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BioDiesel has been getting more and more popular as it has become another fuel saving alternative than PetroDiesel. Simply convert your diesel engine to BioDiesel and you can expect greater average fuel saving if you make the BioDiesel yourself.
How Does It Work?
BioDiesel is simply produced from vegetable oils or animal fats. When converting your diesel engine to BioDiesel, you can choose whether to let your diesel engine to run with bio-fuel using vegetable oils, animal fats or a combination of both. You may re-use used vegetable oils from your daily cooking so you can imagine how much saving you can get from fuel itself.
How Much Can It Save?
The cost of vegetable oil to make BioDiesel is definitely much cheaper than PetrolDiesel. If you make your own BioDiesel, you can expect an average fuel saving of more than 50%. More-ever, since diesel engines that run on BioDiesel are healthier, you can save on your vehicle maintenance costs as well.
What Other Benefits Are There?
Pollution is greatly reduced when powering diesel engine with BioDiesel, as it is a clean-burning fuel that does not produce emission of greenhouse gases thus keeping our planet green. That is the reason why BioDiesel is favored by environmentalists all over the world.
What Are The DownSides?
However, BioDiesel does have its downsides too. It decreases the car performance due to its low energy content. It requires modern diesel engines that come with synthetic seals instead of old rubber seals. Lastly, you may smell the taste of french fries when the engine is running with BioDiesel but who cares, as long as your car can bring you from point A to B, these issues are no longer considered as a problem.
Conclusion :
With constantly increasing fuel costs, car owners over the globe are always looking for alternative fuel to reduce on their fuel expenses. BioDiesel is definitely one of the best money saving fuel alternatives. Start saving on your fuel expenses today and enjoy living debt free in life today!
Since history seems to repeat itself, maybe we could learn something about the current possible recession by studying this country’s recession history.
I work with investments, so I’m particularly concerned with recessions because they can have a very negative impact on investment account values. I’m going to look at the recession history with particular focus on how each recession affected the Dow Industrials Stock Index. I have Dow Index data back to 1930, so we will start there.
I have known for some time that the market moves in approximately 15 year cycles. The market goes up for 15 years then seems to go sideways for the next 15 years. This growth and then consolidation pattern happens frequently through out history.
Let’s first consider the Dow Industrials index from 1930 through 1945.
This period started with the great depression. We all know the effect the depression had on stock values. The Dow lost over 88% of its value between 1929 and 1933. It made a nice rebound following the depression. It increased 345% over the next 4 years. We will see there is a theme in the recession / expansion cycle. Recessions are relatively short and can be very violent to investors in the stock market. The expansion period following recessions are much longer and historically quite good.
One thing you need to be extremely aware of. Numbers and percentages can be deceiving. I just mentioned that the index lost 88 percent, but then gained 345%. Sounds like you made up all your losses and then some. Not quite.
The dirty little secret to investment losses is this: if you lose 50% of your portfolio, you need to make 100% just to break even. This is an ugly little fact, but let’s look at it in real life. If you had $100,000 and lost 50%, you would be left with only $50,000. How much do you have to earn on your $50,000 to get back to even? You need to earn another $50,000. This is 100% of what you currently have. You lost 50% and must gain 100% just to break even.
Let’s put this into real life. In 1929 the Dow had a high of around 380 and in 1933 a low of about 48. This is an 88% decrease in value. Over the next 4 years it went from 48 to 187. This is a 345% increase. Sounds like you made up the 88% loss and then some. Unfortunately you have only gained back just over half of what you lost. This also is a recurring theme. When a recession takes huge bites out of portfolio values, it normally takes many years just to break even again. Not to get ahead of myself, but the Nasdaq has only regained about half of what it lost during the last recession. And this is 7 years later! The Dow and S&P 500 took about 6 years to finally break even. The kind of time periods required to recover definitely make the study of the recession history worth while.
Now that some of the back ground work is complete lets look at the next 15 years, from 1945 through 1960. In 1955 the Dow finally got back to where it was before the great depression. This was a very long 25 year wait. Imagine the poor retirees that retired before the depression and never again regained their original portfolio value!
Remember the last 15 years were mostly down then sideways (1930 through 1945). This next 15 year time period (1945 thru 1960) had very mild recessions with the worst only causing a 15% drop in the Dow. Overall, the Dow gained 267% over these 15 years. This is very good reward for a minimum amount of risk. This leads us to the next 15 years, 1960 to 1975.
The 15 year cycle is definitely in effect. The last 15 years were very tame yet had a nice return. These 15 years were not for the feint of heart. Gain was very little over the period, but volatility was killer. The period started out with a wonderful 75% gain, but gave it all back by the end. The recessionary periods were very violent. The reward available in this market was much smaller than the risk. It would have been nearly impossible to be a buy and hold investor and have stayed with the market.
Thus far, we had a 15 year period that was horrible (1930 thru 1945), one that was very nice (1945 thru 1960), then another horrible one (1960 thru 1975). Without looking ahead, we might guess that the next 15 year time period would be another nice one. The market consolidated over the last 15 years and should be ready to move ahead again.
This period began with a 6 years of continued consolidation (going sideways), but when it was done consolidating, it moved up very nicely. It moved from around 800 in ’82 to 2800 by 1990. This represents a 250% increase for the period. The volatility for the period was pretty tame, at least if you look at the volatility caused by recession. The largest pullback in value was the ’81 to ’82 recession which was about 18%. There was a large pullback in August of ’87 of about 30%, but wasn’t caused by recession and didn’t take that long to be regained; all in all a very fruitful 15 years.
This would lead me to believe that the next 15 years (1990 thru 2005) would be tumultuous again as the market needs to digest its gains.
The roll the market had going continued for the first half of this period. It gained 300% in just 8 years. This was more in the first half than the others gained in their entire 15 year period. This didn’t go un-noticed however, and the market promptly took back a healthy 35% through the next recessionary period. It took until mid way through 2006 to finally get back to even from the highs seen in ’99. Once this was achieved, however, the Dow just kept going. It extended its gains through the expansion period, hitting new highs once again.
This brings us to today. There is much talk about the beginning of another recession. We’re at the end of a period that should have shown consolidation, but instead had another large run up. This run up wasn’t without sizeable volatility. We’ve just broken a long term support line. I’ve drawn support lines through the years following recessions and had you sold when the support line was broken, you would have been saved a lot of grief during the next recession.
In summary, I would say that the recession history points to our next recession causing havoc on the Dow. When will the next recession be or are we already in it? I’ve covered this dilemma in another article. Personally, I think we are already in it. I believe the Dow just broke support and has a lot of potential to continue downward.
Everyone needs to save, but sometimes it becomes difficult. It’s easy to spend everything you make, especially in times where the cost of living is a little more than it was last year and your salary was frozen as a company money-saving initiative.
Sometimes you can “trick” yourself into saving a little here and there if you feel a little apprehensive about saving in a big chunk. Look for the small ways to save a little and reap the rewards at the end of the week, the month, the year, and beyond.
Here are some quick, easy and fun ways to save some money.
1. Create a budget.
This will be the most difficult, but can also yield the biggest reward. Any number of resources can be found on the Internet for creating a budget just by doing a search. You can purchase any number of budget software, and some programs have options to help you create a budget built-in. The important thing is to be honest with what you spend. Keep track of your spending habits for three months to come up and average of what you spend and what you take in each month. Some people will use the “envelope method” and put the money for each category in envelopes. When the money’s gone at the end of the month, that’s it. Just make sure you stick to the budget. Most people will find that frivolous spending diminishes when they think about how much they actually spend.
2. Forced discipline works.
Many people take advantage of direct deposit. If this is available, use it to save. Set up a savings account with your bank or credit union and put 5% of your take home pay in the account. This is an amount most people can live with and will not miss. It is vital that you “pay yourself first” when budgeting, so make sure to save every month. Even if it’s only $20 a week, at the end of the year, your account will have over $1,000.
3. Use pre-tax contributions as a way to save.
Whether you use it for medical expenses, insurance, cafeteria plans, or retirement contributions, every dollar you save is significant.
4. Utilize employer contributions to your retirement plan.
First, make certain that you’re putting away money for retirement. If you’re not, you’re missing out on a big savings opportunity. If your employer will match retirement funds up to a certain percentage of your gross income, take advantage of it. An average employer contribution is half up to 6%. Check with you payroll or human resources department to see what programs are available. It’s free money!
5. Refinance your house.
One by-product of a down economy is lower interest rates. If you’re planning to stay in your home for a number of years, you could see significant savings every month simply by refinancing your home. As an example, at 7% interest, our payment was $989 a month. Dropping the interest rate to 5% saved us $157 a month in interest. Our payment is now $832 a month. That’s $1884 a year and more than $56,520 over the life of a 30-year loan.
6. Brown-bag it.
Take your lunch twice a week. That’s not too much to ask of yourself. Bring leftovers from dinner the previous night. For argument’s sake, let’s say the average lunch costs $8. That’s a savings of $16 a week. Doesn’t really seem like much, but remember, we’re going for long-term here. It’s $832 a year… one extra mortgage payment.
7. Speaking of extra mortgage payment…
Did you know that if you pay one extra mortgage payment a year, it will deduct eight years of payments from your repayment schedule? This is the most complicated math we can do for the sake of this article. If you reduce your payment schedule by eight years, at $832 a month that’s a savings of $79,872. Don’t forget to subtract the additional money that you’re paying. The savings over the life of the mortgage will be $61,568. (Quick…add that to the savings of refinancing. That’s over $118,000 savings in 30 years. Think about that in relation to how much you paid for your house.)
8. Use a passive saving technique.
The best example of this is saving change in a jar. A lot of people do it. It’s amazing how much a jar full of change is worth. Try kicking it up a notch. Look at your dollar bills. There are 12 (A through L) and it denotes the regional Federal Reserve Bank that issued the bill. Pick one of the letters and save every dollar bill you come across. You won’t miss a dollar here and there, will you? At the end of the month, put it in savings. We have the kids do this. We hope it will teach them the value of saving, a little about our money system, and maybe even some geography. We pick a different letter each month and put the bills in the college funds. One person we know does it with $5 bills by saving every bill he finds with the smaller Abraham Lincoln on it. He averages about $80 a month.
Remember, every little bit helps. Stick to it. Make it fun. Saving is addictive. When you realize how much you can save by just taking small steps, you’ll find ways to save more without really feeling it.