Off in the corner of my desk sat a forlorn fax machine. Once humming with activity, it had been quiet for most of the last three years, except for the occasional times it spit out an ad for a fake vacation or bogus health care plan. I gave it little thought. That was the problem.

I canceled the fax’s rarely used, but just as rarely noticed, phone line and cut my monthly expenses by $30.

Go ahead and read the article linked above and you’ll see how this particular writer cut more money out of his monthly digital expenses. Most of the suggestions in the article equate to Cutting Your Expenses 101 which means that if you’ve ever sat down and given your monthly income and expenses a real review, you probably already cut these unnecessary costs. That said, I’m sure that there are some people out there who will read this article and – for the first time – realize that they could be saving hundreds of dollars each month (thousands each year) if they just cut out some unnecessary expenses.

A personal example: A few years ago when I sat down and had a serious look at my finances, I noticed that I was paying for a very expensive cell phone plan. Sure, at one point I needed hundreds upon hundreds of minutes each month, but when I reviewed my usage it was clear that I didn’t need such a robust plan any more (and that I hadn’t needed that plan in many months). So I cut the plan back and my cell phone bill went from north of $100 per month to a little bit more than $50 per month. That’s a pretty good bit of savings if you ask me!

The same thing happened with my car insurance. When I looked at the invoice last year I noticed a bunch of fees that were worded such that no one could understand what they meant. I asked the car insurance company what they meant and while most of them were legit, there were two nominal fees that were obviously unnecessary – I had them cut out. Okay, so that only saves me $15 – $20 per year, but it adds up.

Take a read of that article and then, if you haven’t already, find some time to sit down and seriously review your finances. In today’s economy, there’s no need for you to be making some company rich paying for services that you don’t even use!

With all of the discussion about improving America’s energy future and President-Elect Barack Obama’s pledge to make energy security the top of his domestic policy agenda, let’s hope that situations like this don’t happen for too much longer.

This reminds me of the blackout from 2003 that knocked out power for most of the northeast states as well as Ontario, Canada. How pathetic was that? If you remember, for a brief period of time after that blackout there was some talk about fixing the electrical grid so that something similar would never happen again. Yeah, well, apparently that was forgotten real quick, huh?

At the very least, America should have a secondary energy grid running at all times just in case the primary grid goes down like it did in 2003 or a few weeks ago in Neptune Township. The secondary grid should be built on green technology with wind turbines, solar arrays, and other renewable energy sources so that we know it will always be available (wind is always and sun is always shining…somewhere). Then the secondary system can be built upon and expanded which does two things. First, it actually creates a large portion of the “green collar” economy that keeps getting thrown around in political debate. Second, it begins to shift America’s reliance on coal and oil sources to renewable energy.

Or we can do the alternative – which is to keep bitching about the need for energy independence via renewable sources and do nothing to achieve that goal. And the next time there is a blackout in any part of the country, we’d have no one to blame besides our politicians (go figure).