Signing up is hard to do

Thirteen years ago, when we paid off our mortgage, I was surprised to find at how hard it was to make that final payment—not financially or emotionally, but technically. We had the money, and we were ready and eager to hand it over, but getting the bank to accept that final payment was way more complicated than I expected. It took a whole series of transactions online, by phone, and in person at our local branch to get the job done.

Right now, we're having similar problems with another big life transition: Brian's retirement. Specifically, the process of switching over to a new health care plan.

The problems started in January, when Brian chose February 11 as his official retirement date. I got straight to work trying to sign us up for new coverage on Get Covered NJ, only to run into a snag: because it was January, the state was still in the middle of "open enrollment." If I signed up for a new plan during that period, it would automatically start on February 1, while Brian was still employed—and double-dipping on coverage is a big legal no-no. So I had to wait until February 1 to sign up for a new plan that would start on March 1.

Once I'd done that, I still had to take care of all the other details associated with changing coverage, like choosing a new primary care doctor and transferring our prescriptions. To do that, I needed to set up an online account with the insurer. And here I ran into my second snag: Because our new insurance plan was with the same provider as our old plan, I already had an account on their website. I could find no obvious way to add my new plan to that account, so I struggled through the maze of customer support and eventually learned that I'd have to wait until the new plan took effect on March 1 (today) to create an account for it.

So, this morning, right after breakfast, I settled down for what I figured would be a busy day of paperwork (or, since it was all going to be online, pixelwork). I punched in all my details—name, date of birth, member ID—and tried to create an account. And ran straight into snag three: I couldn't create an account using my email address because I already had one linked to my old account. I could still log into that old account, but it only had information about the old plan that had just expired. And because it was Sunday, I couldn't call or chat with customer service to fix the problem. Until the customer service lines open tomorrow morning, I'm stuck in limbo.

Annoying as that situation is, it seems positively straightforward compared to the problem I'm having with the website for our new dental savings plan. I registered on that insurer's site as soon as I bought the policy—or at least, I thought I had. But when I tried logging in today, using my email address and the password I'd selected, it told me either my username or my password was wrong. Okay, no big deal: I just clicked on "find my username" and entered my member ID, name, and date of birth to get my official username. Then I entered that username and the password I'd selected...and once again, the site told me that one of the two was wrong. So I took a different tack and asked to sign in without a password, using my username and date of birth to receive a login code. And I got the same error again. It told me that either the username it had just given me or the date of birth I gave it to get that username was wrong. I must have gone through the same cycle four or five times—check the username, enter the username and password, enter the username without the password—before I gave up. So that's yet another customer service call I need to make tomorrow.

Naturally, all this left me feeling a bit disgruntled. But as I was about to make some snarky remark to Brian about how much technology has "simplified our lives," I thought, well, wait a minute: would this actually have been any simpler before the Internet? And as it happened, I already knew the answer, because the last time I'd signed up for private health insurance was in 1995, before any of this stuff could be done online. To get my policy back then, I had to make an appointment to meet in person with an insurance agent, drive to his office, look at a list of plan options he presented to me, flip through a bunch of paper books to compare them, fill ou the enrollment forms for my chosen plan by hand, and pay my first monthly premium by check. The whole process was a much bigger hassle than this year's online enrollment, even with all the glitches. It just didn't feel like a big hassle back then because there was no simpler alternative. 

This little glimpse back down memory lane has helped me put my #firstworldproblems in perspective. Yes, it's annoying that these websites are so hard to use. But it's also kind of amazing that they exist at all. Looking at the situation through 1995-era Amy's eyes, having to wait until Monday to call customer service—from my own home, most likely in my pajamas—doesn't seem like such a big deal.

[EDIT, 3/2/26: After a frustrating half hour on the phone with the insurer, I'm no longer convinced doing things the old-fashioned way was harder. After working my way through the maze of the automated phone line and spending about 15 minutes on hold, I was informed that it was not possible to set up a new online account with my current email and my only option was to create a new email for this purpose. I gently (okay, maybe not so gently) pointed out that it can't be too uncommon for people to change plans, and it seems unlikely that the system simply doesn't allow for this possibility. The agent then put me on hold again while she presented this argument to the "e-services department," which eventually conceded that it would be possible to unlink my email from the existing online account so I could use it to create a new account. (Doing this would cut off my access to the old plan info, but that wasn't a problem because Brian still had an account linked to his email, so we could use that to deal with any lingering problems.) However, it apparently takes three to five business days to perform this apparently simple operation, so I'm now stuck in a holding pattern until Friday. The call then redirected me to a customer satisfaction survey, which I used to register my customer dissatisfaction. I even pressed the button to add an extra comment, gently (again, not that gently) suggesting that it would have been helpful to warn me about this "feature" when I first signed up for the new plan, so I could have dealt with it ahead of time.

On the plus side, one quick call to the dental plan provider was enough to unlock my account, so that shows competent customer service still exists somewhere in the modern world.]

[EDIT, 3/5/26: Well, there's good news and bad news. The good news: It didn't actually take 3 to 5 business days to uncouple my email from my old account. I got a call back within one day to say it was done, and I took the precaution of keeping the customer service agent on the line until I'd confirmed I was able to sign up for a new account. The bad news: Even with that account set up, I wasn't able to select a new Primary Care Provider online. I went through all the steps to do it and got a message saying, "Your PCP request could not be processed." So I got in touch with customer service again and they made the PCP selection for me—or at least, they said they had. It's now been two days and no PCP is showing up on my account. 

What's odd is that Brian made his PCP selection shortly after I did, using the phone system rather than chat, and his selection has already been processed. I just called Member Services again to sort this out, and as best I could make out from the agent's somewhat incoherent explanation, Brian's request somehow superseded mine. So this agent made the PCP selection for me again, and once again told me it would take 3 to 5 business days to go through.

So I'm now back in limbo, unable to transfer my medical records, see my new doctor, or get new prescriptions for any of my meds until this is resolved. In my ongoing battle with bureaucratic B.S., it's easy to see who's winning.]

How we became financially independent

This week, Brian finally did something he's been wanting to do for years: He quit his job. He is now officially retired, financially independent, a gentleman of leisure. Thirteen years after we officially set our sights on early retirement as a goal, we have now crossed that goal line.

How did we do it? Basically, by following the same plan that I outlined in that 2013 post and later expanded on in a 2016 article for Money Crashers: 

1. Cut your expenses as much as possible to maximize the amount you can sock away each month. (This step is what you've been reading about here for the past 13 years.)
2. Invest those savings in a mixed portfolio of low-fee funds. We've had some help with this step from a reliable finance guy who's sniffed out investments that earn us solid returns while minimizing what finance guys like to call "downside risk." (What exactly would be an upside risk?)
3. Stick with the plan until you've earned enough to retire. Technically, we reached this point a few years ago, but Brian needed a little time to get comfortable with the idea. Last year, he decided he was ready to take the plunge, and his official last day was Wednesday.

Before we could cross that finish line, though, there were a few t's to cross and i's to dot. The most obvious one: health insurance. Luckily for us, we live in New Jersey, which has a well-organized state health marketplace (Get Covered NJ) that makes it quite easy to shop for plans and compare costs. Even more luckily, New Jersey is one of the ten states that have stepped in to pick up the cost of the Obamacare subsidies Congress canceled last year. With our new, lower income (which is based on our taxable investment earnings, not the amount we withdraw each year to pay our bills), we qualified for a discount of over 80%, cutting our monthly premiums to just $318 for the two of us. Mind you, this is for a plan with a pretty hefty deductible ($2,100 per person per year), so we'll have to get used to paying out of pocket for a lot of costs that used to have only a nominal copay, such as prescription meds. But with all the practice we've had stretching our dollars over the past 22 years, I'm sure we can manage to keep those costs under control.

The health plan I bought doesn't cover dental or eye care (except for children, which we don't have). With a little searching, I was able to find a separate vision plan that wasn't too expensive (around $21 a month for both of us) and included our current eye doctor in its network. Based on our typical eye-care needs, which are a bit on the high side, it looks like this plan will save us around $300 a year. But dental coverage, at first blush, looked like a completely different story. There were dental plans available on Get Covered NJ, but most of them, once again, offered coverage for children only. The few plans I found that included adult care were not only expensive but had very low out-of-pocket maximums. (The worst of the lot capped payouts at a mere $1,000 per year, which was barely more than the annual cost of the premiums. It was practically guaranteed to cost us more out of pocket than it would ever pay back.) With such limited coverage, these plans would do little to nothing to protect us from ruinous costs, which is what insurance is supposed to be for.

But after looking a little further, I found an alternative that looked much more cost-effective: a dental discount plan. This isn't technically the same as insurance, which pays your bills (or a portion of them) for you. Instead, for a nominal yearly fee (around $125), you get charged a reduced rate for all care from dentists in the plan's network. If the plan's estimated costs for services like cleanings, exams, and fillings were accurate, it looked like it would save us about 65 percent on our average yearly dental costs. The only catch was that it would require us to choose a new dentist, since the trusted dentist we've been seeing for years isn't part of this or any other dental network. But after a little research, I was able to find a dental office with very good reviews from customers that's not only in the network, but also within walking distance of our house. Given how much we stood to save, it seemed like we should at least give the new dentist a try. If we didn't like her, we could always go back to our old dentist, and it would cost us nothing (since the savings just on that one visit would be enough to offset the signup cost).

In addition to the health insurance, there was one other workplace benefit we had to replace: Brian's computer. The laptop he's been using for the past several years belongs to Rutgers, and we knew he'd have to surrender it when he left. The last time we bought a computer, we chose a mini PC, which combined a low price with ease of upgrading. But Brian prefers the portability of a laptop, which he can easily haul into the kitchen for a video chat with his folks, set on the coffee table to stream a show on the TV, or take with him on a trip. So I did a search on Craigslist and found a lightly used Lenovo ThinkPad, which gets high ratings for repairability, for just $200. It's pretty basic, but more than adequate for his modest needs (email, Web surfing, streaming video and audio).

Although Brian is now officially retired, there still are a few more retirement-related tasks we need to clear up. For one, I've scheduled a couple of doctor appointments to take advantage of our current health insurance before it switches over at the end of the month. (One of these is with a dermatologist to see if I can find a cheaper alternative to the cream I'm currently using for my rosacea, which I've just learned would cost me about $100 a month to buy out of pocket.) Then, once the new plan kicks in, we'll need to officially select our new doctor and dentist and arrange to have our health records transferred to these new providers. And there's a bit of paperwork I need to complete to roll over Brian's 403(b) to a new IRA under the care of our trusty finance guy. 

But within a few weeks, we'll be officially set up to live a life of leisure. I'm already more or less retired myself, as all my long-term clients have dropped me one by one over the past few years and I've had no luck finding new ones. I've spent quite a bit of time over the past year or two scouring freelancer job listings and applying for suitable-looking jobs with essentially no results, and since we don't really need the money, I've decided to stop bothering with it. I'm happy to accept a new assignment if it simply falls into my lap, but I'm not wasting any more of my time looking for work. I'll leave it to the younger freelancers who need it more than I do.

Having reached this major financial goal, we don't feel any need to set a new one. All we have to do at this point is make sure our nest egg can carry us through the next 40 years or so. (We'll still have smaller, shorter-term goals, like gradually electrifying our home and, eventually, our car. But we've got ample cash in the kitty to dip in for those expenses as needed without cutting into our income.) So basically, we just need to stick with the same plan we used to get here: keep our expenses low, keep our investments sound, and keep on trucking. Which means that the posts you'll be reading on this blog in the future will probably be along much the same lines as the ones you've read here in the past. We'll still be doing all the same things to save money and care for the environment as we've always done; we'll just have a lot more time now to do them.

Thrift Week 2026, Day 3: How to Recycle Batteries

As regular readers will know, I'm not a particularly tech-oriented person. I'm a late adopter who only replaces her computer every ten years or so and didn't even own a smartphone until 2018. So I was quite surprised the first time I calculated just how many devices we had that ran on batteries. There were literally dozens—some with their own built-in rechargeable batteries, some with single-use alkaline batteries. Even when batteries aren't included, they're very much required.

In the years since, we've swapped out most of those alkaline batteries for either rechargeable ones or longer-lasting lithium batteries. (We still have a few partially discharged ones lurking in a drawer, waiting for us to eke the last little bit of charge out of them.) Both of these, particularly the rechargeables, are a big improvement on the alkaline ones. They produce a lot less waste and cost less over their lifespan. But sadly, no battery lasts forever. Eventually, like their disposable cousins, they'll need to be tossed.

Fortunately, when their time finally comes, there are plenty of places to recycle them. Our local Department of Public Works takes them, as do many Home Depot and Lowe's stores. But the old-fashioned alkaline batteries pose a bigger challenge. Our local DPW no longer accepts these, telling us we should simply toss them in the trash. But this doesn't sit well with me. Although modern alkaline batteries contain a lot less mercury than they used to, they still have some, along with other metals like manganese and zinc that go to waste when they're discarded. Environmentally conscious areas, like California and most of Europe, don't allow them into household trash, and I don't want to allow them in mine if I can help it. 

 

The Earth911 Recycling Search isn't all that helpful in this particular area. Most of the places it lists in my area for recycling alkaline batteries are municipal programs that are only open to residents. I've had better luck with a couple of sites specifically devoted to battery recycling: Battery Network and Call2Recycle. As far as I can tell, both these sites use the same search tool, which you can customize to find recycling locations near you for multiple types of batteries: rechargeable, single-use, cell phone batteries, and even specialty kinds like e-bike batteries. In our area, there are several Staples that accept single-use batteries, including one that's quite easy to swing by on our weekly trip down to Princeton. It takes only a few minutes to drop them off, and we can even earn reward points for them.

 

So, if you live near a Staples store, or if you pass by one on your regular route, you can dispose of all your depleted batteries there—both rechargeable and disposable—at one fell swoop. If that's not an option and your only choice is the trash, then take the precaution of putting tape over their terminals before tossing them. (Actually, it's a good idea to do this even while they're sitting in the drawer so you don't risk a short-circuit if the terminals come into contact.) 

 

Of course, the best long-term solution would be to switch to rechargeable batteries for everything, so you'd never need to dispose of single-use ones at all. But with most rechargeable batteries still available only in AA and AAA sizes, it may be a while before that's practical.

Thrift Week 2026, Day 2: How to Recycle Electronics

One category of waste that's particularly tricky to recycle is electronics. Electronic waste, or e-waste, includes old phones, computers, and pretty much anything else containing circuits, which these days can mean anything from light bulbs to refrigerators. It's a huge category, over 60 tons a year worldwide, and it poses an even thornier problem than textiles. If worse comes to worst, those old jeans can go into the landfill, where they won't cause any more pollution than anything else in the landfill with them. But old phones and computers contain all sorts of nasty components, such as dioxins, mercury, and lead, which you definitely don't want getting into the environment. At the same time, they contain lots of valuable metals and minerals, such as gold, copper, and lithium, which you definitely don't want to go to waste. That makes recycling them both very difficult and very important.

Because e-waste is also hazardous waste, most places have specific rules about recycling it. In our town, for instance, we're supposed to take it down to the Department of Public Works. This is what we do with any device that's no longer usable, like the old VCR and tape deck we discarded earlier this month. (If your town doesn't have an official collection site, you can drop off most kinds of electronic gizmos at your local Best Buy or Staples store. Check Earth911 for locations near you.) But, just like with clothing, it's much better to keep an object that's still usable in use if possible. 

The most recent case in point for us was my old smartphone. When I replaced it in 2022, it was technically still working; it had just become so unreliable that it was impractical to use. (Not only did the battery drain really fast, even after I'd replaced it with a new one, but it would randomly shut down without warning.) It might have been possible to fix it, but it wasn't within my extremely modest abilities. So, rather than simply take it to the recycling shed, I did a quick search and found an organization called 911 Cell Phone Bank. They take old cell phones, repair or recycle them, and donate them to victims of domestic violence and human trafficking. If my old phone was fixable, they could probably fix it; if not, it would be recycled. So, worst-case scenario, it would be the same as if I'd taken it to the DPW; best-case scenario, I'd not only keep it out of the waste stream but help out someone who really needed it.

Donating my phone through this program was quite straightforward. First I wiped it by going into Settings and doing a factory reset. Then I went to the website, clicked the Donate Phones button, and selected 10 Devices or Less and Print Shipping Label. There was one minor snag when the label didn't print properly, so I had to submit my information a second time and have the label emailed to me as a PDF. But eventually I got it printed out, packed up the phone and the spare battery that hadn't done it much good, slapped on the label, and dropped it off at the post office. Easy peasy.

Computers are a bit trickier to dispose of than phones, mainly because they're bigger. However, they're also more valuable, so if you have a computer that's still usable, you can almost certainly find a new home for it. If it's a reasonably new one, you might even be able to get a little cash for it on Craigslist. We've never sold an old machine this way, but we recently bought one: Brian's new laptop, which will replace his work laptop when he retires this year. (Like his work computer, it's a Lenovo ThinkPad, which gets high marks for repairability, and buying it secondhand will make it even more sustainable. It's far from state of the art, but it's more than adequate for jobs like email and streaming TV shows, and it was only $200.)

But even if your computer is ancient and creaky, you can probably find someone willing to take it on Freecycle (or Buy Nothing or Trash Nothing). I've never Freecycled one of my own old computers, since I tend to keep them until they're effectively unusable, but I've successfully found homes for two old machines that had belonged to my parents. I forget exactly how old they were, but I know neither one was any spring chicken, and I still got multiple offers for each of them within 24 hours.

And if your computer is so old that, like mine, it's barely working at all, you may still be able to find a home for it through Computers4People. Like 911 Cell Phone Bank, they accept both working and nonworking machines. After wiping the data, they refurbish the ones that can be salvaged and donate them to people in need; everything else gets recycled. It's not quite as simple to use, because you can't just pop the device in the mail, but you can drop it off at any of over 10,000 FedEx and Walgreens stores across North America. Most sites only accept laptops, tablets, and smartphones, but there are few that take desktop machines and peripherals.

 

One important caveat: before getting rid of a computer or a phone, make sure to transfer all the files you need from it, then scrub the hard drive to remove all your personal data. PCMag offers guidelines on how to do this with both computers and phones. But if your device is well and truly bricked and you can't get onto the drive at all, don't worry; both 911 Cell Phone Bank and Computers4People promise to clear all data off donated devices before passing them on to new users.

I've been plagiarized

I just did a search on the term "gazingus pin," trying to see if there was a better way to explain it than the way I did in this 2014 post. One of the first hits I found was from a blog called Simple Vegetarian Concept, and it looked oddly familiar. I didn't quite realize why until I saw the photo accompanying it, which I immediately recognized as one that I had taken. Turns out, this blogger had lifted the entire post—text, photo, and all—from my 2014 blog post.

And it wasn't just this one post. Looking at the "popular posts" listed in the sidebar, I realized that every single one of them was lifted directly from my blog. "Holiday Tour of Highland Park": my blog, December 2012. "A Futile Gesture of Protest": November 2014. "Gardeners' Holidays": February 2013. The entire blog was nothing but posts copied from my blog, verbatim.

Naturally, I'm rather irked that this person is appropriating my words without giving me credit for them, and possibly diverting traffic from my blog in the process. (Given that the plagiarized post showed up in my search results while my original post did not, I rather suspect that's the case.) But even more than that, I'm baffled. The Simple Vegetarian Concept blog doesn't appear to be monetized in any way: there are no ads on it at all. So what is this person getting out of stealing my words? 

Right now, the best idea I can think of is that maybe this person intended to create "a blog about simple vegetarian tips," but after setting it up, they never quite got around to posting anything. Then, perhaps, Blogger warned them that they had to post something or lose the site, so rather than come up with something to say, they stole from me, and they've been doing it ever since. But that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I mean, why would they care about losing the site if they're not actually using it?

The other thing I can't figure out is what I can possibly do about it. The "Contact" link on the Simple Vegetarian Concept blog just leads to a blank page, so I can't send this so-called blogger a polite request to take down all the posts they blatantly stole from me. I could report the blog to Google for copyright violation, but I'd have to report every single post that was plagiarized separately, providing a direct link to the specific article on Simple Vegetarian Concept and a direct link to the original on Ecofrugal Living. Since this blogger has stolen literally hundreds of posts from me (I stopped counting after page 75), this would take hours if not days (particularly since Google won't let you report more than ten violations in a single report).

For now, I've settled for reporting the gazingus pin article that I found with my search, as well as nine others that were listed in the "Popular posts" sidebar on Simple Vegetarian Concept. If Google responds to that report, I'll see if I can get in touch with anyone there to simplify the process of reporting the entire blog.

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.