I’ve noticed sometimes that there’s some half-baked videos or blogs or whatever that purport this or that frugal trick, but if you look at the time or math, it’s not actually frugal for you.
What are some examples of that you’ve come across? The things that “aren’t worth it”?
For me it’s couponing. (Although I haven’t heard people talk about it recently–has it fallen out of “style”, or have businesses caught up to the loopholes folks used to exploit?)
Not sure if this counts, per se, but Solar Panels. Specifically, via a loan.
My electric bill is insane, thanks to the powers of capitalism and monopoly. So I figured installing solar panels would be a good investment. Sure it takes ten years to break even, but I’d rather be paying my way through that than paying my electric utility.
Well, the problem I ran into was that the interest on a loan would effectively negate any headway I was hoping to make per month.
I still plan on doing solar, but not before either interest rates at least quarter themselves or I save up enough to practically pay for it up front.
Depending on where you live, the feed in tariffs are a scam as well, so you better make sure you use any power you generate instead of feeding it back to the grid (either by shifting use or installing a battery).
I don’t know much about residential, but I’ve been watching battery/solar setups for vans and RVs, and the cost of batteries to store power has been going down a lot.
I wonder if there’d be savings if one set up a “house battery” that only charged at night, then you use the stored electricity during the day.
Maybe hiring an electrician to do it would eat any savings, though.
Although, if one is more of a prepper than simply frugal, setting up a big “house battery” to smooth out electric outages due to thunderstorms or whatever might be nice.
Batteries could definitely be used to use cheap night time electricity during the day without solar. I think in some places you could even use it for arbitrage (use the grid market to get power when it’s cheap, feed it back when there’s more demand, etc).
For myself I got them when rates were low. It actually saved me money instantly, swapping from a $300/mo bill to a $140/mo solar loan repayment.
Are you in the US? Are you factoring in the federal rebate? Are there any other state or local rebates you might also qualify for?