Saving Money on

 Home Improvements

1.      Try doing simple home improvement projects yourself. You can find tutorials online for tasks like painting, minor repairs, and gardening.

2.      Visit salvage yards or reuse centers for building materials and fixtures. You can often find good quality items for a fraction of the price.

3.      Buy materials and tools during sales events like Black Friday or end-of-season clearances.

4.      Attend free community workshops to learn new skills and techniques for home improvements.

5.      Invest in energy-efficient windows, doors, and insulation. These can reduce your energy bills in the long run. Observe the golden rule of insulation. If you can see the top of the floor joists in your attic, you’ll likely save energy dollars by ­adding insulation. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that homeowners can save an average of 15 percent by sealing their homes and adding insulation in attics, floors over crawl spaces, and basements.

6.      And batten down the hatch. Insulating your attic entry —­ often called the hatch —could save $150 a year in energy costs. The goal is to keep heat out of the attic. Since heat rises, an uninsulated hatch drains heat from your home. Home centers carry hatch insulation to fit most situations.

7.      Know when to prime. Painting over low-gloss and using a similar ­color? Skip the primer. But in ­other situations, primer will save you money. Use primer when painting porous surfaces, such as bare drywall or wood or surfaces with high-gloss paint.

8.      Wait for winter. Many people don’t want to start indoor projects during the winter due to the cold and holidays. But this means contractors are looking for work during those months and are more likely to give you a better deal as well as their full attention.

9.      Know how to improve home value. If you plan to sell your home down the road, check out Remodeling Magazine’s helpful annual Cost vs. Value survey at remodeling.hw.net. Most financially helpful in 2023 was converting a fossil-fuel furnace to an electric heat pump, averaging an $18,366 return on $17,747 in cost. By comparison, a $23,430 deck would return just $9,325.

10. Rehab your tub. Replacing a stained and worn bathtub can run you $10,000 or more because you’ll likely have to replace everything that surrounds it too. But for $150 or less, you can refinish it with an epoxy-based finish, such as Ekopel 2k or the Rust-Oleum Tub & Tile Refinishing Kit.

Practice helps the brain and the body 2

Yesterday I was talking aobut learing a new skill and how it helps your brain at any age. Today I want to highlight my grandson and brother. My 13-year-old grandson, is an elite athlete in slopestyle skiing, a sport that involves tricks, jumps, and terrain park features like rails, boxes, and jibs. To stay on the Snow Australia Emerging Talent Program, he must maintain high standards in school and in public. His journey into slopestyle skiing started with hours of watching YouTube videos of professional skiers performing tricks. But watching alone wasn't enough. He spent countless hours on the trampoline, practicing the movements and jumps before trying them on the snow. This dedication has allowed him to perform complex tricks with ease, as his brain has created and strengthened the neural pathways needed for these skills.

Every day after school, he heads to the trampoline in his backyard. He meticulously practices spins, flips, and grabs, translating what he’s seen in videos into physical movements. Initially, each attempt is awkward, and he falls more often than he lands. But with each session, his brain learns. The neural connections involved in balance, spatial awareness, and muscle coordination strengthen. Over time, these tricks become second nature, allowing him to focus on perfecting his form and adding new variations. His commitment to practice, even when it’s difficult, has made him one of the top young athletes in his field.

On the other end of the spectrum is my brother, who was the Canadian doubles tennis champion for his age group (over 75) and now teaches tennis and English as a second language to newcomers to Canada. My brother didn’t start playing tennis until he was in his twenties, teaching himself the game through sheer determination and hours of practice each day.

In his early years, my brother spent many evenings after work on the tennis court. He studied the movements of professional players, mimicking their serves and volleys. He practiced relentlessly, hitting balls against the wall when he couldn’t find a partner. Over time, his brain adapted. The motor skills required for tennis became ingrained in his muscle memory. His footwork became quicker, his reflexes sharper, and his ability to anticipate his opponent's moves almost instinctual.

Even now, in his seventies, he practices every day for at least one or two hours. This continuous engagement keeps his brain sharp and his skills honed. He has also found joy in teaching, sharing his love for tennis and language with others. Teaching tennis involves breaking down complex movements into simple steps, a task that reinforces his own skills while helping newcomers learn the game. Similarly, teaching English requires patience and creativity, engaging different parts of his brain and keeping his mind active.

Stories like these illustrate how practice and dedication can reshape the brain, enhancing both physical and cognitive abilities. Elite athletes, whether young or old, understand that their success is not solely due to natural talent. It’s the result of consistent effort and a willingness to push through challenges. This practice changes the structure of their brains, making them more efficient and skilled over time.

When a difficult skill like creating a ski jump or mastering a tennis serve is new, it demands a lot of conscious effort and attention. This is especially true for novices, who need to think carefully about every small part of the movement involved. With extensive practice, many parts of the action become automated, freeing up attention to focus on decision-making or fine-tuning performance.

For instance, one study looked at the brains of novice, expert, and elite archers performing a simulated archery task. The novices showed widespread brain activity, especially in the frontal areas related to controlled planning. In contrast, experts showed reduced activity in these areas, relying more on specialized processing in particular parts of the brain. This shift from general to localized brain activity allows experts to make decisions quickly and efficiently, using less energy than novices.

A similar process occurs in athletes like my grandson and brother. As they practice, their brains become more specialized, allowing them to perform complex tasks with less conscious effort. This not only improves their performance but also enables them to learn new skills more easily.

Practice can even change the brain's structure. For example, London cab drivers preparing for the difficult "Knowledge of London" test were found to have an enlarged posterior hippocampus, an area important for spatial memory. Similarly, professional divers showed a thicker cortex in areas related to spatial information, and rock climbers, basketball players, badminton players, and speed skaters showed expansion in the cerebellum, which coordinates muscular activity.

While genetic factors may influence an athlete's potential, the importance of deliberate, focused practice cannot be overstated. Both my grandson and brother have demonstrated that through consistent effort and a commitment to learning, it's possible to achieve extraordinary levels of skill and intelligence, regardless of age. Their stories are a testament to the brain's incredible plasticity and the power of practice.

Pracitce helps the brain and the mind 1

 We tend to think of elite athletes as being gifted with natural talent—some innate quality that just makes them better at swimming, running, football, or gymnastics. Sure, we all know they practice a lot, but we often see this as honing or developing a natural skill or talent to a world-class level.

Scientists continue to investigate the relative importance of genetic factors in athletes’ superior abilities, both mental and physical. An Australian study looking at road cyclists found that professionals outperform recreational cyclists in their inhibitory control—the ability to regulate strong or automatic responses and suppress irrelevant information. Inhibitory control is thought by many to be an inheritable or stable trait, so it’s possible that this superior control does indeed come down to an athlete's genetic makeup. However, practice not only changes athletes’ bodies; it also changes their brains.

While human brain development is over by around the age of 25, our brains continue to change throughout our lives. Depending on our experiences, including the memories we revisit and the skills we practice, some synaptic connections (connections between neurons) become stronger, while others wither away. This ability of our brains to change is known as plasticity.

Learning a new skill can be hard at first, but the more we do something, the stronger the neural pathways associated with that skill become, and the task becomes easier. If we practice enough, we may even begin to run on ‘autopilot’—with our actions becoming automatic and unconscious. And, as you’ll know if you’ve ever ‘overthought’ a tricky dance or sporting move, interfering with this unconscious process can actually worsen performance.

Take my 13-year-old grandson, for example. He's an elite athlete in slopestyle skiing, a sport that involves tricks, jumps, and terrain park features like rails, boxes, and jibs. To stay on the Snow Australia Emerging Talent Program, he must maintain high standards in school and in public. His journey into slopestyle skiing started with hours of watching YouTube videos of professional skiers performing tricks. But watching alone wasn't enough. He spent countless hours on the trampoline, practicing the movements and jumps before trying them on the snow. This dedication has allowed him to perform complex tricks with ease, as his brain has created and strengthened the neural pathways needed for these skills.

Every day after school, he heads to the trampoline in his backyard. He meticulously practices spins, flips, and grabs, translating what he’s seen in videos into physical movements. Initially, each attempt is awkward, and he falls more often than he lands. But with each session, his brain learns. The neural connections involved in balance, spatial awareness, and muscle coordination strengthen. Over time, these tricks become second nature, allowing him to focus on perfecting his form and adding new variations. His commitment to practice, even when it’s difficult, has made him one of the top young athletes in his field.

On the other end of the spectrum is my brother, who was the Canadian doubles tennis champion for his age group (over 75) and now teaches tennis and English as a second language to newcomers to Canada. My brother didn’t start playing tennis until he was in his twenties, teaching himself the game through sheer determination and hours of practice each day.

In his early years, my brother spent many evenings after work on the tennis court. He studied the movements of professional players, mimicking their serves and volleys. He practiced relentlessly, hitting balls against the wall when he couldn’t find a partner. Over time, his brain adapted. The motor skills required for tennis became ingrained in his muscle memory. His footwork became quicker, his reflexes sharper, and his ability to anticipate his opponent's moves almost instinctual.

Even now, in his seventies, he practices every day for at least one or two hours. This continuous engagement keeps his brain sharp and his skills honed. He has also found joy in teaching, sharing his love for tennis and language with others. Teaching tennis involves breaking down complex movements into simple steps, a task that reinforces his own skills while helping newcomers learn the game. Similarly, teaching English requires patience and creativity, engaging different parts of his brain and keeping his mind active.

Stories like these illustrate how practice and dedication can reshape the brain, enhancing both physical and cognitive abilities. Elite athletes, whether young or old, understand that their success is not solely due to natural talent. It’s the result of consistent effort and a willingness to push through challenges. This practice changes the structure of their brains, making them more efficient and skilled over time.

When a difficult skill like creating a ski jump or mastering a tennis serve is new, it demands a lot of conscious effort and attention. This is especially true for novices, who need to think carefully about every small part of the movement involved. With extensive practice, many parts of the action become automated, freeing up attention to focus on decision-making or fine-tuning performance.

For instance, one study looked at the brains of novice, expert, and elite archers performing a simulated archery task. The novices showed widespread brain activity, especially in the frontal areas related to controlled planning. In contrast, experts showed reduced activity in these areas, relying more on specialized processing in particular parts of the brain. This shift from general to localized brain activity allows experts to make decisions quickly and efficiently, using less energy than novices.

A similar process occurs in athletes like my grandson and brother. As they practice, their brains become more specialized, allowing them to perform complex tasks with less conscious effort. This not only improves their performance but also enables them to learn new skills more easily.

Practice can even change the brain's structure. For example, London cab drivers preparing for the difficult "Knowledge of London" test were found to have an enlarged posterior hippocampus, an area important for spatial memory. Similarly, professional divers showed a thicker cortex in areas related to spatial information, and rock climbers, basketball players, badminton players, and speed skaters showed expansion in the cerebellum, which coordinates muscular activity.

While genetic factors may influence an athlete's potential, the importance of deliberate, focused practice cannot be overstated. Both my grandson and brother have demonstrated that through consistent effort and a commitment to learning, it's possible to achieve extraordinary levels of skill and intelligence, regardless of age. Their stories are a testament to the brain's incredible plasticity and the power of practice.

Learning when retired not easy but worth it.

 Many people think of the brain as a mystery. We don’t often think about what intelligence is or how it works. When you do think about what intelligence is, you might think that a person’s intelligence is predetermined at birth – either you are a “math person” or not – and stays that way for life. New research shows that the brain is more like a muscle – it changes and gets stronger when you use it. Scientists have been able to show how the brain grows and gets stronger when you learn. Everyone knows that when you lift weights, your muscles get bigger, and you get stronger. A person who can’t lift 20 pounds when they start exercising can get strong enough to lift 100 pounds after working out for a long time. Muscles become larger and stronger with exercise. When you stop exercising, muscles shrink, and you get weaker. That’s why people say, “use it or lose it.”

Most people don’t know that when they practice and learn new things, parts of their brain change and get larger just like muscles. This is true even for adults. So, it’s not true that some people “just can’t learn.” You can improve your abilities as long as you practice and use good strategies. People aren’t “smart” or “dumb” at math. At first, no one can read or solve equations. But with practice, they can learn to do it. The more a person learns, the easier it gets to learn new things – because their brain “muscles” grow stronger. This is true even for adults who have struggled for a long time to learn something. A scientist from Wake Forest University said, “We used to think adults couldn’t form new brain connections, but now we know that isn’t true… The adult brain is like a muscle, and we need to exercise it.”

People who don’t know this can miss out on the chance to grow a stronger brain. They may think they can’t do it, or that it’s too hard. It does take work to learn, just like becoming stronger physically or becoming a better juggler does. Sometimes it even hurts. When you feel yourself get better and stronger, you realize that all the work is worth it.

Take my brother, for example. When he retired, he decided to take up learning Italian and playing chess. At first, he could barely understand a word of Italian, and his chess skills were rudimentary. But he committed to practicing both every day for about 20 minutes each. Now, he can speak and understand Italian to the degree that a 5-year-old could, and he has become very proficient at online chess.

Every morning, he starts his day with a cup of coffee and an Italian language app. He practices speaking, listening, and even reading simple Italian stories. It’s not easy, and there are days when he struggles with pronunciation or understanding a particular phrase. But he keeps at it, pushing through the challenges. Over time, he has noticed improvements. He can hold basic conversations, order food in Italian restaurants, and even enjoy Italian films with subtitles.

After his language practice, he moves on to chess. Initially, he was frustrated by his frequent losses. Chess, with its strategic complexity, seemed daunting. But just like with Italian, he approached it with patience and persistence. He studied different openings, learned from his mistakes, and gradually improved his tactics. Today, he enjoys playing chess online and often wins against players from around the world.

My brother’s journey illustrates how the brain, like a muscle, grows stronger with use. His daily practice has not only made him proficient in Italian and chess but also kept his mind sharp and engaged. He proves that it’s never too late to learn something new and that with dedication, anyone can grow smarter. His story is a testament to the incredible plasticity of the adult brain and the power of consistent effort. So, if you think you can’t learn something new, remember my brother. With patience and practice, you too can strengthen your brain and unlock new potentials.