't completely smooth. Right after our service was hooked up, we discovered that only one of the four phones in our house would ring, and when we told Verizon customer service about the problem, they insisted that everything was working fine and that the problem must be that our phones were defective. Yes, they found it easier to believe that three phones that had worked just fine with our old service had simultaneously, spontaneously become defective than that their installer had forgotten to hook up the phone jacks. Fortunately, he had given us a direct line to reach him if there was a problem, so we were able to call him back, and he came out the next day and fixed it. So, full marks to him for great service, and negative marks to the customer service rep.

That wasn't the end of our problems, either. Even once all four lines were working, we discovered that occasionally, a call would come in and would get sent directly to voice mail without ever causing the phones to ring. After this happened two or three times, we called Verizon back and got yet another customer service rep who seemed to have no idea what she was doing, so it took over an hour on chat before she told us that she had "reset" the line and if that didn't fix the problem, it must be, once again, our phones that were defective. I wasn't looking forward to challenging them on this point, but fortunately we haven't had to, since the reset seemed to take care of the problem.

So we now know that Verizon's customer service still leaves much to be desired. However, it's not as if Optimum's is exactly brilliant; they gave us a very hard time when we called to cancel our service, and they only took no for an answer once we had told them several times that it was a fait accompli. Plus, even though it's been over a month since we canceled it, they've still continued to send us bills (with no amount due, but it's still annoying), and they have yet to send us our refund for the partial month of service that's owed to us.

The bottom line: I still do not, and probably never will, truly love Verizon. But given the choice between two companies I don't particularly like, I'm definitely happier with the one that charges me $61.26 a month instead of $131.66. When you balance a couple of hours on the line with customer service against $845 a year in savings, I think it's still a pretty good deal.

Money Crashers: 8 Best Browser Extensions to Save Money While Shopping Online

Six years ago, I wrote about my initial suspicions, and later wholehearted embrace, of the PriceBlink add-on for my Web browser. Whenever I shopped online, it automatically searched other sites for the same item at a lower price, making comparison shopping easy. It could even locate coupon codes for me to save me more money at whichever site I was using.

I continued to use this browser extension for several years, but when I installed the latest version of Firefox on my computer, I could no longer get it to work. Every time I tried to install it, I got a "connection failure" message. So, for a while, I gave up and went back to comparing prices and finding coupon codes the (somewhat) old-fashioned way, hunting them out one at a time for each item. It was still a lot easier than comparing prices the genuinely old-fashioned, pre-Internet way, by physically going around to different stores, so it didn't bother me much.

But recently, Money Crashers invited me to write an article about a new browser extension called Honey, which appears to do many of the same things PriceBlink used to do for me. It can't compare prices across different sites, but it can compare prices from different sellers on Amazon, as well as automatically tracking down coupon codes and, on many sites, giving you cash back. After a little discussion with my editor, this proposed piece turned into a roundup of nine browser extensions that save you money online in a variety of ways. They compare prices, find coupon codes, provide cash back, track Amazon prices over time so you can see when you're getting a good deal, and warn you when online reviews of a product appear to be fake.

For me, Honey appeared to be the best of the bunch, so I'm now running that on my browser, and it has already saved me nearly $20 on a pair of winter boots. Check out the article, and you might just find a browser add-on (or several) that will work equally well for you.

8 Best Browser Extensions to Save Money While Shopping Online

My 24-hour Internet fast

It’s been many years since I fasted on Yom Kippur. Even back in the days when I did it every year, I never really believed that I was obeying a command from God or that I would be punished if I didn’t. Partly, it was a matter of cultural identity; I fasted because I was a Jew, and fasting is what Jews do on Yom Kippur. But also, I believed that on some level, it was good for me. Good for me physically, because a 24-hour fast would shrink my stomach and make me less likely to overindulge in the new year, and good for me spiritually, because going hungry for a day would make me more sympathetic to people in need.

Over the years, though, I began to have doubts about whether my yearly fast was really having the desired effect. It certainly wasn’t making me feel better physically; on the contrary, it usually left me with a throbbing headache and an uneasy stomach that didn’t want to accept the food it needed. And these discomforts, far from making me feel spiritually uplifted and sympathetic to all humankind, made me cranky and snappish with the humans in my immediate vicinity. I eventually reached the conclusion that fasting wasn’t doing either my body or my soul any good and quit doing it.

But I never felt entirely easy with my decision. Although I knew that fasting hadn’t done anything to make me a better person, it still felt wrong not to do something special on Yom Kippur — something that would give the day the same weight and significance it had in the lives of my ancestors back in the shtetl. So this year, as I attended the evening service with my parents, I found myself wondering: was there something else I could give up on Yom Kippur, something that really would be physically and spiritually beneficial even if it was difficult? And suddenly the answer came to me: I should go 24 hours without connecting to the Internet.

I quickly realized that doing this would be, in some ways, more of a challenge than going without food. No Internet definitely meant no work, since my job is pretty much entirely online these days — a mixture of Internet research, composing articles in Google Docs, and connecting to coworkers via Gmail, Slack and Trello. And most of the things I normally do as a break from work — checking email, answering online surveys, clicking on whatever intriguing article has popped up on Pocket — would also be off-limits. I wouldn’t be able to solve my daily cryptic crossword (downloaded from BestforPuzzles.com) over breakfast, listen to a podcast in the shower, or read the day’s top headlines from the New York Times. It would be a complete disruption of my routine.

And in a way, that was the point. An Internet fast would force me to take a break from all my daily habits, both good and bad — and in the process, step back and get a clearer look at which was which.

So, after a little initial hesitation — what about the emails I hadn’t answered that afternoon? What about other urgent messages that might come in during the day? — I decided to give it a try. And I made a further decision: as I went through my Internet-free day, I’d document it to see just how it had affected me, for good or bad.


Here's what happened.

***

Tuesday, 10 pm: Upon my return home from services, my husband Brian gets onto my computer to answer, on my behalf, the one email message I feel I can’t afford to leave dangling for the next 24 hours. He then ceremoniously disconnects the Ethernet cable from my computer to ensure that I won’t slip up and connect to the Internet without thinking about it. So now it’s official: I’m doing this.

Wednesday, 7 am: Since Brian is still going to work today, even if I’m not, the alarm wakes us at the usual time. After I take my pills and brush my teeth, I realize I’m not sure what to do with myself next. Since I can’t eat breakfast until half an hour after taking my pill, I’d normally spend the next 30 minutes checking email and printing out my morning puzzle before breakfast, but those activities are now off-limits. Instead, I pick up yesterday’s copy of the Daily Targum — a college paper I normally get only for the crossword — and actually read it.

Wednesday, 8:40 am: After Brian departs for work, I sit down and start writing this article (in TextEdit, which I can use offline). I quickly discover how much I’ve been in the habit of taking mini-breaks throughout my workday, every time I get stuck on a tricky paragraph, to check my email or play a quick game of 2048. Unable to engage in these diversions, I root around on my computer’s hard drive and unearth an old copy of Montana Solitaire, which I can play without benefit of Internet.

Wednesday, 11:10 am: I decide it’s time for a shower. Clicking on iTunes, I realize that I still have part of yesterday’s Hidden Brain podcast left over that I didn’t finish listening to, and since it’s already downloaded, I can listen to it today without breaking my Internet fast. It feels a little like cheating, but I do it. The topic of the episode is outrage: how it’s “hijacking our conversations, our communities, and our minds.” As the presenter and his guests talk about how social media, in particular, has become a constant stream of vitriol, I mentally run over all the emails that have entered my inbox over the past few days and are probably continuing to pile up this very minute. How many of them were from one political mailing list or another, shrieking about the latest travesty in the political realm and the urgent need for MORE MONEY, NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW, to combat it? All of a sudden, I feel a lot better about not being available to receive them.

Wednesday, 12 pm: Time for lunch. As my tummy rumbles, I feel thankful that I’m skipping Internet today rather than food. Then I wonder how ironic it is that not fasting is making me more appreciative about eating.

Wednesday, 1 pm: After consuming my soup, biscuit, apple, two squares of chocolate, and a chapter or two of Ngaio Marsh’s last novel, I find myself once again at loose ends. I can’t do any work, and I can’t do most of the things I normally do for play, since they all involve going online. So instead, I sit down at my computer and start putting together a scenario for “Honey Heist,” a silly little role-playing game I’ve been meaning to run for a while. This is a task I’ve never managed to find the time to work on; during the day I was always either too busy with work or allowing the wonders of the Internet to distract me from work. Apparently a day offline was the kick in the pants I needed to get started.

Wednesday, 2:20 pm: Got so absorbed in planning my Honey Heist, I didn’t even notice it was past my usual time for my afternoon walk. It's chilly and damp out, but not too cold once I get moving. Since I have no work to get back to, I feel free to take my time strolling around town, gathering fall leaves, and stopping into the store to pick up some snacks for tonight’s game.

Wednesday, 3:50 pm: Back from my walk. Take my time arranging my newly collected leaves in their basket and fixing myself a snack (hooray for not fasting). Go back to “work” on the Honey Heist.

Wednesday, 5 pm: Brian comes home from work. I ask him if he knows what time sunset is, since I can’t go back online until then (and I can’t visit Accuweather to check for myself). He checks for me and reports that sunset is at 6:27 pm, so I still have about an hour and a half to go. He also brings me a fresh copy of the Daily Targum, so I have plenty to occupy myself until then.

Wednesday, 6:40 pm: The moment of truth. Having finished dinner, I reconnect to the Internet. In the course of this one day — counting from 5:30 last night, when I left for services — I have accumulated 40 emails (not counting survey invites) across my three email accounts. These include five work-related messages, six about dance practice, four about the concert series, five concerning a friend’s request to borrow a couple of board games from us (which Brian handled for me), one about our weeknight gaming group, and two shrieking political messages. The rest are all newsletters and other trivia that don’t really require my immediate attention.

It takes an hour or more to go through all these accumulated messages, sorting them and responding as necessary. If I'd dealt with them as they came in over the course of the day, it would probably have taken at least as much time, but it would have felt less burdensome because it would have been spread out into shorter blocks of 15 minutes or less. By the time I'm done with it all, I feel almost as tired as if I'd really fasted all day, and more than ready to collapse on the couch with some Netflix (courtesy of my long-lost friend the Internet).


***

So, now that it's all over, what conclusions do I draw from my experiment?

First of all, I can say with relief that I'm not genuinely addicted to the Internet. Going without it for a whole day wasn't terribly burdensome; in some ways, it was actually quite pleasant. Being unable to work or goof off in the ways I usually do left me with time free to do things I normally wouldn't, like planning my Honey Heist, and more time to spend on offline activities I enjoy, such as reading and taking my afternoon walk, without feeling guilty about all the time I was taking away from work. It was definitely less painful than going a day without food.

That said, I have to admit that my life with the Internet is, on the whole, easier than my life without it. It really was awkward not being able to do the little things I've come to rely on: printing out my puzzle in the morning, checking the weather report, sending a quick email message. And while I didn't happen to miss any urgent messages during my 24-hour "fast," that was largely a matter of chance.

As to whether this Internet fast was good for me, that's a tougher question to answer. On the one hand, I think my day without Internet was, on the whole, less stressful than a normal day with it. But the time I spent recovering from the "fast" was actually more stressful than usual, because I had to clear out a 24-hour backlog of messages. And I'll probably have to continue putting in extra hours over the course of the next week or so to make up for the day of work I missed.

I certainly wouldn't say that Internet fasting is something I'd want to incorporate into my life on a regular basis. But as something to do every year on Yom Kippur, it has its points. It certainly does make the day feel different from other days. It forces me to take my mind off my usual everyday concerns and focus on different things — maybe not spiritual things, exactly, but things I might never find the time for on a normal day. And at the same time, it makes me more appreciative of the many blessings of the Internet when I finally get to go back to it. (And unlike regular fasting, it doesn't make me feel too ill by the time I break my fast to be able to enjoy it.)

And if I want to feel more connected to my ancestors in the shtetl, well, after all, they lived without the Internet every day of their lives.

Money Crashers: 3 Home Phone Landline Alternatives That Save You Money

Based on the stuff I read online, I had the impression that Brian and I were practically the only people left in America who still had a landline phone. Turns out, that's a bit of an exaggeration. According to the National Health Interview Survey, we're in the minority, but it's still a pretty good-sized minority: about 45 percent of adults and 35 percent of kids in the country have a landline phone at home. But that's still a big drop from the 85 percent of all households that had one as recently as 2007.

So are we behind the times? Is the day of the landline over? Or does this old-school technology still serve a useful purpose?

For us, we've concluded, the answer is yes. Unlike most of our friends, we still rely on our landline as our primary phone and use our cell phones only for emergencies. This enables us to get by with only the barest-bones of mobile plans: $10 a month for my still fairly new smartphone, and $3 a month for Brian's dumb phone. Add $36 a month for our landline, and we're paying a total of $49 a month for phone service. If we had to rely on our cell phones as our primary phones, we'd need to upgrade to unlimited talk-and-text plans, which would cost about $15 a month for him and $20 for me. So we'd save around $14 a month, which sounds good...but there are some big downsides. For one, we'd have to keep our cell phones switched on all the time and actually check them every time they ring (rather than ignoring them while we're at home, because everyone who actually knows us knows to try the landline first). We wouldn't be able to share a phone call by using two extensions. If my phone rang upstairs while I was downstairs, I'd have to run up and grab it instead of just picking up the downstairs extension. And worst of all, we'd have to give out our cell phone numbers to everyone who requested our number. Not only would this open us up to even more robocalls than we get now, it would expose all our accounts to the risk of SIM hacking—a scam in which hackers get hold of your cell number, switch it over to a new phone that they control, and instantly gain access to every account for which you've used a phone number for verification. So, yeah, we're willing to pay an extra $14 a month to avoid that nightmare.

Now, there are other alternatives that we've looked into from time to time. For instance, with a device like MagicJack or Ooma, or a cheap VOIP service like VoIPLy, we could reduce our bill to just a few bucks a month. But every time I've grown frustrated enough with our current provider to look into this, I end up backing down because of worries about voice quality and reliability. Since our landline is our main phone, I want to make sure calls we make on it will come through loud and clear.

However, just because keeping the landline is the right decision for us doesn't mean it is for you. If you're on the fence about dropping your landline, my new Money Crashers article can help. It goes into the three main alternatives to landlines—going mobile-only, VOIP, and ATA devices like the MagicJack—and weighs their pros and cons. This can help you figure out what will work best for you in terms of cost, call quality, and convenience.

3 Home Phone Landline Alternatives That Save You Money 

Money Crashers: Net Neutrality Explained

It's been about five years now since Brian and I got fed up with Verizon (after they'd screwed us not once but twice) and switched over all our services—phone, Internet, and for a while at least, cable TV—to Cablevision. Since then, I've been tempted repeatedly by the offers we keep getting from Verizon saying they can offer us all three services—including faster and more reliable Internet—at a significantly lower price than we're paying now.

For a while I was holding out against them on the grounds that based on our past experiences, we had no reason to believe Verizon could actually deliver on its promises—but then several things happened to shake my confidence. First, a Verizon rep rang our doorbell and started trying to sell me on their new FiOS service, going so far as to point out the actual cable that carried the signal. Second, our Cablevision Internet connection started to become a little wonky, cutting out at unexpected times. And third, I saw several survey showing that of all the ISPs available in our state, Verizon actually had the best ratings for customer service, which suggested that they had actually "upgraded their customer service" just as the rep had claimed.

However, just as I was on the point of giving in and making the switch, the Trump administration started making noises about scrapping the 2015 Open Internet Rule (as it eventually did in November 2017, though the change doesn't take effect for another couple of weeks). At that time, there were reports that multiple ISPs were actively lobbying the administration to make the change—and when I checked, Verizon's name was right there on the list. That got me so hopping mad that I decided, screw it, I was willing to pay an extra few hundred bucks a year to support a company that wasn't actively working to destroy the Internet as we know it.

So, the next time a couple of Verizon reps showed up at my door, I politely but firmly said I wasn't interested in ever having service with Verizon. And when they asked why, as I had expected they would, I was happy to explain that it was because of the company's stance on net neutrality. What I wasn't expecting was for their next question to be, "What's that?"

This forced me to think as best as I could on my feet to explain what net neutrality means in just a couple of sentences. I think it came out something like, "Well, it means that the people who own the pipes that deliver your Internet service can't control what you see online by blocking certain sites or making you pay extra for them. And right now there are laws that say they can't do that, and Verizon is working to get those laws changed." Which wasn't bad for an off-the-cuff response, and clearly came as news to the two students who were shilling for Verizon—but it got me thinking that apparently there are a lot of people who really understand this issue, and a more complete and coherent explanation might be handy for them.

So in my latest Money Crashers article, I've attempted to provide this. As clearly and succinctly as I could manage, I explain what net neutrality means, give some examples of what can happen when there are no rules to protect it, outline the changes in net neutrality law over the past few years, and explain how the new rules to "restore Internet freedom" could affect us all: how we pay for Internet service, what content we're able to view online, and what products and services will never get off the ground because they can't afford to pay for access to the new Internet "fast lane." Then I wrap up with some discussion of how the fight over net neutrality is being continued at the federal, state, and local level, and what you can do to get involved.

So if you don't feel like you quite understand net neutrality—or if you do understand it but aren't sure what you can do to protect it—this article is for you: Net Neutrality Explained – What It Is and Why Internet Regulation Matters

Money Crashers: 8 Things You Should Always Buy Online

In my last post, which introduced my article on things you should never buy online, I talked about my disappointing experiences shopping online—particularly for shoes. After ordering the same pair shoes from Zappos last month in three different sizes, then being forced to ship them all back because not one pair fit comfortably, I concluded that I simply shouldn't buy any more shoes without being able to try them on.

Well, as it turns out, that resolution didn't last long. Because, as I discovered last night, shopping for shoes in a store has can be even more problematic than buying online—especially for someone with weird feet like mine.

After my disappointing experience with Zappos, I decided I should give up on shoes with any kind of built-in arch support, since it always seems to hit me in the wrong part of the foot. So instead, I decided to try the nearby Skechers outlet, knowing that Skechers makes many shoes with a memory foam insole that conforms to your particular foot. I tried on every single pair of flats in the store, and I didn't find any that was a perfect fit, but I found one pair in a size 7 regular that I thought would be acceptable. Until I got it home, that is, and started wearing it around the house. After an hour of just sitting still with the shoes on my feet—not even walking around much—they were starting to cut off my circulation. And since they were also so long that my heels came close to slipping out of the shoes when I walked, I knew sizing up wasn't an option. So, back those went to the store.

Then, last night, I gave DSL a try. This experience was even worse: there wasn't a single pair of shoes in the store in a wide width. I tried simply sizing up to a 7 regular, but in every single case, the size 7 - and sometimes even the 7 1/2 - was too tight across the top, yet too long at the same time. There were one or two pairs I could get my feet into, but none that felt comfortable.

So I came home and fell back on Plan B: I ordered a pair of shoes from Minnetonka Moccasin. These aren't vegan, but they're made from moosehide, which comes from (presumably) free-range moose, so it fits within my ethical limitations. And on every other requirement, they appear to tick all the boxes: they're available in a 6 1/2 wide, they look reasonable, and the overwhelming majority of reviews describe them as both incredibly comfortable and incredibly durable. They're a little pricey at $70, but if I can get five or more years of wear out of them, they'll still be a great value. And if they don't fit, I can send them back and exchange them for a different size, free of charge, until I find a pair that does. If I try on all the sizes and nothing fits, well, I'll have to eat the $7 return shipping, but I'd rather take that risk than waste another evening in a shoe store trying on pair after pair to no avail.

So it appears that, at least where shoes are concerned, sometimes online shopping is the best option after all. And that makes this story a good way to introduce my latest Money Crashers piece, which is all about the things you should always buy online. Once again, shoes aren't on that list (for someone with normal feet, shopping in a store for those is probably easier), but clothes are—or at least, "clothing basics" where fit isn't crucial—along with seven other items that are nearly always cheaper and more convenient to order over the Web from the comfort of your home.

Find out what they are here: 8 Things You Should Always Buy Online

Money Crashers: What “True Cost to Own” Means and Why It Matters

When we first bought what I still think of as our "new" car, about seven years ago, one of the factors I paid most attention to was how much it would cost us to own over the long term. I wanted to know not just how much we'd pay for the car itself, but how much we should expect to spend on gas and maintenance over the time we'd own it. Those "cost to own" calculators on sites like Edmunds were a big help with this, and helped convince me that spending the extra money on a hybrid wasn't worth it for us. (The money we'd spend on the car would never pay for itself in reduced gas costs, and if my goal was to minimize our carbon footprint, I could do it much more cheaply by buying a reasonably efficient gas-powered car plus some carbon offsets.)

Since then, I've done similar calculations for other big purchases, such as our new boiler (for which we chose a moderately efficient model, rather than a hyper-efficient one that was vastly more expensive) and a potential solar array (which we've decided will probably be cost-effective, but should wait until it's time to replace the roof). I've even crunched the numbers for much smaller purchases, like LED light bulbs and even new winter boots.

No one ever seems to talk about "cost to own" for purchases like these, but they really should. Any time you're spending a significant amount of money (whatever "significant" means to you) on a product you expect to keep for a long time, it's worth thinking about how much that product will cost you, not just up front, but over its entire useful life. There may not be cost to own calculators online for appliances or power tools, but it's still worth doing the math on your own.

My new Money Crashers article is an attempt to supply this need. In it, I explain how to decide when cost-to-own calculations are important, and how to perform them for five different kinds of purchases: cars, appliances, computers, tools, and clothing. That's not a complete list of all the products for which the cost to own is worth knowing, but with the techniques laid out in the article, you can figure out how to do the math yourself.

Check it out here: What “True Cost to Own” Means and Why It Matters for Big Purchases

Walking the line with technology

A few months ago, the New York Times Sunday Review ran a piece called, "Save Your Sanity. Downgrade Your Life." The author, Pamela Paul, frames her decision to deliberately go without, or even give up, various high-tech devices as part of her quest for a simpler and more meaningful life. A few examples:

• Trading in the "frantic whir" of her electric toothbrush for an older, manual version
• Sticking to a "stubbornly DVD-based" Netflix account rather than switching to downloads on demand
• Limiting smartphone use in specific ways (no devices in the bedroom; leaving her phone in another room when she's with the kids; not giving the kids their own phones)
• Cutting out not just cable TV, but network TV as well
• Eschewing all personal phone calls and e-mails, preferring to "catch up with a good friend or a family member...[when] we actually see each other"
• Skipping Spotify in favor of "the radio and ye olde compact discs"
• Avoiding e-book readers and tablet computers

Paul argues that choices like these help her minimize "techno-stress—the psychological and physical impact of spending countless hours staring at a screen." She highlights the dangers of constant connectedness, such as online harassment and cellphones cutting into face-time, such as the family dinner hour, and sees "creeping backward toward the 20th century" as her way to resist the relentless march toward a faceless digital society. This is a goal I can certainly sympathize with. But I can't help wondering whether Paul's knee-jerk rejection of all new technologies is really the best way to achieve it.

One of my favorite remarks about the simple life comes from Ursula LeGuin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas": "Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive." It makes perfect sense for Paul to eliminate or limit the types of technology that are clearly destructive: the constant clamor of Facebook, for instance, or the siren call of the smartphone screen at the dinner table. And it may even be worthwhile, at least for her, to eliminate some of the "neither necessary nor destructive" forms of tech like her electric toothbrush. But is she throwing out the baby with the bathwater? In her eagerness to eliminate all forms of "unnecessary" tech, is she deliberately making her life more complex and less fulfilling?

Anyone who reads this blog regularly will know that I'm no slave to technology. I've written numerous times about my slowness to adopt various gadgets and services, from smartphones to social media. But I've also written quite a bit about the types of technology I do find worthwhile, like our tablet computer (which gives us access to a wide selection of e-books from the eLibrary) and my online bill payment service. I see no contradiction in this; to me, it's simply a question of deciding which forms of technology are "neither necessary nor harmful." I could certainly live without online bill payment and pay my bills the old-fashioned way, writing out a check and sticking it an envelope with a stamp and putting it in a mailbox—but it's slower and more cumbersome, it costs me money for the stamps, and it wastes paper. In this case, it's the high-tech system that truly simplifies my life.

This is why I have problems with so many of Paul's tech-related choices. I like having my entire music collection at my fingertips on iTunes; I can select any song I want with the click of a mouse and easily put together themed playlists for different occasions. I can't see how giving that up in favor of "the radio and ye olde-fashioned CDs"—which would force me to listen to whatever happens to be on at the moment, including advertisements, or else fumble with a huge collection of physical disks—would make me a better or happier person. Likewise, while I don't currently have Netflix, it seems to me that if I did, there would be no advantage in a "stubbornly DVD-based" subscription that would force me to make my selections ahead of time, wait to receive them, and then have to mail them back—possibly even unwatched, because by the time they reached me I no longer had the time or the inclination to watch them. If you can't watch what you want, when you want, then what's the advantage of having the subscription at all?

Worse still, I wonder if Paul may actually be hurting her relationships with friends and family through her single-minded determination not to let technology "interfere" with them. I have a lot of friends and family members who are scattered across the country; if I insisted on "wait[ing] until we actually see each other" to catch up with them, I wouldn't speak to them more than once or twice a year. Not to mention that I would have trouble arranging to see them in the first place, since it's awfully difficult to make plans to visit someone who lives in another state—or even in another town—without using either the phone or e-mail. (I guess we could use old-school snail mail, but in the time it would take a series of letters to go back and forth between us, we might end up missing the one available weekend when all of us happened to be free.)

To me, it seems clear that if you really want to "simplify" your life, blindly rejecting all forms of technology isn't the way to do it. It makes much more sense to evaluate each new device or service on a case-by-case basis and ask: Would having this make my life better or worse, easier or harder, more or less fulfilling? If the answer is clearly negative, it obviously sense to eschew the new technology; if it's clearly positive, it makes sense to at least look at the cost and decide whether the benefits are enough to justify it. And if you're not sure, there's nothing wrong with holding out until you have a clearer idea of both the perks and the drawbacks.

It's also worth noting that the answer to this question can change over time. When I wrote this article on technology and frugality back in 2010, I said I "wasn't tempted by the new e-book readers," which seemed to have no clear advantage over printed books. But a lot has changed in the seven years since. Today, there are free e-reader apps for tablet computers, so it's no longer necessary to spend $100 or more on a dedicated device that can do nothing but display books; there's also a much bigger selection of e-books available for free or cheap through sites like the eLibrary. Nowadays, reading books in digital format gives us a lot more to choose from, and it lets us start enjoying our new reads right away instead of waiting until the library is open.

Of course, if the book we want doesn't happen to be available in digital form, we still have the option of going to the old-fashioned brick-and-mortar library to check it out. Because that's the other nice thing about new technology that Paul seems to be ignoring: simply having it doesn't mean you actually have to use it. There's no rule against communicating with your friends by e-mail and in person, or playing both computer games and old-fashioned board games. A new technology is a tool, not an assignment.

If your smartphone, or your Facebook subscription, or any other type of technology in your life is causing you stress or sucking up unreasonable amounts of time, then sure, it makes sense to dump it—or at least put limits on it. What doesn't make sense is to throw out things that are making your life better, easier, happier, because you've decided that technology, as a category, is harmful. There's plenty of room in LeGuin's "middle category...of the unnecessary but undestructive, that of comfort, luxury, exuberance, etc."—for the things that we could live without, but we shouldn't have to.

Money Crashers: Cheap Computer Games – Best Free & Affordable Options

As a complement to my Money Crashers article on the joys of tabletop gaming, I've also done one on how to enjoy electronic games on a budget. I've checked lists at gaming publications to find the top-rated games in different categories - war games, fantasy games, MMORPGs - that you can play for free (although some of them are only trial versions, and others charge for in-app purchases).

I've also added a section on my favorite type of computer game, old-fashioned text adventures (like Zork). There's a huge number of these available for free online, they don't require a sophisticated computer setup, and the best ones are, in my opinion, even more compelling than the best graphical games. Sure, I know computer graphics are more realistic than ever, and I know we're on the verge of a revolution in virtual reality that will make it possible to experience the game world even more fully—but I still maintain that there are some things a well-written story can do that no visual experience can ever match. In an IF (interactive fiction) game, you can experience not only sights and sounds, but also smells, tastes, and more importantly still, thoughts and feelings. How can graphics ever do that?

If you've never tried it before, I urge you to give just one of these text adventures a try and see for yourself. Andrew Plotkin's The Dreamhold is a good one for new players, but any of the games in this "starter pack" list could be a good choice.

And to see the rest of the game choices, check out the full article: Cheap Computer Games – Best Free & Affordable Options

The perils of refilling printer cartridges

In the past, I've indulged in a little bragging about how much money we saved by refilling the ink cartridges on our printer, rather than buying new ones. A great big bottle of black ink, I pointed out, cost less than a single black ink cartridge, and we were able to get so many refills out of it that it actually outlasted the printer. And it kept all those plastic cartridges out of the landfill, as well, making it an ecofrugal no-brainer.

Well, pride apparently goeth before a fall. Because as it turns out, this thrifty habit that we plumed ourselves on has actually backfired on us with our new printer—possibly costing us more money in the long run than we would have spent just buying new cartridges in the first place.

The problems first started last spring, when the printer suddenly started rejecting our refilled cartridges. We were puzzled, since we'd had it for over two years and had no problems refilling it until then, so we did some research and determined that apparently, this printer has an age limit on the cartridges it will accept. Since the original equipment cartridge was over two years old, the printer considered it unusable. So we decided to invest $14 in this chip resetter, which can basically trick the printer into thinking it has a brand-new cartridge. We tried this on the black ink cartridge and it worked, so we figured that was $14 well spent; it was still less than the cost of one new cartridge, and it should allow us to go on refilling our cartridges ad infinitum.

Thus, when the colored ink showed signs of running dry last month, we didn't hesitate to refill that too. This printer, as I mentioned back when we bought it, has three separate reservoirs for colored ink, so you can refill them individually as needed—but in this case, all three were low, so Brian did them all at once. The cyan and magenta inks posed no problem, but when he tried to refill the yellow ink, he saw through the little window in the ink reservoir that the refill ink he was using (from a set we'd bought years ago, back when we had the old HP printer) was reacting with the dregs of the Brother ink that was left in the cartridge, leaving behind a flaky precipitate. So he hastily emptied out the whole cartridge and rinsed it to remove all the precipitate before topping it back up again with the refill ink.

Well, okay, we figured, that was a bit of a nuisance, but at least we'd cleaned all the old ink out of the cartridge, so from here on out, we should have no further problems with the refills. Alas, what we completely forgot about was the ink already in the lines. This week, when I printed out a document in color for the first time since the refill, we found that we weren't getting any yellow ink. Brian tried running the cleaning cycle several times to no avail, so I did a quick search and found this video on cleaning the nozzles—and it was at that point that Brian realized all that precipitate he'd so carefully cleaned out of the cartridge itself had probably formed in the lines as well as soon as we started putting the yellow refill ink through them. In hindsight, he realized, he probably would have been better off just pulling out the yellow tank the minute he discovered the problem and buying a yellow refill from Brother.

But of course, it was too late to undo what we'd already done, so the best we could do was try to get those lines cleaned out. So we spent another $9 on this cleaning kit, complete with cleaning solution, a rubber tube to feed it into the nozzle, and a syringe to inject it. And today, Brian hauled the printer down to his workshop and got to work with the kit, trying to clear the lines. Since we'd been having a little trouble with the black ink as well, he tried it on that first, and it worked just as shown in the video, running right through the lines and pulling out the dried residue. However, on the clogged yellow line, it didn't go so smoothly. He had to apply more pressure to force the fluid into the lines, and when he tried to draw it back out, he wasn't able to clear them fully. So as of now, only the black ink is working. He plans to work on the yellow some more in the next few days, but he doesn't know whether he'll succeed in clearing it or not. If he can't, our only options will be to replace the printer or ditch the colored cartridges and use it only in black and white.

The moral of this story? If you plan to refill your printer cartridges, make sure you're using an ink that's compatible with your particular printer. If we'd sprung for a $26 Brother-specific refill kit at the time we bought the chip resetter, that would still have been cheaper than a new set of color cartridges, and a lot cheaper than having to replace the whole $100 printer.

Money Crashers: 7 Ways to Stop Spam Email, Unwanted Messages & Robocalls

It's now been about a year and half since I offered my proposal to fight spam in the comments sections of online articles by allowing authors to selectively block comments from people based on their user profiles. So far, I have no evidence that Disqus has taken up this idea; as Alexanda Petri observed in a 2014 article on Christmas Creep, "It is almost as though writing about things on the Internet had no impact on them whatsoever."

But I can, at least, do something to help you with the more commonplace type of spam - the kind that regularly invades your inbox, displacing important messages about work and social engagements with offers to refinance your house, claim your foreign lottery winnings, or increase your penis size (regardless of whether you actually possess a house, a lottery ticket, or a penis).

My latest Money Crashers article is all about how to fight the scourge of spam. Although there's probably no force on earth that can stop every spam message from getting through, you can slow the flood down to a trickle by learning to recognize it (and ignore it) when you see it, taking steps to keep your e-mail address private, and training your spam filters to do their job better. You can also fight back directly by reporting spammers to the FTC (they can't stop them all, but they can penalize the worst offenders) and protecting your computer so they can't hijack it and put it to use in their nefarious schemes. As a bonus, I offer some tips on how to block unwanted texts and robocalls, too.

Here's the article: 7 Ways to Stop Spam Email, Unwanted Messages & Robocalls