Miracle of miracles, Matt wrote a post. Hopefully this will be happening a little more frequently! Here’s what he has to say:
Sometimes, I see things outrageously priced and think “Who would every buy that?” I suppose if one has the money, one will spend it. So was the case for me with housing during college. Scholarship paid for my housing and so I never looked at the cost of housing. Looking back on it now, it’s amazing to see how outrageously priced some of the student housing is.
For example, the lease for Phase II (Kurz Hall) is $500 a month for a two bedroom, one bathroom pad with unlimited utilities. That’s not bad, but what’s the REAL price of the lease when splitting the pad with three other guys? Less the unlimited utilities, $2000 a month can purchase quite a nice pad right on the ocean here in Cocoa Beach, and I guarantee you it’ll include more than one bathroom and a kitchen. Obviously, some of my college friends understood the price of housing as they lived off-campus in an apartment. Ohh the money I could have saved!
So to make up for lost time, I’m trying to develop a frugal mentality, especially regarding utilities. So electricity, cable TV, phone, and internet are all subject to examination. We have cell phones so no need for a home phone. Neither of us want all the TV channels that come with cable so we just use trusty rabbit ears. (actually, we upgraded to an attic antenna since the original writing of this post) And the cheap DSL internet is $19.95 a month (also, we’ve since upgraded to the $34.95/month plan to watch UofL sports over the internet).
A lot of people who have cable have DVRs which are awesome. Instead of depending upon the cable company to provide a DVR, for the past four years I’ve used my computer to record TV. So far, it’s worked out nicely and there’s no subsciption fees like TiVo. A year ago we got an HD TV with a computer input on it. I know it’s a strange concept, but our computer is connected to our TV so that we can watch TV. Being able to record TV shows is the only way I’m able to watch any TV these days, with, of course, the exception for Cardinal Basketball. For example, a 2-hour American Idol show becomes 40 minutes without commercials. A bad singer comes on, skip through. Didn’t catch how Simon slammed someone, skip back. DVR is the only way to roll.
This brings me back to my earlier post about the nettop. My current computer gulps down a whole 250W whenever it’s on: recording TV, watching TV, or whenever I’m just using it. The current nettops only sip about 25W when under heavy use. So my immediate reaction is to buy a nettop because it could save money. But how much savings? Here are the numbers:
Assuming 4hours of usage each day for a year, the electricity cost for my computer is:
250w*1456hrs = 364kwh
364kwh*$0.11/kwh ~ $40
whereas the cost of the nettop is ten times less at $4 per year.
A good nettop is in the range of $350. Now the real question, how long will it take to recover that cost and start saving money? Answer: about 10 years. Talk about deflating any motivation of saving money! Think about what kind of computers will be available in 10 years! Probably ones that will be event more energy saving and a lot cheaper.
How about another example of trying to be frugal? It takes about 2.5 minutes of running of water (about 2 gallons) to get hot water at our kitchen sink. There are many ways of improving this, including better insulating hot-water pipes. Since my pipes are in the concrete-slab foundation, one method I’ve been looking at is a hot-water pump. It would go under the kitchen sink where, after pressing the start button, it starts pulling water from the hot-water heater and putting that cold water on the cold-water line, which goes back into the water heater, so no water is wasted. It pumps the water until it reaches the temperature you want then shuts off. Another nice feature is that it can pump water faster than the faucet can release it, so the pump would only need about 45 seconds to pull the hot water to the sink, saving about 1/3 the time waiting for hot water.
I’ve been looking at one here that’s $180. So, yeah, getting the pump to save water sounds nice because letting the faucet run for 2.5 minutes seems like a lot of water and money going down the drain. So now the real question: how long would it take to recover that cost and start saving money? If we want hot water at the kitchen sink 3 times a day, every day for a year, that’s 2190 gallons/year that would be wasted and go down the drain. At $4.43/1000gal, that’s about $10 per year. Answer: about 18 years.
So what’s the lesson? Anything marketed to save money is probably true, but look at the time it would take for that to take effect. I like being thrifty and not wasting things unnecessarily such as electricity and water. But when it comes down to it, money is also one of those things. It’s interesting to find that my knee-jerk reaction to buy things to save money doesn’t make quite as much sense monetarily once I think about it. So maybe instead of buying the nettop to save money, it’s to buy it because it’s cool and instead of buying the pump to save money, it would be an expense to save time waiting for hot water. At least, that’s the honest answer. And maybe 10-18 years down the line, if those things are still working, I can start using that money being saved to go towards an electric car so I can start saving money on gas.
Good post and good point Matt. That is the way it is with most energy saving stuff. The only time it is worth it is when you have to replace the item anyway. And when you can get a good government rebate at the same time. We made a killing on our last fridge/dishwasher purchase with gov’t rebates! Of course, we took the old fridge and put it in the garage, so there go any energy savings! I’m hoping that one day Garrick will throw something through our single pane sliding glass doors so I can have a good reason to upgrade. Those things are probably costing me $300 a year, but they cost about $2500 to replace just one, and I need to swap out 4! Even the $1500 gov’t rebate didn’t make that worth it.
Dave, you bring up an interesting point that might merit a separate post:
Why do we wish for situations that “force” a choice to get a certain outcome when we are fully capable of choosing to get that same outcome now?
You can also get a “Point of Use Instant Hot Water Heater” to supplement that water line…with that pipe sitting in a huge heat sink its never going to stay hot but your floor above it should be .001 degree warmer.
So there are a couple of points that you didn’t address in your post.
1. Your time is worth money. Wasting five or ten minutes on 6 different inconveniences around your house each day adds up. It also subtracts from family time and other enjoyments.
2. You like formulas and numbers, so do I and thats great. But you have to take into account things that are harder (or impossible) to quantify. Not everything is a financial decision you have to factor in your quality of life. If your DVR sounded like an airplane taking off and you had to turn the volume on the TV to the max to hear it you could justify that it still worked and wouldn’t need to be replaced even though you miss out on the enjoyment of watching American Idol.
3. Your decisions effect the greater community, using less water means less water the city has to filter and pump, uses less energy and ultimately kills less polar bears. Your sink is killing polar bears.
I was happy when I saw this post because I think it accurately portrays the human struggle. Our lives are this complex balance beam and we are constantly trying to manage which way that beam is leaning. But the annoying part of the whole thing is that we are never going to be completely balanced, the stars will never align perfectly, as soon as we surmount our current set of obstacles …there will be more. But it’s the cycle of contemplation, struggle, and the luxury of hindsight that makes us better.
It got awful deep in here over a sink.
According to the most recent GIS data, since your comment 5 polar bears and 20 seals have perished due to my sink.