Ten Ways To Save Money At The Pump

Worried about the high cost of gas? You've got good reason. Gas prices look like they're set to reach record levels.

The best way to avoid spending more on gas than you need to? Keep all of these tips, courtesy of the Sierra Club, in mind:

1. Drive Smart!
When you drive aggressively, you waste gas and put others at risk. Observe the speed limit, avoid rapid acceleration and braking, and maintain a constant speed on the road.

2. Keep Your Car in Shape.
A well-tuned car burns less gasoline. So make sure that you get your oil and air filters changed regularly, and that your tires are always properly inflated.

3. Change Your Commute.
Sitting in rush hour traffic burns gas and gets you nowhere. If possible, adjust your work schedule so that you avoid rush hour traffic. Even better, and if your employer allows it, think about telecommuting. If you can't telecommute full-time, try for one or two days a week.

4. Use Public Transportation.
Look into the public-transportation options in your area, and use them as much as possible.

5. Try to Combine Errands.
According to the Department of Energy, several short trips taken from a cold start can use twice as much fuel as a longer, multipurpose trip covering the same distance when the engine is warm.

6. Go for a Ride or Walk.
Rather than drive your car to the corner store or a friend's house, walk or ride your bike there. Studies show that this approach has the added advantage of reducing your risk of heart disease.

7. Carpool.
Carpool or use ride-share programs if you can. This might also enable you to shorten the time of your commute by using High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes.

8. Pack Light.
According to the Department of Energy, a loaded roof rack on your car can decrease fuel economy by approximately five percent. Also, every 100 pounds you carry in a car reduces a typical car's fuel economy by one to two percent. So, when you go on vacation or a long car trip, put everything you can inside your vehicle, and pack light

9. Think Hybrid.
The most fuel-efficient vehicles on the road today are hybrid-electric cars. A hybrid combines an electric motor with a conventional, but cleaner, gasoline-powered engine. Over its lifetime, a 50-mile per gallon hybrid Toyota Prius will use half as much gas, and release half as much global-warming pollution, as a 23-mpg Pontiac Grand Prix.

10. Consider Sharing.
Rather than buy a new car, sign up for membership with a car-sharing program such as Flexcar or Zipcar. These programs allow you to reserve and drive cars by the hour -- and they cover the cost of the vehicle, insurance, gas, parking, and maintenance.

Bonus: Write Your Leaders.
Urge them to raise fuel economy standards to 40 miles per gallon. Modern technology can make our cars and trucks go farther on a gallon of gas. Taking this step would save nearly 4 million barrels of oil a day -- more oil than we currently import from the Persian Gulf. And by saving on gas, you would save nearly $2,000 at the pump over the life of your car.

A Cheaper, Smarter, More Earth Friendly Alternative To Bottled Water

Here's a cheap chic idea: Instead of buying bottled water, consider buying a water filter system such as Brita or Pur, or buying one of those ceramic crocks that come with refillable 5-gallon jugs that you can fill up with reverse osmosis water, and fill up your own easy-to-carry container (glass or stainless steel is best) before you head out the door.

Bottled water does a lot of harm to the environment. The process of bottling water produces up to 1.5 million tons of plastic waste every year. That plastic requires up to 47 million gallons of oil per year to produce, and since only 20% end up being recycled, tons of slow-decaying plastic trash are continually building up in landfills and in the world's oceans, representing a great risk to marine life.

That's not all though. It hurts your wallet as well. Unless you're out in the middle of nowhere and the only convenience store for miles around has nothing else but bottled water, buying bottled water is stuuuuuuuupid.

We think paying $1.30 for a mid-size bottle of water is pretty exorbitant. Even if it comes from Fiji or some fjord in some pristine far-flung area of Europe, it's still water. It can't taste that different from regular water.

Although we're sure there's nothing intrinsically wrong with tap water, over the years, we've taken the extra precaution of using a Brita water filter pitcher, just in case. It's worked pretty well for us, except for the fact that we get lazy every now and then about filling it back up again. There's that whole issue of opening and closing the fridge quite a lot as well.

So we decided to buy a ceramic water crock for $30, and a 5-gallon jug of reverse osmosis-purified water for 25 cents per gallon. The lady that sold us the jug n' crock set let us have our first 5 gallons for free, and gave us a stamp-as-you-go card so that we could get our 10th refill gratis as well.

Not having to continuously open and close the fridge door is great, but the best part of it all is the savings. Consider this: $1.25 for a 20-oz. bottle of water versus $1.25 for 5 gallons of filtered water. 'Nuff said!

What's In A Name ?

I've always loved my name because it's so unique, and it fits me to a 'T'. Derived from the original French 'Desiree', which means 'the one longed for', I've taken to putting it a naughtier way as I've gotten older by saying my name means 'the object of desire'. (Look at the picture below. Do I or don't I look like a Dezzi Rae/Desiree ?)

My parents liked the name 'Desiree', which they picked up when they saw the Marlon Brando movie 'Napoleon and Desiree' but knew very few Filipinos would be able to pronounce it correctly so they decided to alter it a wee bit. 'Dezzi' was because I was born in December, and 'Rae' was in honor of my dad, Ray, on whose 27th birthday I chose to make my grand entrance into the world (talk about being a scene stealer!).

Just this week, I stumbled on a story online about a high school basketball star named Dezzirae Cafferata. I forwarded the story to my parents. My dad thought it was quite a coincidence, but pointed out that mine is spelled out as two words - 'Dezzi' and 'Rae'. My mom said, "Aw, c'mon! Maybe they saw your name in the papers when you first came to the States as a Soroptomist International Youth Forum representative'.

I finally decided to google 'Dezzirae' and 'Dezzi Rae' and wouldn't you know it, there were a few other Dezzirae's out there.

I did a little bit more research and found out that 'Dezzirae' is in fact an old English name that means 'dawn' or 'sunrise'. From 'object of desire' to 'sunrise'. Who would've thought?

If you're looking for cool baby names (like 'Dezzi Rae'- Ha!), one book that we bought a year ago and still enjoy going through and making notes on which names we'd like for our wee ones when the time comes is Cool Names For Babies. Taking inspiration from the book, we decided on Katana Lily if we have a girl, Mace Atreides (yes, as in The House of Atreides from the sci-fi novel 'Dune'), if we have a boy.

So, I may not be the only one in the world who spells her name as 'd-e-z-z-i-r-a-e' but hey, at least I'm the only one who spells it as 'd-e-z-z-i' and separate word 'r-a-e'. Or at least that's what I believe until another Dezzi Rae emails me and refutes my statement!

Salt Dough Sculptures

I've been making fun things out of salt dough since I was a kid. It's one of the least expensive hobbies around, what you make is entirely up to you, and I love how it absolutely puts me in my "Zen Zone".

The photo above shows some of my latest pieces: a cute little ladybug, a leaf (both of which I'm going to hot-glue onto magnets so I can use them to hold notes up on our fridge), seals for our wedding invitations, and a gold-tipped rosebud (I have no idea how I'm going to use the rosebud, but I ended up with it while watching an episode of 'Ace Of Cakes' where they were sculpting flowers out of fondant - artistic osmosis via cable TV!).

The most basic recipe for salt dough is 1 cup of fine salt, 1 cup of flour, 1/2 cup water. You mix it all together in a bowl until it forms a ball, and you knead it on a well-floured board or flat surface until it's smooth and elastic. Your salt dough is now ready to use!

Whatever you can't use up, simply put plastic wrap around it and store in a cool place and it'll keep for at least a week or so.

I've found that air-drying my sculptures for a few days before I paint and varnish them is best, but since Corey got a dehydrator from his sister a couple Christmases back, I've been using it to speed up the process. I've also tried brushing them with egg wash and drying them in the oven for a golden brown effect.

Over the years, I've played with variations to the basic salt dough recipe (more salt makes for a grainier texture, more flour makes it softer, adding coloring and interesting stuff like coffee powder or glitter to the dough, etc.) so feel free to experiment. It's part of the fun!

-Dezzi Rae

Wedding Seals Made of Salt Dough

We like the idea of having a seal on the wedding invites but rather than buy the wax seals, I decided to experiment with salt dough instead, which is an extremely inexpensive alternative, given that it’s basically just salt, flour and water.

I simply took a stamp (we found one a couple years ago with our initials - ‘A’ for ‘Ascalon’ and ‘M’ for ‘Marshall’-when we were down at the Hollywood Toy and Costume Store and had to buy it), pressed it into a piece of salt dough that I had rolled out into a thin sheet, let it air-dry, and painted it with black and metallic gold acrylic. I waited for it to dry before painting on a layer of varnish.

For the salt dough recipe and more cheap chic tips, go to http://www.thecheapchiccouple.com/

L.A. Fashion District: A Treasure Trove for the Bride On A Budget

If you're a bride living in Los Angeles, you simply must go down to the Los Angeles Fashion District and check out the huge selection of wedding items down there.

I feel like a kid in a candy store everytime I go down there. Of course, there's horrendous, low quality, tacky stuff everywhere (but there's horrendous, tacky stuff at the higher-end retail stores as well) but when you find a good deal, it's enough to make you feel like you just found hidden treasure.

Parking can be as high as $8-15 for all day parking but I found a parking lot on 8th Street, near the bead stores and Michael Levine's, that has $3 all day parking. Be sure to read the signs before you park though. Some of them have the big ol' $3 sign on them but in tiny letters underneath, it says 'per hour'. Sneaky!

A Must-Read: The Millionaire Next Door

As a mortgage consultant, there are several books that I give my clients as gifts when they close their transactions with me. 'The Millionaire Next Door' is is one of them.

Growing up, my family instilled the value of frugality in me. My mother taught me to never buy clothing simply because it had a shi-shi-foo-foo designer label on it, and which items to stock up on when they went on sale. My grandmother had a bowl in the wash basin to catch the soapy water, and she'd make us pour it into a pail nearby. When the pail was full, she'd use it for flushing the toilet. My grandfather dug composting holes in the garden so we could fertilize the garden with what we normally threw out.

As an adult, frugality is tantamount to financial savvy in my book. Being frugal means being debt-free. Being debt-free means being able to work to live, instead of having to live to work. It also means being able to retire early because you don't spend most of your life paying off debt when you could be enjoying early retirement- which should be everybody's goal in life.

'The Millionaire Next Door' shows how we can all join the ranks of America's wealthy (defined as people whose net worth is over one million dollars) by following seven simple rules. The first rule is, always live well below your means. The authors mercilessly show how wealth takes sacrifice, discipline, and hard work, qualities that are positively discouraged by our high-consumption society. "You aren't what you drive," admonish the authors.

Definitely a must-read for everyone who intends to pursue the Cheap Chic lifestyle!

-Dezzi Rae