Savvy Saving Bytes

The man was part of the army of summer tourists visiting New York City. Which Madison Avenue bus, he wanted to know in a thick accent I couldn’t quite identify, would take him up to 82nd Street. Visiting the Metropolitan Museum I asked? Yes, he and his wife and two teenage children smiled and replied.  After we piled aboard an M3, I kept an eye on them to be sure they got off at 79th Street and walked the few blocks northwest to get to the museum’s front door. But it was only after they left the bus, all of them giving me a friendly wave goodbye, I realized I hadn’t given them the most important information of all.  Information that could have saved that family one hundred dollars. The sign posted near each museum cashier says “$25.00” entrance fee in large letters and it’s easy to miss the MUCH smaller nearby word that says “Suggested” entrance fee. And according to information given by a former Met employee in a complaint filed by 2 New Yorkers against the Museum, most tourists DO miss the “suggested” part. They end up paying the full $25.00 fee instead of what they wish or can afford.

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Who would not love to work in one of “The 10 Most Impressive Offices In The World” featured in Huh Magazine? Comparing these beautifully designed, whimsical, joyful work spaces to some of the dreary, deadening offices we have worked in is like comparing cathedrals to mole holes.

How could you not feel good — not productive — working in one of these places? How could you not look forward to each day? All that luminous light and rich color and fun niches with welcoming spots to eat and work out, play games and even whoosh down three-story slides. How could these delightful environments not inspire creative juices?

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Oh boy. Food fraudsters in China ride again. Only weeks after the USDA reversed its ban on chicken processed in China and gave the okay for it to be served on American plates, another big Chinese food-fiddling story surfaced. To take advantage of beef’s higher prices over more lowly pork, greedy Chinese meat sellers took 44,000 pounds of pork and swished it around overnight in a mix of wax, industrial salts and other chemicals. Then abracadabra – by morning that pork had become beef and the charlatans had become richer, setting up yet another reason for American consumers to wonder if the USDA has misplaced their grey cells in allowing  processed chicken (or any Chinese food) into the US.

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If your fridge happens to contain any yak, elk or Llama meat, you have a treat coming, according to an ad for transglutaminase (a.k.a. meat glue). Slap these singular meats together with meat glue and you can now “create an Exotic Mixed Grill Filet.” Or how about gluing some “Swordfish with Salmon to create a Seafood Filet?”

These unique combos of meat, fish, and even pasta (shrimp pasta anyone?) are now possible thanks to an enzyme called transglutaminase (TG).  Extracted from animal blood or soil bacteria, these enzymes are processed into white powder that’s used as an adhesive to bind proteins to proteins.

Food producers can bind together shreds of meat or fish and mix them with a glue mush that’s shaped into items like chicken nuggets, fish balls or imitation crabmeat.

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Yes, I know CVS paid a bundle to tear out their cash registers and replace them with self-service check-out stations so customers would have the convenience (cough, sputter, eye-roll) of checking-out all their own items, but I for one will not be jumping on the CVS customer-as-cashier bandwagon in New York City.

Number one, their new self-service machines slow everything down. With so many disparate devices cobbled together at the check-out stations, they don’t work so hot together. Some stop in mid-transaction and customers have to cool their heels waiting for CVS employees to materialize from where ever they hide out to fix the glitches. And some out and out refuse to do their stuff.  At two nearby CVS stores, each has one totally kaput self check-out.

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To catch a flight at LaGuardia during the Christmas holidays I could do one of two things: either grab a cab and cough up well over $40.00 OR jump on an M60 bus and pay a sweet little $2.25.

I had already taken the M60 from FROM LaGuardia to New York City when time wasn’t a factor and there was no plane to catch at the other end. But getting out of the city at holiday time can be a dicey proposition. With masses of travelers on the move and roads packed with drivers with short tempers, a traffic snarl could  easily morph into a highway nightmare that could mean a missed flight. And with Christmas flights fully booked, there would be no hopping on the next flight out.

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Impatiently waiting for the real estate market to recover from the recession, my niece, spurred on by the $8,000 government tax credit for new homebuyers, finally jumped in and bought herself a house. Happily for her, she’ll be paying property taxes in Virginia, one of the twenty states that have the lowest property tax rates in the country.

Of these 20 low property tax states, the northern most state is Wyoming, which comes in at number 10. For our water-lover friends, eight of these bargain tax states are on the coastline: California on the Pacific: Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and South Carolina on the Atlantic and Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana on the Gulf of Mexico. The majority of the states are in the sunny South or Southwest.

The rock bottom property tax rate on owner-occupied housing in the country is .14% in the Deep South State of Louisiana. The highest rate is in Texas at 1.76%. For an idea of the difference, if a house is valued at $126,800 in Texas, you would pay $2,232 in property taxes. If that same $126,800 house is sitting on Louisiana soil, you would plunk down $178 for your property tax bill. A tidy $2054 difference.

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Not once in the twenty plus Halloweens I’ve lived in this Upper East Side brownstone have any Spidermen, Batmen, or little sparkly princesses knocked on my door, trick or treating. Nor have I ever seen any costumed kids canvassing for candy on my block. And why should they? They get far richer pickings over on the commercial avenues of Lexington and Third, where they speed walk from store to store collecting sweets in bulging shopping bags that drag their little shoulders down.

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Want to be transported from LaGuardia Airport to New York City for the grand total of $2.25? Or $1.10 if you’re a Senior? Easy! Jump aboard the M60 Bus.

At first I had hesitated taking that bus. I had read too many downbeat reviews and still had too many questions about it. The M60 is not an airport bus so you can’t just hand over your luggage to be conveniently stowed away in a luggage compartment. It’s a regular city bus. Usually packed with standing passengers, city buses have narrow aisles, which means lots of bumping into other riders and their bulky paraphernalia. Add a passel of traveler’s luggage and no matter how small or compact those suitcases, I couldn’t imagine a scenario that didn’t include irate New Yorkers bellowing about suitcases smacking, tripping, or just plain annoying them.

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I stared at my lone skinny bathroom shelf. Then I stared at my piles of make-up, my growing collection of body splashes, my bath powder, my lotions, my shampoos and conditioners, my tooth brushes, my this and that and the other thing totaling pretty much a ton of beauty paraphernalia. How was I going to squeeze all that stuff onto that narrow, rinky-dink shelf?

Straw baskets to the rescue. At Goodwill for a few dollars I found a straw napkin holder with its’ original label still attached. Next I foraged around for some thrift shop glass containers to separate my different make-ups, brushes, emery boards, nail clips, etc. For my lipsticks I found a circular shallow container. Encased within that, I placed a curved taller glass to hold my make-up pencils and brushes. For my toothbrushes I dug up an unusually shaped, slender glass that wouldn’t tip over from the weight of the brushes. My tortoise shell hairpins were a tougher proposition; no glass was tiny enough to suitably contain them – till I spotted a shot glass at the back of my kitchen cupboard. Perfect. With all my make-up and application tools now visible and easy to reach, I had myself an organized make-up station.

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