Saving money

Buying a new TV that won’t kill your electric bill

Dave Farquhar Saving money , , , , , , , , ,

As television technology improves, they become more energy efficient. Generally speaking, at least. The CRT TV ranging in size from 26-32 inches that was common in living rooms for most of my lifetime used around 130 watts. But some of the monster TVs people are buying these days use more power than the fridge. Read more

Debt magic demystified

Dave Farquhar Saving money , , , , , ,

I see the repackaged debt snowball method is making the rounds again. Let’s not make this overcomplicated. You can do this. Read more

Of CFLs, LEDs, and modern lighting in general

Dave Farquhar Saving money , , , , ,

Compact Fluorescent and LED light bulbs just couldn’t stay out of the news this week, and boy, is there some bad information still out there.

Let’s start with Velvet Underground drummer Moe Tucker, who recently discovered a form of libertarianism after years of voting a straight Democratic ticket. She said three things about CFLs in an interview with Village Voice Media: Read more

Don’t waste money paying for road hazard coverage on tires

Dave Farquhar Saving money

I bought tires last week. The last time I bought tires, I bought road hazard insurance without even thinking about it. This time I thought about it, and asked “How much?”

It was $130 and change.

I did some very quick math in my head, and said no, rather emphatically. Maybe too emphatically.

Here’s the math. I last bought tires four or five years ago. On my car, I’ve needed the road hazard coverage once. Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t in position to use the coverage, so I paid someplace else $20 to patch the tire.

But it only happened once. And my average for the last 19 years has been roughly one flat tire every 4-5 years. That happens to be about how long a set of tires usually lasts for me. So the last time I bought tires, I spent $130 to save $20, and then I didn’t even save the $20.

So what if the tire is damaged to the point of needing to be replaced? Well, that’s actually happened on my wife’s car. But when it happens, they don’t just give you a new tire. They look at how much tread is left, then give you a pro-rated discount on a new tire. So when we had to use the road hazard coverage on my wife’s car, what we got was about a 25% discount on some no-name tire because they didn’t even have a matching tire in stock.

For some reason, my wife’s had a run of bad luck the last few years, and she’s actually had four flats, two where the tire couldn’t be repaired. But one happened far from the store, so we couldn’t use it. Had we been in position to actually use all of the coverage I paid for, we still would have only saved about $80.

So I opted not to spend $130 for questionable protection of my $330 set of tires. If road hazard coverage is included with the purchase price and the purchase price is competitive, there’s no reason not to take it. But there’s no reason to pay $30+ per tire for it.

A smarter use of that money is to pay to fix flats as they happen, and consider getting an extra rim and a fifth tire to use as a full-sized spare, and rotate it in. Then, in the event of a tire issue, you don’t necessarily have to drop everything and take care of it right then. Put on the spare, get where you need to go, then when you’re in position to shop around, weigh your options and get the flat taken care of.

And since your tires will last about 25% longer by virtue of one tire being out of the rotation 25% of the time, the full-sized spare comes close to paying for itself anyway just in a matter of dollars, not even factoring convenience in.

If a tire is damaged to the point of needing replacement, replace it. Use the money left over from not buying the coverage. Match the tire if at all possible, and if that’s not possible, replace the other tire on the same axle.

Or the other thing I could do is just deposit that $130 into the bank account I use for emergencies, because chances are, I’m not going to spend $130 on emergency tire maintenance. But I spend enough time on the road that buying a rim and another tire seems prudent.

And one more thing; Keep the tires properly inflated. It saves you some hassle and improves gas mileage. What’s not to like?

Missing the playoffs because News Corp. and Cablevision are greedy? Build an antenna!

Dave Farquhar Baseball, Saving money ,

So Cablevision and News Corp are arguing about money, and the result is Fox is dark on cable in New York and Philly tonight, and for the foreseeable future.

Build an antenna. No, seriously, build an antenna.

Over-the-air HDTV looks better than cable, because they have to compress and recompress the signal in order to bring you those 432 channels nobody ever watches. And DTV reception isn’t like it was in the analog days. With a good antenna design, reception is much better than it was a few short years ago. Build a Gray-Hoverman antenna out of $10 worth of readily available materials, and you’ll never miss a local broadcast again. In fact, you’ll probably wonder what’s wrong with your cable provider.

And yes, Game 1 of the NLCS is a pretty good game so far. Definitely not worth paying to miss.

Rupert Murdoch delenda est.

When a dollar isn’t a dollar

Dave Farquhar Personal, Saving money

When my accountant did my taxes this year (I almost always file Form 4868 to extend my due date, which is why I’m talking about taxes in October), he included a comparison sheet, comparing 2009 to my previous years.

One thing jumped out. I made almost 12%  less in 2009 than I made in 2008. My salary for both years was supposed to be the same.

I worked for different companies, but had the same job title and comparable responsibilities. Once company was relatively generous with its benefits; the other extremely stingy.

When I worked for that company in 2009, it seemed like they were nickel and diming me on my benefits, but I never attached a number to it. He did. No wonder things seemed so tight that year.

I didn’t really negotiate the salary. The negotiation started with the hiring executive asking what I make. I told him. He asked if I could produce a couple of pay stubs. I did. And that was pretty much the end of it.

I should have asked more questions, like what the benefits were, and what they cost. Then I should have used those numbers to figure out how much I’d have to make in order to keep my take-home pay more or less constant, because I basically threw away four years’ worth of pay raises when I signed on the bottom line.

Of course, my fear at the time was that if I played hardball too much, they’d just hire someone willing to work for less. I’m not certain that fear was unfounded. And at the time, my phone wasn’t exactly ringing with job offers, even though I was looking aggressively.

So it’s hard to be too regretful. In effect, I took a pay cut. In 2009, so did a lot of people. When I was shopping for clothes for my interviews, I ran into a former classmate at Dillard’s. Working there, not shopping there. I took the job, waited for a better opportunity, and when that happened, I took it.

But when you get a job offer and the time comes to talk salary, it probably makes sense to ask more questions than I did.

Using child safety outlets to save energy

Dave Farquhar Saving money , , , , ,

I got a new book recently about saving energy. I’ve read several of those, but this one had two tips I’ve never seen anywhere else: caulking baseboards and putting child safety covers on electrical outlets.

It didn’t explain caulking the baseboards, but I will. Frequently there’s a gap in the wallboard where it would normally meet the floor. Maybe it’s laziness—it’ll be covered by the baseboard, after all—but that gap is also a handy place to do after-the-fact wiring, reducing the need to cut into walls and then patch and repaint. The gap makes the area prone to drafts, however. So caulking where the baseboard meets the wall, and where it meets the floor if it’s not over carpet, makes rooms less prone to drafts.

Child safety outlet cover
These child safety outlet covers team up with foam gaskets (pictured below) to make a good energy-saving combo

The child safety outlets make for another interesting trick. I’ve talked before about foam electrical outlet inserts and their companion for light switches. And I’ve wondered about putting a child safety plug in. But recently I bought child-resistant outlet covers, after seeing them on This Old House. They come in varieties that twist or slide.  I like the sliding ones better, both from an insulating and usability standpoint. They’re convenient because you can just slide the cover out of place, rather than having to remove an insert. And these covers do two things: They put more material between you and the gap in the wall, and they cover the outlet plugs themselves, eliminating that last little source of drafts. And when you have small children like I do, they’re a necessity anyway.

I do insulate interior walls as well as those that face the outside. I didn’t used to bother. But this book mentioned that gaps in interior walls can cause them to act like chimneys, drawing heat out of the room. So I’ve changed my ways.

Foam electrical outlet insulatorsBoth of these are inexpensive upgrades that don’t take long to accomplish. When you buy the switch covers in bulk, it gets even cheaper.

I get ridiculed sometimes for talking about saving energy so much, but think about it. Energy isn’t getting any cheaper. My local utilities ask for rate increases just as frequently as the law allows them to, and more often than not, the state grants an increase. Not always as much as they ask for, but something.

More energy saving ideas

I’ve done a number of other things to help me save energy over the years. Most are pretty inexpensive. I installed thermal blinds and thermal curtains. Then I insulated my hot water pipes. And of course I use LED light bulbs.

My electric usage dropped 19 percent in 2011, so these things work.

Save money on cables by not buying at retail

Dave Farquhar Hardware, Saving money , , , , ,
Save money on cables by not buying at retail

I’m ashamed to say I own one Monster cable. Hopefully if I tell you I bought it at a garage sale for $2, I’ll regain your respect. But there’s an easier way to save money on cables than buying at garage sales.

Unless you need it immediately, there’s no reason whatsoever to buy Monster and other overpriced cables at big-box consumer electronics stores. Profit margins are really thin on most electronics, even the big-ticket items, and they use the cables to make up for that. That’s the reason nobody includes cables in the box.

Read more

I got an LED bulb, and it is fabulous.

Dave Farquhar Saving money , , , , , , , , , , ,

I half-heartedly checked Home Depot’s web site today, and saw they had 429-lumen, 8.6-watt (40W equivalent) LED bulbs at my local store. Finally!

So when I had a chance, I drove over, plunked down my 19 bucks, and brought one home.

It’s not perfect. But I like it an awful lot.I tried the bulb out in a lamp first, to test the light quality. It’s very similar to the last batch of CFLs I bought. Not quite as yellow as my remaining incandescent bulbs, but nice.

It’s not quite bright enough to use in a lamp, and it’s fairly directional. You’ll want at least a 60W equivalent for that, and probably more. Give it time.

In my son’s bedroom, the light worked great. It works nicely in overhead lights, and it’s dimmable. Dimmable CFLs are expensive and hard to find, so I might as well buy LED bulbs instead since they use less power and last 2-3 times as long.

In operation, I found the LED bulb never got uncomfortably hot to the touch.

LED bulbs produce no UV light, so they won’t attract bugs and they won’t cause the pictures on your walls to fade. That sounds like a plus to me.

And, believe it or not, they’re assembled in the USA. Presumably most of the components, if not all of them, are made in China, but LED bulbs are one of the few things you can buy that support manufacturing jobs here in the States.

The bulbs have a five-year warranty. I suggest saving the receipt and perhaps the packaging, and writing the date of purchase on the base of the bulb in pencil. That way if the bulb fails prematurely, you can do something about it.

The 46-year life expectancy claim sounds overly optimistic, but 15-20 years wouldn’t surprise me.

I suggest you “burn in” the bulb by leaving it on for 24 hours straight. Like any other electronic device, if it survives that first 24 hours of running continuously, it’s likely to last years.

If the bulb is going in a bedroom or someplace else where leaving it on for 24 hours is impractical, put it in a lamp and leave the lamp on for 24 hours, then install the bulb where you intend to use it.

At $19 a pop, I’m not going to run out to convert the whole house. But as old bulbs burn out, I’ll buy LEDs to replace them. As time goes on, they’ll only improve, and prices will come down. But these bulbs are good enough to be useful today.

The energy savings isn’t chump change–LED bulbs pay for themselves in a couple of years if they replace old-fashioned incandescent bulbs. Not only do you get more lumens per watt, but the less wattage you consume, the lower your cooling bills will be. I was an early adopter of CFLs–I have them everywhere but my kids’ rooms, and a seldom-used light in the shower of one bathroom. Between that, my thermal curtains, and a programmable thermostat, I haven’t had a $200 electric bill in years.

Energy isn’t going to get any cheaper, and we consume more of it per person than the rest of the world. We can voluntarily cut our energy usage, or we can wait for China and India to show up with guns and force the issue. I’d rather cut it voluntarily.

Incoming link: http://mondayevening.wordpress.com/2009/02/17/led-bulb-glows-after-i-turn-it-off/

Barely scraping by on a quarter-mil a year

Dave Farquhar Saving money

This WSJ article (with profuse apologies for linking to something owned by Rupert Murdoch) offers some advice for those who are struggling to make it on $250K or $350K per year.

It’s good advice for people making 1/10 of that too.The gist of it is that people need to lower their expectations. I’ll make this real personal and include myself in this group.

About a year ago, I ran into a former coworker in the parking lot. He asked how things were going. They happened to be going bad that day. Real bad. “Got any job openings?” I asked.

“Actually, we do,” he said.

A day or two later, I sent him my resume. Another week or so later, I was interviewing for a job. Another week or so after that, they offered me a job, with the biggest raise of my life, though I’m still well below that $250K threshold.

Still, I’m making more than I’ve ever made, and I’m having more trouble paying my bills than I’ve had in a very long time.

Don’t feel sorry for me.

I got lazy and I got sloppy in my budgeting. It’s not my employer’s fault for not giving me a bigger raise, and it’s not the government’s fault for taxing me too much. It’s my fault for not bothering to stop for a minute and figure out what I can and can’t afford before plunking down the cash or reaching for the plastic.

Of course there are other things you can do that this article doesn’t suggest, such as buying high-efficiency light bulbs that use less energy and last longer. This saves money on the electric bill every month, and reduces those trips to Target resulting in fewer temptations to buy $100 worth of other stuff you didn’t really need. But the mentality matters more than the specifics. Develop the mentality, and specifics will follow.

And it matters whether you work in food service making $18,000 a year or you’re a professional athlete making millions per year. After all, how many athletes have we heard about going broke after their career ends in spite of earning tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars?

Personally, I’ve been eating a lot more Campbell’s Chunky Soup and using a lot more coupons lately.