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For most of you who have been following my Money Meter closely, it might have come as a shocker to see the meter jump from about $1400 last month to over $2000 this month. I’m gonna refrain from building a plot and a climax in this post today and just throw the numbers at you real quick.

$250 – MS Exams

Last month, I registered for two Microsoft exams. Each one of them costs about $125 but I used vouchers from friends and managed to register for both of them for free. Total savings = $250.

$500 – Lease Renewal Special

Two weeks back, when we were driving back our new Prius from San Antonio, we were dog tired and damn hungry too,  so we stopped by Riata Bar and Grill for a quick bite. The waitress in the restaurant looked really familiar. After a good 15 mins of scratching my head, I was finally able to recognize her. She is a neighbor in our apartment complex and I see her every now and then with her dog, thanks to Dash’s aggressive instincts. Khushi and the girl hit it off right away (women!!!). The girl then went on to tell us about a special that was going in our apartment complex. It was for a whopping $500 discount on the first month’s rent if we renewed our lease for 6 months or more. We had recently signed a lease and it was effective only from July 1; so I thought to myself maybe we were eligible for the deal but were never told about it. The very next day I went to the leasing office and haggled with the manager for 20 mins. At the end of it, I came home $500 richer.

$300 on Cable

We got rid of the cable last month since all we were watching on TV was Network TV. It did not make any sense to pay $50 month after month for something that was available for free. We are not gonna have cable for a while now unless they start showing live cricket matches in North America. Total Savings for the next 6 months = $50 X 6 = $300

The next project for haggling is to get my renter referral money from the apartment guys. I referred 2 friends and am eligible for a whopping $800 check. I’m not gonna get the entire $800 since it’s gonna be divided by 3 (Indian style of referral!). Whatever the amount, I don’t like to let go of $$$$ that legitimately belong to me. Especially not to corporations.

If you remember, when we started the Green Project^ in early November of last year, I had pledged that I was going to ‘drive a better car’. During that time, I had the 2005 Honda CRV and a 2000 Mitsubishi Montero. In May of 2008, when I bought the Montero, little did I know that it had the carbon footprint the size of an 800-pound gorilla. I felt helpless. I really wanted to get rid of it but I had just bought it and that too for a dirt-cheap price of $4800. And I must say, I’m not as green as I’m frugal. I continued to use the Montero sparingly, bringing out the CRV as much as I could. However, things turned a little ugly after a few months. The Montero, as old as it was, started giving up on me. At first, it was the minor stuff like the battery etc. Then, major breakage set in. I ended up spending a good $2000 on it within two months. I didn’t mind much about the extra expenses since I had bought it at such a bargain price.

While this was happening, I’d completely forgotten about something else that was playing a big role in my auto expenses every month. Even though I seldom used the Montero, my monthly auto expenses remained high. After a few hours of dissecting my expenses on auto, I realized the culprit was Gas aka Petrol (for my non-US readers). Without my knowledge, I had been spending close to $150/month on filling up this gas guzzler’s tummy. Yes, it was averaging about 16mpg, standing true to its name, an 800-pound gorilla, with a big appetite of course! This was inspite of me using the CRV more than the Montero. Maybe it was averaging even less than 16mpg, who knows! I still didn’t mind it. I thought maybe if I just stopped using this sucker completely, I will not have to worry about all this. I and Khushi started to co-ordinate our trips so that we used only the ‘better car’. We were not ready for a new car yet (check out my Money Experiment^).

Last April, however, things changed for the worse. One fine evening, when we were coming back from Sun Harvest, the damn thing refused to boot. After repeated attempts to revive it, the thing did not budge one bit. We had done a good bit of shopping and had to call a friend to pick us (and our groceries) up. We left the car that night in the parking lot and the next day, my insurance guys eventually towed it to a shop. The shop guy calls me the next day and says the alternator has gone bad. Usually, one would suspect the battery to go bad when a car doesn’t start. But I had replaced the battery only a few months before. Didn’t make sense! Well, it so happened that the bad alternator had caused the almost new battery to fail too (due to an overcharge). The estimate came out to be $650. That was the day when I decided enough was enough. It did not make any sense owning a 10 year old vehicle that I was spending top dollar on, month after month when I could get something nicer for the same amount (post coming up in the Money Experiment on this). In a year, I had spent about $2700 in repairs, about $1000 extra on fuel and another $2000 in depreciation totaling to $5700 for 13 months or about $440 per month.

Last week, we finally pulled the trigger on a new Prius. I traded in the Mitsubishi Monstero (happily so) and welcomed the green machine to our family. So far, I have been enjoying the 48mpg. Will report more and add pix shortly.

A new bridge tour bus service for common citizens.

Photo courtesy: www.abhijitsplanet.com

This might come in as a big surprise to most of my blog readers. You might wonder, of all things, how can one stay cool, on a frikking IM client? After all, GTalk is nothing but another internet messaging tool like the rest of them out there (Yoohoo, Windows not-so-live etc.) right? Well, you might want to think again. GTalk is different and I’m going to teach you a few cool tricks on GTalk that could make you uber-cool from uber-boring in a jiffy! Ready? Let’s do this.

1. Pick a badass username

This is where all the coolness begins. You ain’t nothing in the G-world if you don’t have a sick username. Don’t pick boring names like reachme12345, emailtime90210 or fungirl2005. I personally knew fungirl2005. It wasn’t fun anymore creating an account every year!  Try something cooler. Something that tells everyone out there how awesome you are. I remember having IDs like LonerInAustin, TostitoLover and KittiesRock.  If you’re a guy, go with names like LifeIsABeach, DramaKing or LoveMahCouch. If you are a chica, something like HeartSugahDad, BootieMama or DonutGal would be the best choices. Never ever use your real name. Believe me, I have gotten into trouble many a times coz of that. I must also mention that zip codes are a straight no-no (makes it easier to locate you).

2. Update your first and last name

A lot of people somehow miss this very basic feature of GTalk. What happens then is, you end up displaying your username to the world and believe me, a lot of us have weird usernames (like the boring ones above). A friend of mine had a username  ’touch_dear’. Now that should get you popular with the ladies huh? His idea behind that ID was, he wanted people to keep in touch with him and also wanted to let them know that they were very dear to him or something like that; you get the drift. So, your first step should be to update your account information. Choose a name that sends a strong message out. I remember having google accounts with names like The Real MacGruber, Furious Loner, Burrito Lovah and Schitt Happins. You will not believe me if I tell you how many friends I have made using those names.

3. Get a cool profile picture

This is extremely important if you want all your friends to talk about you in the G-world. In fact, more important than your username or your first or last name. Like they say, a picture is worth a 1000 blah blah blahs. This is your true identity and you should choose a picture that tells everyone what a beautiful person you are, both inside and out. However, it is also important that it connects well with your username. A few ideas to help you pick one easily.

GUYS

GALS

4. Choose a cool status message/icon

If you never thought about this, now is your chance! Twitter made a fortune just by letting people tell other people what they did every minute of their ‘exciting’ lives. And there are a lot of people out there who are really interested in everything you do, right from what shaving cream you use to chop your beard to how many packs of Frito Lay’s you consume in a day. People who care about you more than you care about yourself. For starters, check out Gul Panag’s Twitter page. Now, I care about her and I seriously wanna know what she ate for lunch, if she drinks diet or regular coke, what is she planning to have for dinner, what does (not) she wear at night, what time does she wake up, how many times does she flush her toilet and a lot of other such important stuff. You might laugh at me if I tell you that the status message is the new status symbol. But trust me since I’m always right. Another one of my fav five Twitterers is Mallika Sherawat. Her account name stands at MallikaLA. Why the LA? She opened her Twitter account in LA dummy! One of the tweets from the sweet seductress was “yes, sir! M indeed veg and proud of it! how do u think I maintain this body figure?“. Now how would I know if she was a vegetarian or not if it were not for her status message? And how would I know whether that was indeed the real reason behind her ‘body figure’ ? So, respect the status. Everybody wants to know what kinda underwear you’re wearing right now. And don’t forget to set it to ‘Busy’ with the red ‘talk to my hand‘ icon. People can be in their underwear and still be busy!

5. Always ‘leave the conversation’

Oh ho ho. I just can’t wait to reveal this G-secret to you. This neat trick can catapult your life in tha G-world overnight. You can thank me later for giving you such valuable piece of advice. When I was new to GTalk, I was like you; naive, innocent and gullible. Then, one fine day, I stumbled upon this cool trick that, all of a sudden, made me look like Antonio Banderas. Eager to know how I did it? Here it goes.

Say you’re talking to a contact on your G-list. He/she types something at you. You type back. And then, immediately, you hit the ‘X’ button on the top. Yes, you close the window. GTalk has this cool little feature that, whenever someone closes their chat window, tells the other person that ‘XYZ has left the conversation‘. That XYZ is you. It is like walking out of a meeting room full of people, without giving two hoots about the rest. Feel it? Feel the energy, the power now? It’s like telling the other person, ‘I have said what I had to, you can go take a hike now.‘  Try it out and let me know the results. You will be a changed man (alright, woman too), I promise.

There are a lot more tricks that I can teach you, however, for that you will need to be at least moderately good at these five. I have put endless hours behind GTalk and it has taken me years to master these techniques. With a lot of practice and hard work, I’m confident that you will be as good as me someday. If you need help with any of the above tricks, please do not hesitate to contact me at LonerInAustin[AT]yahoo.com.