Earlier this summer we dropped our Netflix membership. Don’t get me wrong, we love Netflix — it’s one of those rare companies that just seems to get it comes to providing a valuable service at a competitive price. But we were just about to move, and we also knew that we’d be travelling quite a bit over the summer, so why pay for movies that we wouldn’t be watching? [more]

FiveCentNickel participated in four carnivals this week. Here they are, along with links to my posts that were included in each.

The Best of Me Symphony included “Money Saving Tip: Live Next Door to Someone Who’s Moving.” Also included was “Check Out the Girl Ninja” from raising4boys.com.

The Carnival of Personal Finance included “Dish Network Customer Service Still Sucks.”

The Festival of Frugality included “Reducing Peak Electrical Usage.”

The Carnival of the Vanities included “Marriage by the Numbers.” Also included was “First Day of School Jitters? Yeah, Right” from raising4boys.com.

Just about a year ago, my wife and I decided that we were underinsured given our then-current income and living expenses, so we shopped for and bought new term life insurance policies. And now here we are, feeling the exact same way… This last year has been good to us both personally and professionally and, following our move, we have a bit more in the way of liabilities, as well as considerably more income to replace if anything bad were to happen to me. Thus, we’re once again feeling a bit ‘exposed’ when it comes to life insurance, and we’re thinking of re-doing our policies. Again. The trouble here is figuring out how much we need. [more]

This weekend marked the completion of one of my major electricity-saving projects — the conversion of our house from incandescent lighting to compact fluorescent bulbs. We still have (I think) four incandescent bulbs in closets, but those get so little use that it wasn’t worth switching them over. All in all, I ended up swapping out 107 bulbs. In terms of energy savings, we reduced the total wattage of lights in our house by nearly 80%, broken down as follows: [more]

Time to dig into the archives again… Here are some of my favorite posts from the month of June…

06/01/06 — Ethanol Blended Gas = Lower Mileage?
06/05/06 — Reducing Our Electrical Usage
06/07/06 — Our Dish Network TV Experience (So Far)
06/07/06 — Our Dish Network Experience (Continued)
06/12/06 — Our John Deere Model 125 Lawn Tractor
06/13/06 — Hampton Inn’s 100% Satisfaction Guarantee
06/16/06 — The Dish Network Runaround
06/19/06 — Our Online Banking Changeover
06/21/06 — Money Saving Tip: Live Next Door to Someone Who’s Moving

And here’s a rundown of what was happening at Raising4Boys during June:

06/01/06 — C-Sections Unsafe?
06/51/06 — Braces for an Eight Year Old, Update #2
06/09/06 — Check Out the Girl Ninja
06/12/06 — Strict Parenting = Overweight Kids?
06/15/06 — Introducing the 401(kid)
06/16/06 — Four Year Old (Mis)Behavior, Portrait Studios and Pants-Dropping
06/23/06 — Guess What? Smoking is Bad for Your Kids
06/26/06 — From the Mouths of Babes: Made in China
06/28/06 — The Best Dollar(s) that I’ve Ever Spent
06/30/06 — The World’s Most Practical Five Year Old

Here’s a quick rundown of posts that caught my eye over the past week… [more]

Hmmm… This is interesting… Apparently Google, Inc. (GOOG) has amassed so much cash in its coffers that it’s currently at risk of being classified (and thus regulated) as a mutual fund. They have made an SEC filing to persuade the SEC that it is truly and “internet and new media business,” rather than existing primarily to make investments. So how much money does it take to get into this sort of trouble? Well, Google’s most recent quarterly balance sheet listed assets totaling $14.4 billion, including $4 billion in cash and $5.8 billion in marketable securities. The problem is that, under the Investment Company Act of 1940, a comany with more than 40% of is assets in certain security types is subkect to different rules when it comes to general operations, as well as disclosure.

[Source: Yahoo! Finance]

Here’s a quick look at some of my favorite posts from a year ago this week:

• Sandwiches by the Loaf — Advice on how to de-stress your morning routine by pre-making your kids sandwiches.

• How to Sue Wal-Mart — Info on taking Wal-Mart for all they’re worth.

• The Riskiest States for Identity Theft — A rundown of the states with the highest risk of identity theft.

• How to Create ING Direct Subaccounts — A quick tutorial on creating subaccounts at ING Direct.

I ran across an interesting program on our electric company’s website the other day… In an attempt to reduce electical demand during peak hours on the hottest days of the year, they are offering people cash to have a small, remote-controlled switch installed on their air conditioner. When demand for electricity peaks on weekday afternoons (between noon and 7:00 PM) from May through September, the electric company will be able to throw the switch and reduce the run time of your air conditioner. [more]

As of yesterday, my wife and I have been married for ten years. This got me to thinking about all of the things we’ve experienced together during that time. I actually started this list over on raising4boys.com, but thought that I’d flesh it out here. We’ve been married for:

10 years
9 surgeries (4 C-sections, 2 carpal tunnel, 2 sets of wisdom teeth, and a tonsillectomy)
8 trips to Disney World
7 car trips of more than 2000 miles
6 ear tubes (two of our kids, three sets total)
5 moves (fortunately three of these were local)
4 kids
3 states of residence (one of them twice!)
2 homes bought
1 home sold

And a partridge in a pear tree… We’ve had a very busy (and very, very good) ten years!