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Moneysavers
Thanks to all the people who have supported me in my work by buying my booklets, sending them to friends and telling people about what is in them. I would like to repay people by helping them to save some money and that could easily add up to a great deal more than they have given me. Please read on:
Computing
These are the main things I had to spend time finding out to set up my sites. If you don't have an FTP programme, sign up with GeoCities. They have an easy upload facility. If you can manage FTP you probably know more than me but www.50megs.com is good. It also accepts the Windows Web Publishing Wizard. For an FTP program, if you need one, WS_FTP LE is free from Ipswitch - it is a little difficult to find at Ipswitch's site but it is there (April 2001). If you want to set up a music site Winamp has a free version of its mp3 player and for a free mp3 encoder/decoder try RightClick by Mr Shannon.
Home Expenditure
If you have wooden window frames and have no plans to switch to plastic or aluminium ones use a fungicide or other wood treatment when you wash windows. If you pay to have them washed still use wood preservative periodically(!).
Fuel
Expenditure
Watching fuel expenditure quite carefully convinced me that with a 5-speed gearbox, which many people have nowadays, it wastes money working the engine hard in 5th gear below about 55mph (90kph) for a typical family car. The manufacturer's book for the car I have is a little misleading in this respect. Their graphs showing the fuel economy involved with using 5th gear at low speeds only applies to cruising not accelerating or hill climbing. Getting the best out of your engine in this way could save you $7 (5 pounds) per 1000 miles.
Food
Expenditure
Vitamin C
Using vitamin C tablets leaves me not wanting to bother much with fruit and I have reached the conclusion that fruit and vegetables are mostly beneficial for the vitamin C and other anti-oxidants they provide. In the United Kingdom these days there is a lot of promotion in the media of the idea that children at school should be eating many portions of fruit and vegetables per day. I have to wonder how the influence of supermarket barons may have been instrumental in promoting this idea since a handful of businesses in the United Kingdom stand to gain greatly from that policy. Why doesn't someone say everyone should take one vitamin C tablet per day which would cost them approximately 2cents (1.5pence)?
Bread - high quality, low fat use.
Bread is often dry and requires quite a lot of fat to make it palatable. Finding that the bread I was using seemed to be giving me a backache I developed my own microwave bread and have never bothered with shop-bought bread since. Also, bread from the microwave is moist and doesn't need so much fat. People are advised not to derive more than about 40% of their energy from fat and with my kind of bread I think the figure is nearer 15%. I mix self-raising flour with plain flour which has the advantage of removing any problem with acid indigestion. I add arrowroot and sugar. It's not crusty but I've never bothered with a bread maker or baking in an oven so other people could easily make a much better end result than me. However I'm sure it has saved me a great deal of money, left me in better health, feeling fitter than I used to - and I never run out of bread!
Tooth
Care
I'm glad I learned the importance of using fluoride toothpaste which keeps toothache at bay. I'm sure that a lot of people suffer from toothache because they don't know that fluoride helps to block the very fine holes in teeth that lead to aches and decay.