Something For Everyone . . .

Here are 30 (fairly) painless ways to cut your expenses.

1. Clean air conditioner coils. If your house has A/C, there’s a box outdoors that draws outdoor air into it through a zillion little metal slots, dumps the heat from your house into it and blows the hot air out.  If the airflow through those little slots is blocked, less heat is transferred, and the A/C runs longer (and longer).

Use a vacuum cleaner with the brush attachment and GENTLY clean the dust and dirt off the outside of the slots/fins at least once each year.  Also, cover it up each winter and the entire unit will last more years, saving you big bucks.

You’ve probably seen advice to do the same to the coils on the back of your refrigerator, but it’s difficult to move.  If you pull it out to clean underneath it, clean off the coils at the same time.  Refrigerators cost more to run dirty, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to cost of the A/C cooling your entire house.  In the meantime, you can easily slide out the flat bowl you’ll find under the refrigerator (behind that pop-off grille at the bottom in the front) and clean the layer of smelly crud that really doesn’t belong in your kitchen.  It’s there from all the things that have ever spilled inside the fridge and dripped down to the bottom.

If your A/C is blowing warm air into the house, it probably needs a freon recharge.  A pro will have to do that for you, probably under $100.  Don’t call the first hot day of the year, or you’ll wait at the end of a long, long line.  Always check the system a few days BEFORE the hot days begin.  Never run the A/C when the outdoor temp is below 60 degrees F unless you like expensive repairs, no matter how hot it is in the house from that big party.

If the air coming out of the register is cool, but barely moving (not blowing) you’ve likely frozen up the heat exchanger inside the house (inside the furnace).  This happens when you turn the temp setting too low (so the A/C runs constantly) or if the house was really hot and damp and you turned on the A/C.  If it’s a combination furnace/AC unit, switch to Heat and run the furnace about 15 minutes to melt all the ice (you’ll hear a small water pump run as the ice melts and the water is pumped out).

2.  Pace traffic signals. You can save a lot of money by just paying attention while you drive.  Traffic signal systems are a joke in most areas.  They’re often paced to STOP traffic flow, not encourage it, in a lame outdated attempt to slow speeders.  When you sit at a light, you get the same mileage as every other car, truck, semi and bus;  Zero MPG.  (Actually, since you’re burning fuel but not moving, you’re all getting negative MPG.)  When you start moving, your mileage starts at 1 MPG, then 2 MPG, then 3 . . .  You get the picture.

If you can slow long before the intersection (don’t block traffic — use your head) and coast through the light on the green, you can get better mileage in the city (at a steady 40 MPH) than you do on the highway (at 70 MPH) — yes, you read that right.  You’ll also save money on brake jobs, tire replacement, collisions, etc.  Look further ahead of you than the next guy’s trunk.

3.  Brake pads last longer with gradual, gentle braking than they do with hard, panic stops.  See #2 above.  One caveat. When coming down a long, steep hill, riding the brakes can make them overheat and actually fail.  In those cases, start slowing earlier, then brake 5 seconds on, 5 seconds off to slow your descent.  Some people are taught to ‘shift to a lower gear’ but if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’ll find that new brakes are cheaper than rebuilt transmissions.

4.  Tire pressure is critical for safety and mileage (read, ‘money’).  Low tires can be damaged or even destroyed by a bad pothole.  Low tires wear unevenly and require premature replacement.  The extra heat caused by extra flexing at freeway speeds can cause a blow-out.  They’re harder to roll down the road, so they use more fuel to go the same distance (substantially more fuel).

Get a digital tire pressure gauge at any auto parts store ($5 – $10) and use it.  Some cars have a dashboard warning lamp — resetting some of them can be clumsy — check with your car dealer, but it shouldn’t cost you anything.  If they want to charge you, use Google to find an answer.  Tire stores usually offer free air and valve caps (use them to keep dirt out of the valve).

You’re supposed to check pressure when the tires are cold (undriven for 4 hours) but that’s really not necessary.  Check them when they’re cold one time, then check again after you’ve driven a while and you’ll see there’s not much difference unless they were really low.  Just check them and air them up when they need it.  You’ll find a tag on the driver’s door or the glovebox door telling you what pressure to use.  Press the gauge and the air hose firmly on the tire valve or you’ll only let air out of the tire.  Don’t even get me started on all the SUV’s that have rolled over and killed people just because a tire was low and blew out on the freeway.  Low tires overheat from excessive flexing and blow out without warning.

5.  Spark plugs last a long time in modern cars — usually 50 to 100 thousand miles.  Having a garage change them can be expensive, depending on the model.  If you feel your engine is missing (has uneven acceleration, runs rough, poor acceleration), call the dealer and ask how long the plugs should last.  If you’ve still got quite a ways to go to meet the standard, try switching to Shell gasoline for a few tankfuls.  Shell has extra chemistry that cleans the fuel system and important parts of the engine.  If that’s what it needs, changing the plugs won’t help, anyway.  If that makes a change, but it’s still not right, you might have a clogged fuel filter.  Some cars are cheap and easy to replace, some are multiple, difficult, complicated and expensive (inside the fuel tank, for example).  Make sure a lowball estimate includes all the filters, or have the easy ones done first.  If you’re feeling ambitious and want to work on your car yourself, get a Haynes manual — Chilton’s manuals are great for changing light bulbs, but not for serious repairs.

6.  If you have high-speed internet service from your cable TV company, using Vonage for your phone calls can save you a bundle and still get you a full suite of features.  Your cable company may also offer an identical service, but Vonage has unlimited calls to the U.S. and 60 countries, and is usually cheaper.  Basically, instead of having your phones connected to the wire that runs to the telephone pole and goes to the phone company, you’ll connect one of your phone jacks into a small box that plugs into your cable internet connection, and all your phones are connected.  It’s very easy to do.  At around $35 a month including taxes, it’s probably much less than you’re paying now for phone service.  Vonage can even be your answering machine, so you can get your messages from your phone or any computer connected to the internet.  They’ll even turn your messages into text and email them to you.

Two caveats. If you use a FAX machine, depending on the model, it might have some trouble and require multiple sends.  Test a few inbound and outbound FAX’es right away and switch to your cable company (or back altogether) if it’s too much trouble, or set your FAX machine to 4800 or 9600 baud (send/receive speed).  Also, if your cable internet goes out, your phone goes out, too.  Since most folks also have a cellphone, that may not be a big issue.  If a phone pole or wire gets knocked down and takes out your cable, it may have taken out the phone line, too.

7.  That annoying dryer filter.  How often should you clean it?  Every load of clothes.  A clothes dryer is a total energy hog, and cleaning the lint out of the filter lets it move hot, moist air outdoors.  Any blockage just makes it run longer.  Block it enough and you might even start a fire.

8.  Fixing your water heater temperature is a gradual change.  Any water over 120 degrees F is too hot for you to stand.  If you heat water higher than that, you just have to mix it with cold water to make it tolerable.  What a waste!  And you’re overheating it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, forever.

On the front of a gas water heater (gas heaters have a tube on the top that goes to a chimney and black pipe that carries gas) you’ll see a big dial near the bottom marked something like Off, Warm, Hot.  Move it down a little bit.  Wait a day or two for things to settle down and see if you can stand pure hot water on your hands.  If not, move it down a little bit more.  It’s much easier to move just a tiny bit at a time than it is to yo-yo back and forth, so just take it easy.

Electric water heaters (no chimney, but large circuit breakers and a fat electric cable) have their thermostat under a cover  on the side.  Many need a screwdriver to make adjustments.  Just be careful not to touch any wires.  Switch off the breakers in the fusebox if you’re nervous.  Always return the cover immediately.

Eventually, you’ll find the setting that gives you water that’s as hot as you like without mixing in cold water.  It will waver within about 10 degrees, so ‘close’ is ‘good enough.’

9.  Drafty old windows waste your money in winter (heating season) and in summer (when the A/C is running).  Storm windows are now replaced with double-pane windows.  Many styles pop out for easy cleaning on both sides.

I’d like to see utility companies finance your window replacements, then get repaid by charging the same bill until the windows are paid off.  That way, you’d get immediate comfort, the same old bill for a few years, then a permanently lower bill.  Sadly, that’s an idea way ahead of its time.

10.  Shop around for credit card rates every year and transfer funds.  This one can save you a lot.  Each year (perhaps while you’re gathering your income tax paperwork) call each of your credit card companies and ask about balance transfers and tell them you want a lower rate on your current card.  Write everything down and you’ll see who is hungriest for your business.  When you’ve gotten all the answers, call them all back again.  I know this sounds redundant, but you may be very surprised — once they learn you’re a serious shopper and they’re likely to lose your business, perhaps forever, they may suddenly come up with better plans than those they told you about during the first round of calls.

If you don’t get very good transfer rates, there are other companies that want your business.  Google credit card interest and you’ll find websites that specialize in showing you cards with low transfer rates.

Always read the fine print.  There are often fees (not always) for a transfer, and they should be considered.

Two caveats. When you transfer money to a card at a low rate, they apply all your payments to the low rate transfer and not to any high-rate balances until the low-rate transfer is paid off.  That means you could get charged high interest on part of the non-shrinking balance for years.  Make sure you understand clearly what they’ll do with your payments.  Also, if you move money to a new card and then make any ordinary purchase with it, that purchase (at a high rate) may not get any payments applied to it until the transfer is paid off.  A casual $10 lunch could turn into an astronomical amount after years of interest.  If you transfer to a new card, cut it up and don’t use it.  When they send you a new card later, activate it, then cut it up.  You can’t add purchases to that card.  I always get a kick out of phone calls from card companies that want me to know about using that card or some special offer.  I explain, “Don’t you understand that I don’t dare use that card for any purchases?”  ”Oh, yeah, I suppose you’re right.  Thanks.  Bye.”

11.  Dispute all credit report black marks.  Get a free set of three credit reports at AnnualCreditReport.com (other websites charge fees for other services).  Basically, dispute any black marks on your report and call the bureau 30 days later! If you wait longer, they may wait longer, too.  Hold their feet to the fire by returning your corrected statements along with a “Return Receipt Requested” form from the Post Office.  It’s not expensive, and gives you the date they received your paperwork.  Call them exactly 3o days later and insist they retract anything that hasn’t been countermanded by the vendor.  Some of them may come off and you can have lower interest rates for car loans, home loans, auto insurance, etc.  This can amount to thousands of dollars in your pocket for less than an hour of your time.  If you have a rational explanation for a black mark, you can add a brief explanation to your credit report for a small fee.

12.  Shop around online, then compare and haggle with a local store manager (clerks have little authority).  You don’t have to buy online to save money.  Just having the price and description on a printout from a website may be enough to convince local vendors to give you a discount on the same item.  Maybe not.  But it only takes a few minutes to look up items on eBay, Amazon and Froogle.  Even if they don’t match the price, they may offer a discount, free delivery or other service or benefit.  If they’re stuck on bad-mouthing internet sales, you’re probably wasting your time.  When all else fails, ask if they’ll give you a discount for cash (since they pay a few per cent fee to use your credit card).  Say something like, “I’d really like to buy it here, from a local merchant, but the (spouse or partner) insists we save money by buying it online.  Can you do anything at all?”

13.  Buy filet mignon at Costco instead of expensive steaks at local markets.  At $10 a pound, it’s cheaper than any steak in any other market, and they’re delicious.  Check online at costco.com to find a local store.  They have an annual membership fee, but you can recoup it even if you only buy steaks!  Filet mignon is tender and has almost no fat, so it’s perfect for any weight-loss plan.  We cut them in half (they’re very thick), cut ‘em up for stir-fry, or even as topping for a salad.  I take along a small cooler to keep everything cold and fresh.

14.  Restaurant meals can be cheaper if you split a meal with a friend, or take some of it home for later.  If you split a meal, remember to tip your server as though you had two meals, since that’s what they served.  Waitstaff is often paid less than $3 and hour, since they’re expected to make the rest of their income in tips.

15.  Women find second-hand clothing shops to be loaded with bargains.  Many shops are duds.  Go to the wealthy towns nearby — they have second-hand shops, but the clothing will be far more valuable, and not much more expensive.  They don’t sell clothes that haven’t been laundered or need repairs.  Mens’ clothes are less common.  Take them back when you’re done with them and sell them to someone else.

16.  Your bank wants you to pay your bills through  their website using automatic or manual debit.  Since you can set up regular monthly or even weekly payments, you’ll never have another fee, never need stamps, and won’t ever have a payment lost in the mail or forgotten.  Ask your bank or just go to their website (use Google to find it quickly).

17.  When you buy checks from your bank you pay far above top-dollar.  It’s a revenue source for them.  All checks work the same, no matter who prints them.  Go to Walmart, or Google discount checks and save about 80% of the price of your next check order.  Once you’ve ordered, they often keep track for your next order.  Remember to include all the fees and shipping to compare.

18.  Check online vendors for auto insurance, then use that info to haggle with your current agent.  He’ll know you’re on track to do that when you call and ask for a printout of your current coverage, since you’ll need that to compare apples to apples.  It’s easier to just stay with the same agent if you’re satisfied with them.  Insurance companies have a series of rates, and the highest rates pay the agent the highest commission.  He wants to get the fattest paycheck he can, but he’ll be willing to get you a lower rate rather than lose your business altogether.

All insurance agents have access to lower rates if they know you’re savvy enough to understand how the system works.

19.  Combine your auto, home, and other insurance policies into one agent.  They can get lower rates, again because the company pays lower commissions to the agent on a larger piece of business.

20.  If you drink bottled water, consider getting a filter for your kitchen tap.  Refill the old bottles and refrigerate them.  You’d do that with an expensive (plastic) ‘sports’ bottle and never think twice.  One caveat. The refills will end up costing far more than the original appliance.  When you shop for filters, compare the prices on the refills.  They’re all over the map.  You can also get inexpensive filters (or if local stores don’t carry them any more) on eBay.  Just search by the name of your filter.

21.  Log every purchase you make for one week. I have a friend who has an application for his phone to make it easier.  $4 each workday for coffee?  That’s over $1,000 a year after taxes, he takes a $1,500 pay cut to enjoy coffee.  If you log everything you buy for one week on a piece of paper you carry around, you may be surprised and make some new choices.  To find out an annual cost, just multiply a week’s cost by 50 (52 weeks in a year).

22.  Before you head to the movie theater or video store check Metacritic.com or RottenTomatoes.com for reviews that are the compilation of critics all over the country.  Since critics are professionals, they tend to rely on quality over entertainment value, but you’ll get far better info than from that 30-second TV trailer.  If you’re about to be disappointed by a movie, this tactic could save you some cash.  And you get to see something you enjoy, instead.

23.  Buying prescriptions online or by mail instead of locally can save money, time, and more money.  Your health insurance company usually has an online vendor they prefer, so your co-pay can be far less or free.  Also, your local drugstore wants you to come back each month (more co-pays) but the online vendor might give you a 90-day supply, saving you two co-pays (or perhaps no charge at all).  Auto-refills just pop up in your mailbox.  You may also find that the local pharmacy doesn’t even give you what your doctor ordered.  If he says 10 pills, but the insurance only covers 5, they won’t even ask you to pay for the rest, they’ll just fill it for 5 and tell you to come back when those are gone to pay cash for the rest.  Dumb.

One caveat. If you need your prescription pronto, obviously this won’t work.  But for regular stuff, you can save a lot of money, time and hassle.

If your scheduled refills are a nightmare because they all expire at different times, try to work with your doctor to get them all to expire at the same time.  You’ll finagle the quantities a bit for a few weeks or months, but you’ll be glad you did.

24.  Tired of paying for books, movie rentals, or magazines?  Get them from your local library.  What, they don’t have something that you want?  Tell them to get it.  No library can possibly own everything, so they share resources.  It may take a few days to get the book you want, but they can get it.  They have the authority to go all the way to the Library of Congress if you insist.  The Librarian is your resource manager for information.  If you can’t find what you want, pester them.  They’ll figure out a way to get it as long as they know you really want it and you’re not just wasting their time.

25.  Never get any life insurance policy that includes a savings account of any kind. They’re all an incredible rip-off, no matter what the “agent” says.  I put ‘agent’ in quotes because he’s not your agent.  He’s a commissioned salesman who gets paid the biggest fee by selling you the product that makes the most profit for the company, not for you.  He may seem really nice and friendly (they always are).  If he’s recommending a policy that includes any savings component, he’s a scoundrel, and he knows it.  Smart people know to shop around and find a good, 20 or 30-year (long enough to get the kids out of the house) term policy that won’t go up in price and put their savings elsewhere.  If you save properly, you’ll have enough money when the policy runs out that you won’t need life insurance.  Here’s why . . .

The purpose of a life insurance policy is to protect the family from the loss of income in case the breadwinner dies prematurely.  Period.  Once the kids are grown up and have their own jobs, the spouse has far fewer needs than when the kids were growing up.  If you’ve been saving properly, she would probably be just fine by spending the accumulated savings.  If the kids are grown and there’s still not enough savings, you’ll need a small life policy.  Kids and non-working spouses get a $5,000 ‘burial’ policy, unless that expense wouldn’t hurt the family.  In those cases, the family is already self-insured.

The typical ‘benefits’ of a life insurance policy that includes a savings plan are completely flawed, but look valuable.

A.  If you need a loan, you can get one at a very low interest rate, typically 1% or 2%. (If this is my savings account, why should I have to borrow anything, and why am I paying interest on my own savings?)  To add insult to injury, if you borrow $10,o00 from your ‘savings’ to pay for kids’ college, and then you die, they reduce the death benefit by (wait for it) $10,000.

B.  If you want money in retirement, you can cancel the policy and get your savings account. (Uhh, why should I have to cancel my life insurance to get my savings?)

C.  If you die, your spouse gets the death benefit. (Who gets my savings?  Oh, the insurance company keeps my savings.  How convenient.  So that means that the longer I live, the more money I lose, and the more I have at risk.  I become more of an insurance company than the insurance company!)

D.  This is perfectly normal.  After all, don’t your homeowner’s policy, and your health insurance, and car insurance, and business insurance all have savings accounts locked inside them?  They don’t?  Hmmm . . .

This all started about 100 years ago, when life insurance companies found they could make far more money by swindling people out of their life savings than by simply selling insurance.  It worked.  Today, life insurance companies hold all the money and property, not wall street or the banks, but most people don’t know that.  When a life insurance company brags about how many billions of dollars they have in assets, that just tells you how much they took from their customers.

The worst one I ever saw was a John Hancock (I thought he was one of the good guys!?!?!?) policy that included a ‘mutual fund’ (using the term very loosely) that paid 18% each year.  The fine print on page 62 showed that the company owned the fund, not the policyholder.  Once they received the premium, it was John Hancock’s money, not yours.  The fund got 18%, so John Hancock got 18%, but the policyholder got 6%.  All perfectly legal.  Right there on page 62.  Why doesn’t the government protect you?  Because insurance company lobbyists make sure that each state controls them, not Washington.  No state has the strength to stand up to them, so they continue to behave this way.  It’s all legal, right down to the misleading claims your agent told you.  I don’t care how nice he seems to be.  Your verbal agreement isn’t worth the paper it’s not printed on.

26.  When you make the last payment on your car loan, just keep making the same payments into a Vacation Club account (or similar) at your bank or credit union.  When it’s time to buy another car, pay cash.  Keep making the payments.

27.  Don’t lease a car unless its leased to your business.  Leasing cars has become very popular, but it’s a real loser for individuals.  The one advantage for an individual is that you can drive a much nicer car than you can actually afford.  That should be a red flag right off the bat.

Businesses have two reasons to lease;  first, they get tax benefits (you don’t).  Second, they can predict their budget needs months and years in advance (individuals are more flexible and have more authority over their money than any business).

Leasing a car means you don’t have to sell it when you’re done with it.  For a business that suddenly had to get rid of 100 or 1,000 cars, that would be a problem.  But you don’t have that problem.  Leasing also means you pay what the dealer tells you to pay.  Essentially, that means they’re using the sticker price, not a lower, negotiated price.  If you take good care of the car, it’s worth more when you turn it in.  But the dealer gets that benefit, while you get nothing.  If you break or dent something, they’ll charge you to fix it, even if you would have been fine leaving those things as-is.

Many people who lease a car find they run out of miles before they run out of time.  They end up paying for a car they don’t dare drive.  If they do drive it over the agreement, they pay exorbitant fees to simply drive their car.  If they drive fewer miles than agreed, again, the dealer gets all the benefit, the driver gets nothing.  Small wonder the dealer wants you to lease instead of buy.

It also means you’ll be shopping for a car at the end of the lease, rather than when you want to do so.  That might not be a convenient time for you, but there’s nothing you can do.  If you choose to buy the car at the end of the lease because you took such good care of it, you’ll spend far more money than if you had just bought it on Day 1.

28.  Consider dropping collision coverage on your vehicle when you’ve paid off the loan.  Check Kelley Blue Book’s website or just call your bank, auto insurance agent, or any car dealer to learn what your car is now worth.  If it’s now worth $5,000, and you’re spending $1,000 each year for collision coverage, you will never get more than $5,000 no matter what.  Maybe that’s not a good use of that $1,000.  Drop the collision coverage and put the money saved into that Vacation Club account toward your next car.

29.  When you consider any savings you get you’re not looking at the real number.  It takes you about $1,500 in earnings to bring home $1,000 because of taxes.  If you save $1,000 that you would have spent, it’s like getting a $1,500 raise.  That makes any effort much more interesting and palatable.

30.  This last one isn’t so much about savings as it is about comfort.  It may actually cost you a few bucks for electricity, but can make your home much more comfortable, especially a 2-story house, a house with a hot sunny area or a cold area, or a house with a damp basement.

The furnace and air conditioner in homes don’t work the way they do in commercial buildings.  In a commercial building, a fan runs all the time to circulate a mixed combination of fresh and indoor air throughout the building, and the heat or cooling is controlled in each room to supply just what’s needed.  If they didn’t run the fan all the time, the huge spaces involved would get stale, or damp, or too hot or cold.

A home furnace has a similar fan, but it shuts off when the furnace or A/C turns off, so the air stays where it is until the thermostat is triggered again.  That means hot, dry air rises to the upstairs or in a sunny room, and damp, cool air ends up on the first floor and in the basement.  If you could turn the fan on all the time, all the air throughout the home would be the same temperature and humidity, and be constantly circulated all the time.  No hot spots, no cold spots, no damp spots.

You can do this, if you wish, if you have an ordinary gas forced-air furnace and/or central A/C.

On your thermostat, you’ll find two switches.  One is marked Heat – Off – Cool, and you use that as the seasons change.

The other is marked Off – On – Auto.  It’s now set to Auto (trust me) and it controls the fan.  When the furnace or A/C turns on and off, the fan automatically turns on and off, too (although it lags by a minute or two for efficiency).  If you switch it to On, the fan runs all the time, constantly circulating the air throughout your home.  This will dry out that damp basement, so you can get rid of the dehumidifier (saving you some money) and make the basement much more livable.  If you set the thermostat at 70, the entire home will be 70, not just the room where the thermostat sits.  No more hot spots or cold spots, just comfort in every room.  Remember to change the furnace filter more often, since it will capture more dust from the air.  If you have a permanent filter (plastic mesh with a metal frame) just rinse it off in the bathroom shower.  Don’t damage a permanent filter — they’re usually used because replaceable filters are not available in that size.

One caveat. A furnace, like most appliances, is designed to last a little over 20 years.  They fill enough oil in a pair of long tubes to lubricate the fan motor bearings for over 20 years.  If you run the fan constantly, it will use up the oil sooner.  This is not a problem, it just means you’ll have to oil it (or have a serviceman do it) every 5 years or so.  Just because you’ve never done it before doesn’t mean it’s difficult.  Turn off the electric switch or circuit breaker for the furnace, pull the pop-out panel at the bottom and a big slide out tray. You’ll find a big squirrel-cage fan on an electric motor and the pair of tubes, one tube goes to each end of the fan motor. Just fill them up with oil.  Don’t touch the odd little clips on the fins — they’re the balancing weights.  Press them gently into place if they’re not tight.

If you do decide to do it yourself, I’d recommend going to the auto parts store and buying two items; a Zoom Spout oil bottle (it has a long, slender tube to put oil in odd spots, about $3 — dump the oil into the recycle bin at the store) and a quart of synthetic motor oil, like Mobil 1 or similar (about $8) and put some in the Zoom Spout bottle.   Synthetics are vastly superior lubricants and will last much longer than ordinary oil.  Almost any weight (5W-10, 5W-30) will work, since there’s far less “work” being done by a fan motor, compared to a car engine.

Fill up the two tubes with oil, put the cover on the Zoom Spout and push the spout back into the bottle (put the cap on first or you’ll make a mess), slide the fan back in, pop on the furnace cover, and switch on the electricity.  Write the date on a piece of masking tape and place it on the furnace to remind you in 5 or 6 (very comfortable) years to oil it again.

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Charlie Gosh