I saw something last month that I hadn’t seen in years–literally, years. It was a gas station near my home that was advertising one price for gas paid in cash ($3.79 per gallon) and another price for gas paid by credit card price ($3.86 per gallon). Given that another gas station a mile or so up the road was charging $3.83 per gallon, regardless of how you paid, you can bet that is where I stopped to fill up.

But this cash-versus-credit price brought back memories of my teen years (the 1980s), when my mother would drive around our town a couple of times in order to find the gas station with the best price for gas. It was always the one that charged a little bit less if you paid cash. But back then, gas cost less than a buck, which meant she could fill up her Toyota Corolla for about $10. And who doesn’t have $10 in their wallet, even by 1980s standards?

Flash forward two decades and it costs me $60 or more to fill up my gas tank. I’m far from poor but I can tell you that I rarely have $60 in my wallet at any given time, which is why I prefer to pay for gas with a credit card. Also, because we download our credit-card bills into Quicken each month as part of our budgeting process, paying with a credit card (even if it costs me seven cents more a gallon for gas) makes the most sense for me.

FYI, a seven-cent difference at 15 gallons of gas–that’s how much my car holds–with a weekly fill up (assuming I fill the car weekly; I try not to) only amounts to $54. Should I make the effort to get that $54 a year (or less than $5 a month) back in my pocket? Probably. Will I? Not likely.

I can understand why gas stations have taken to offering competitive–and lower–prices for cash-only transactions. It seems that the credit card companies have been raking them over the coals with transaction fees–costs that they supposedly pass along to us, the consumer, whether or not we’re paying with cash, debit or credit.

Speaking of debit cards, their growing popularity has helped the major credit card companies to enjoy increased profits, despite our down economy. I mean, credit card spending may be down but debit spending is up, which is probably how a company like VISA could recently report a profit increase of 41 percent.

Of course, if you’re on a tight budget and don’t want to have the weight of credit card debt hanging over your head–and you can’t afford to pay your balance in full each month; we are lucky that we can–then cash makes sense. Some people have come to equate debit with cash for the convenience of it. But if it turns out that transaction fees from debit cards are hurting the American consumer as much as credit card fees, then perhaps we should all go back to a cash-only society.

Wait, even better, let’s go back to a barter society. (Did you know that there is a barter section on Craigslist?) Bartering would be cool.

I knew this was coming, but I just didn’t expect it so soon. What, you ask, has got me all hot and bothered? Why it’s my home heating oil bill, the first of which arrived in my mailbox yesterday, for the 2008-2009 heating season.

It’s August; oil deliveries don’t start until late October. Yet today I received a bill for $646.

I called the oil company, thinking this was a mistake and that they hadn’t received my payment for the final bill in May. No, the customer-service rep said. This is our new budget plan and that’s your monthly payment that’s due.

Um, why am I getting billed now for oil I won’t received until way later?

Well, for starters, as we all know, oil prices have doubled since last year’s heating season. Many local oil companies are struggling to extend “credit” to their customers with after-the-fact payments, so they’re asking people to pony up the cash sooner. Also, as a way of making oil payments “hurt” less, this year my oil company is offering a “budget” plan that is 10-month’s long, meaning that payments are spread over 10 months instead of the six from last year.

Payment frequency doesn’t really matter to me, because here’s the bottom line: with last year’s “budget” plan, which allowed me to lock in my per-gallon rate for oil, I paid about $3,600 for all of my oil. That breaks down to about $600 a month over six months. This year, I’m unable to lock in my per-gallon rate, so I can expect to pay at least $646 a month for 10 months. While that means that my so-called monthly payment has gone up only marginally, overall I’m going to be paying at least $3,860 more this year for oil.

So in reality, my oil costs more than doubled, and I’m thinking there’s got to be a better way. I mean, at these prices we would more than make back the $3,500 we might spend for a solar-water heating system–especially since we use our oil to heat our water only. That is, the oil heats the water that comes out of our faucets, and it heats the water that runs through our baseboard heating. Does that mean that if we went to a solar water heater we could break our dependency on oil forever?

Right about now I wish I could bid on oil company services, much like I use the Bidding for Travel website to make smart bidding decisions for hotel rooms on Priceline. Or like when I need a repair done, I put my repair needs “out there” via Service Magic, and then contractors come back to me to bid on jobs. Service Magic is how we’ve found affordable and reliable professional to fix problems with plumbing, the roof, and the gutters, and to clean out our chimneys each fall. What keeps the contractors that subscribe to Service Magic honest is a feedback system, similar to what you find on eBay.

Anyone know if this kind of bidding-for-an-affordable-oil-company option exists? If not, I guess I’ll start scrolling through Switchboard.com or paging through the hard copy Yellow Pages to see if I can find another company that can offer me a better deal. I hope it won’t be a waste of my time.

I have until August 20th to pay this latest oil bill or figure out my home heating Plan B. I wonder where I’ll end up.

One of the greatest discoveries I made in my conversion to green and frugal living was Freecycle, as I’ve waxed poetic about in past posts. I love that Freecycle’s motto is “one person’s trash is another person’s treasure.” How true that is.

As you know Freecycle helped me to secure a free composting bin–a big one about the size of a large keg (see picture, above) –and free plants for my garden. Conversely, through Freecycle I’ve given away moving boxes, bubble wrap and unwanted furniture. The idea here is to pass stuff along so that it doesn’t end up in landfills.

However, Freecycle isn’t the only game in town. There are a number of other virtual places where you can swap goods with others–some are free like Freecycle and require in-person pickups; others are done through the mail, with your only cost being shipping and handling. Here’s a brief guide to some of those sites:

* Craigslist
While people think of Craigslist as a place to get a date, a job or an apartment, there is a whole section devoted to giving stuff away for free (it’s under the “For Sale” section). You can also post stuff that you want in the same section under “Wanted.”

* Yahoo Groups
If you visit the Yahoo Groups home page and plug the term “reuse” into the “Find a Group” search window, you’ll come up with 1,200-plus different groups that are all about reusing items. Many of these are offshoots of Freecycle and locally based. (My recent search turned up the Bucks County group I belong to, along with groups all over the country that call themselves a “Reuseit” group or “RecycleIt” network.)

* City- or Location-Specific Reuse Groups
There are also city-specific groups that aren’t on Yahoo Groups but are still worth noting, because they, too, focus on reusing items and keeping them out of landfills. Two such examples are TwinCitiesFreeMarket.org (in Minnesota) and RedStickfree.com (in Baton Rouge). In addition, there are 25 different U.S. cities with Freepeats groups in them. These groups are dedicated to passing along gently used baby items. (Wish I’d known about them when I was neck-deep in onesies!) Note: there is a $4.95 lifetime membership fee for Freepeats, but you can try out the site for two weeks for free. And business owners in Vermont can “swap” commercial items via the Vermont Business Materials Exchange.

* Swap sites
For all kinds of kids’ stuff, there’s Zwaggle.com, which is geared towards parents. (FlyLady raves about Zwaggle as a great place to get rid of your unwanted clutter.) On the Zwaggle website, you’ll find free stuff in categories ranging from clothing to sporting goods–pretty much all the stuff that parents tend to accumulate over the years. These are the kinds of sites where you can go shopping for free but you have to pay shipping and handling to get the goods.

* Item-Specific Swap Sites
A lot of people are swapping books, video games and other “media” on swap sites like SwapTree.com, Bookins.com and Paperbackswap.com. (Again, users have to pay shipping and handling.) Over at Toy Swap, Chicago-area parents are swapping toys. And though I’ve given away moving boxes to people who responded to my “offer” posting on Freecycle, I found out that some moving companies help their customers to recycle their moving boxes once the move is over. Two such examples are U Haul (check out the U Haul box exchange option) and New York City mover Moishe’s, which offers a box exchange as well. (If you’ve ever been to New York City, then you’ve probably seen one of Moishe’s trademark red moving trucks.)

Let me know if there are other something-for-nothing websites that will help us all clear our clutter, get cool stuff we need and keep unwanted everything out of landfills.

Below is a direct link to the recipe I mentioned in the blog posting from earlier today. And here’s a picture of the recipe simmering in my Crock-Pot. I think the loaf of bread looks a little like a challah. Can’t wait to dig in at dinner!

A Year of CrockPotting: CrockPot French Toast Bake Recipe

My friend Jen Miller, awesome blogger and expert on the Jersey Shore, recently wrote a truly helpful article for Interest.com on how not to pay more for heat this winter (or at least try not to pay more.) Yes, I know that it’s still 90-plus degrees out in the Northern Hemisphere, but with oil prices the way they are, you’ve got to start planning ahead for those out-of-control heating bills that are sure to come.

Regardless of what kind of heat your have–gas, electric or oil–you can expect that your home heating bills could be up by at least 50 percent this winter. So take Jen’s tips to heart. You may be using some of these energy-saving tools already, such as weather stripping your windows and doors. But you will likely learn something, too. For example, I didn’t know that you could use ceiling fans in the winter. I thought they were for summer only.

Oh and did I mention that she quotes me as one of her experts? Yeah, that’s pretty cool–I mean hot–too!

A few months ago I wrote a post about some of the ways that airlines were hoping to save money by cutting back on passenger amenities–if you could call in-flight soda and peanut-packets amenities. Then there’s the notion of charging for all checked baggage (be still my heart Southwest, which continues to be my favorite airline because it refuses to following the airline crowd. And it still refuses to charge for any kind of baggage. It’s no wonder its profits are going up in a down economy). Now I’ve read that one airline is banning its in-flight magazine as a way of saving money.

Emirates Airlines’ decision to jettison its in-flight magazine called Open Skies has nothing to do with saving money on producing a magazine. It’s all about saving weight. In a Sustainable Life Media article, the airline claims that taking magazines off of the plane will save a ton–literally, a ton in weight.

As someone who makes her living writing for in-flight magazines (among other publications), I hate hearing news like this. Because if airlines start cutting back on each of their in-flight publications, I’m going to have to find a new way to make a living. Yes, I’m biased here but at least I’m honest about it. I say save the in-flight magazines!

Here’s a thought: if airlines really wanted to cut down on the weight of their airplanes to save fuel, why not stop taking passengers all together? That will save a ton (or two or 10) of weight.

Today is the day that I cut my landline umbilical cord. It’s the day that Verizon disconnects my business landline and puts up that “doo doo doo–the number you have reached” referral message that lets people know to call me on my new number instead. I guess I should have seen this landline umbilical cord-cutting coming.

When we first moved to this area nine years ago, we had four phone lines in our house. They were for: 1) home 2) my business 3) my fax 4) our dial-up. Then, within a few years, we made the leap to broadband through our cable provider, Comcast, and disconnected that fourth line.

Then there were three lines in the house.

When we moved into our new house in 2007, we decided that we really didn’t need to have a separate phone line for a fax, since I rarely sent–or received–faxes anymore. We reasoned that should I need to send one, I could just plug the fax line into the home line, and press send. So we didn’t reconnect that third phone line when we moved.

And then there were two lines in the house.

For the past year I’ve had the voice mail on my business phone set up so that any time someone leaves me a message, it automatically rings through to my cell phone–the message does, not the actual call that came before the message was left. That means that if I’m on the road or just out of the office and I need to return a phone call, I would use my cell phone. Soon enough I was going over my minutes on my cell phone plan because of how frequently I was using my cell phone for business reasons. At the same time I was rarely using my business line except to collect voice-mail messages, yet I was paying Verizon about $60 a month (just went up to $63 a month) for that second line.

Then I gave that interview to the Business Week reporter that outlined some of the ways we were going to cut back on our expenses to save money in our down economy, and in preparing my thoughts, I realized that paying for that second phone line just didn’t add up. Why would I continue to pay $756 a year for a phone line I rarely used? For $20 more a month–or $240 annually–I could increase the minutes on my cell phone plan to cover all of my business calls. So that’s what I did. My net savings for the year? About $510.

I just got off the phone with Verizon. It turns out that they have a special department set up to handle long-time landline users who want to “transfer” their service to their cell phone. (See this USA Today article on how many folks are just like I am–living on wireless alone, or nearly so.) Of course, the operator spent the first few minutes of the call trying to convince me not to give up my landline. In the end, we painlessly cut the landline, installed my cell phone number as the “doo doo doo–the number you have reached” referral number, and now I just hope that my regular clients call my old phone number in the next 30 days–the amount of time that Verizon will keep that referral message up and running. After that, my landline business number will just be disconnected.

And then there was one line in the house.