Lazy Man and Money

Four Years of Solar Power Reviewed

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Funny Solar Panel

Happy Earth Day! It’s hard to believe, but this month is exactly four years since we got solar panels installed and activated.

I was nervous about taking the plunge. We got a $16,000 Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) to pay for the panels. That’s a lot of money. And though I thought I understood everything about solar panels, you never truly know what you don’t know. Finally, I never know if I can trust local contractors that I’ll save money – they are interested in getting the job and it would be impossible to hold them accountable if they stretched the truth.

Fortunately, everything went according to plan and we’ve been extremely happy. (Knock on wood.)

One very important thing to note is that government funding via state grants and federal tax credits paid for another $16,000. Obviously state grants are going to depend where you live. I did very quick/rough research and it seems like the 30% federal tax credit is still around for 2019, but then it starts to become less in 2020 and 2021 before disappearing for residences/homes.

In short, if you are thinking about solar power, now may be the last chance to get the best price.

Before I get into our personal financial experience with solar power, the benefits to the environment have to be mentioned. Even if it financially break-even, why not do something that helps the environment? To date, our dashboard says that our panels have accomplished the equivalent of planting 686 trees. Using metrics from the EPA, planting one tree offsets the same amount of CO2 as 55.3 kilowatt-hours of clean energy production.

Put another way, our panels have generated the equivalent of 12,640,541 AA batteries. My math could be off, but I think that’s around 668,822 pounds of batteries. It’s a good thing our house doesn’t run on AA batteries.

Calculating the Value of our Solar Power

You can call it 686 trees or 12.6 million batteries, but scientists would say we’ve generated 37.9 megawatt-hours in 4 years. Thanks to the wonders of the metric system, we can say it’s 37,900 kilowatt-hours or kWh.

The reason why we care about the kilowatt-hours measurement is because that’s the unit your electric bill uses. In Rhode Island it costs 11 cents to create one kWh and 10 cents to deliver it. The costs are broken down into more excruciating detail, but I’ll spare you. So overall, using a kWh costs $0.21.

That’s actually the most expensive electricity in the continental United States. (For some reason their numbers are 22.67 cents, which is different than my bill, but it’s close enough.) The average bill in Rhode Island is $203.35. Ouch!

The 37,900 kWh that we’ve generated in 4 years would have cost us $7,985.53. We can round up that last nearly $15 and call it $8000… exactly half of $16,000 we financed. Roughly speaking we’ll have recouped our $16,000 in 4 more years. However to account for interest and inflation, let’s call it 5 years.

Thus after a total of 9 years, we’ll save roughly $2000 a year. (That’s based on easy math of the $8000 we saved already over 4 years.) It will be more as electricity prices rise over time due to inflation.

Our panels are guaranteed to be ~95% efficient for 25 years. It doesn’t mean that they won’t last longer, but that’s just the guarantee. By the time that guarantee is up we’ll have 16 years of free electricity. With inflation our electricity would likely cost around $3200 by the end. I’ll conservatively estimate that the savings come out to around $2500 a year over those 16 years.

That’s $40,000 in savings! If the system keeps working well, it could be more than $50,000.

For a handful of days of research and another few for doing the work, that’s quite the return on investment. It’s a year’s worth of income for many people. While your state will likely be less of a savings, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.

If you are thinking about getting solar power yourself, here’s a quick guide I wrote. It’s hard to get too specific because each state has its own tax credits as well as it’s own costs of power. If energy is cheap in your state, it could be a poor financial decision to get solar power. That’s why it can still save us money even though Rhode Island is not known for being sunny.

Have you explored solar power? Let me know what you think in the comments.

Porking Awesome! (Or Rich Pig, Poor Pig)

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porking awesome

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote Rich Chicken, Poor Chicken (inspired by popular personal finance book). The article was a bit of a humblebrag about an amazing deal I found at Aldi on some chicken. I ended up paying around 45 cents a pound for boneless, skinless chicken breast, an all-time personal record.

The main lesson was that by being mindful with your spending, you can save money a ton of money. Getting 45 cent chicken requires a lot of luck. However, you have to be prepared to pounce when the luck is there.

Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to get another great deal. Just like with the chicken, I felt like I robbed the grocery store. At least this time it was Shaw’s.

Here’s the deal. As you probably can’t see in the tiny image the promotion on the yellow sticker reads, “Buy 3, save $10.” (Underneath it says “Mix & Match.”)

This promotion was on a bunch of bulk meat purchases. At the expensive end of the spectrum there were $30 packages of Porterhouse steaks. On the cheap end of the spectrum there was the pork that I bought.

You could buy 3 Porterhouse packages for $90 and save $10 to make it $80… or you can do what I did. I looked for the 3 cheapest packages of meat I could find. It happened to be the packages of pork that were $1.89 a pound. That’s not the best price I’ve ever seen, but the promotion turns a good price into a great one.

The three packages I bought were $5.42, $4.67, and $5.88 each. The roughly 8.5 pounds of pork came to a total of $15.97. However, with the “save $10” promotion, it was $5.97… or around 70 cents a pound.

The key to the deal is realizing that a package of meat is a package of meat whether it is $5 or $30. The promotion doesn’t discriminate between the two. You get your $10 savings either way.

The Porterhouse was around 12% off. The pork, for all practical purposes, had a sign on it: “Buy 1, Get 2 Free.”

If Shaw’s had put that sign on the pork, I’m fairly sure they would have quickly sold out. Mindful math for the win.

Rich Chicken, Poor Chicken

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Today I’d like to tell you the story of two people shopping at grocery stores for some chicken. One person runs through the grocery store quickly buying the items he needs (including chicken) and gets out of there paying little attention to money. The other person takes a little more time, not a lot, to pay attention to any particular deals. We are going to focus on their chicken purchases today. We’ll call them Rich Chicken and Poor Chicken*.

I’m going to play the part of Rich Chicken, the person who spends a little more time to find the deals. Last week, Rich Chicken found the chicken deal of lifetime! Even though his wife had warned them that they had too much chicken, Rich Chicken does what Rich Chicken does… buys chicken.

What does a deal of a lifetime look like? This:

Aldi Chicken Deal

You can click on the image for an even bigger one to get the details on the pricing. Pay no attention to the dates, I’m writing this article long after the chicken had been frozen in our chest freezer. The sell-by date was the next day.

The big picture (pun intended) is that each of these packages of chicken are on sale $5 off… and they are only around $7 to begin with.

I’ll give you the details so that you don’t have to squint on that picture. Before the discounts on the packages I would have spent a total of $21.35 for 14.33 pounds of chicken in the three packages (including the devil chicken package at the bottom). That would have been $1.49, which is a great price for boneless, skinless chicken breast under normal circumstances.

After the $15 in discounts ($5 per package), I spent $6.35 for 14.33 pounds of chicken or around 44 cents a pound.

Maybe you are thinking I just changed the discount from $1 to $5 with a magic marker at home. Nope, here’s part of my receipt:

Chicken Receipt

Poor Chicken Shopping

Now let’s look at Poor Chicken. Maybe he’s in a rush (aren’t we all sometimes?), but let’s presume he’s just not mindful of his shopping spending. Maybe he’s got a bunch of other things on his mind. For whatever reason, he doesn’t see this chicken deal in plain sight. Many other shoppers missed the deal as well. There were plenty of packages available that I didn’t buy and I waited a few extra minutes to see people pass it by.

A couple of days of later, Poor Chicken decides he wants chicken for dinner. Unfortunately now, he’s at a different grocery store. This chicken isn’t on sale. Typically, I see boneless, skinless chicken at $2.99… more if it’s organic. He might only buy a pound or two now, so it isn’t that big of deal. However, let’s assume that over some time he buys (the convenient amount of) 14.33 pounds of chicken.

Poor Chicken spends $42.85, while Rich Chicken spends $6.35. For some people that $36.50 isn’t that big of deal. This is an extreme example as well. However, all these mindful shopping decisions add up. I can’t even begin to estimate how much that is when you multiply it across many shopping trips over a lifetime.

There’s a lot of debate in personal finance about whether it is better to make more money or save more money. I think there’s room for both. A penny saved is a penny earned, which is a penny that can be invested.

* The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), chickens, places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.

Things I Love: Instant Pot

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Editor’s Note: It’s been a long time I’ve written a “Things I Like” article. You’ll have to wait a little longer, because this is a “Things I Love” article written by my wife. Any typos were likely introduced by my editing as I changed some sentence structure for clarity.

With two little kids, I don’t have room for many hobbies. I tried scrapbooking and gardening, but they were too much attention taken away from supervising the kids. I tried canning, but it was too much time in front of an open flame. I love concerts and Broadway shows, but they aren’t frugal and it’s hard to find the time (kids). Then I met Instant Pot… and I might have just found my hobby.

Instant Pot is a 7-in-1 electric pressure cooker, slow cooker, rice cooker, saute/browner, yogurt maker, steamer & warmer. Lazy Man bought it this Christmas on a Slickdeal and presented it as a “family gift.” I did not want another appliance collecting dust on the shelf (I see you ice cream maker), so I decided to give it a whirl… and a new day dawned.

Using Instant Pot

With Instant Pot, you can make a restaurant quality dinner in less than 20 minutes. As Special Agent Oso might say, “Three Special Steps… that’s all you need…”:

  1. Place the meat and oil/ butter in saute mode until brown.
  2. Add the spices and vegetables
  3. Put Instant Pot on pressure cook for 15 minutes

The food never comes out under-cooked or burnt. The meat is so tender you can cut with a butter knife. Thanks to Instant Pot’s automatic shut off, I am able to go give my 2 year old a bath and not have to worry about the food burning.

Lazy Man found this guy on YouTube using an Instant Pot competitor to make buffalo wings. It’s worth watching just for former WWE wrestler Gene Snitsky’s performance:

His pressure cooker looked like an Instant Pot, so I gave it another whirl.

Well, I was just as excited about buffalo wings as Gene was! They weren’t crisp, but they had infused spice and the meat fell off the bone. I could not stop slurping them down!

The dinners are full of flavor and low carb. I ended up drinking the broth of my Thai red curry like it was a 2008 Zinfandel!

Cleanup is awesome as well, no burnt bottom , cleans up with a little water, a drop of Dawn and a Scrub Daddy! Like 2 minutes!

If I had anything negative to say the sauce does come out too liquidy. I add some cornstarch to thicken it up. (Well the dinners were low-carb.)

Let the Culinary Safari Begin

My first meal was from the Instant Pot cook book, but I found that the internet was full of recipes. I soon learned that any meal that simmers can be “Instant-Potted.” In the last two weeks I have made, Thai, Italian, Indian, Chinese and Russian.

I look forward to Hungarian goulash and Mongolian beef. Thanks to my new hobby of being on a culinary safari with Instant Pot.

Everyday, I ask myself, “What am I going to make next?” I’m running our of countries.

Editor’s Final Thoughts

I thought I’d finish up with some final thoughts from my own perspective.

  • While some of this may sound like a paid advertisement for Instant Pot, it is not. Maybe some of the excitement from my wife is a novelty that will lessen over time. I’ve experienced this to some degree with SodaStream and Fitbit – both great products that are simply less exciting after years of use. In the interest of full disclosure though, I will get a small commission from Amazon if you buy an Instant Pot using one of the links above.
  • I haven’t learned how to use Instant Pot yet. I work from home which usually gives me enough time to plan something with the slow-cooker. It’s easier for me to make dinner at 10AM than it is to make it at 4PM or 5PM when the kids are home from day care.
  • For some reason, I thought it was called “Instapot”, but it seems that it is clearly “Instant Pot” and the vast majority of the public gets it right. I’m sticking to my guns, “Instapot” is a much better name.
  • The Special Agent Oso was my editing. With the kids, we have a fair amount of kids programming going on and Agent Oso’s “Three Special Steps” is a key pattern to accomplishing any task in the show.
  • I do the “family gift” thing a lot. Am I alone in this? It’s a way to recognize that something isn’t exactly fun or exciting for either of us, but it may improve our lives. I saw a deeply discounted Black Friday deal on something that had nearly 6000 glowing reviews from fans. I made a judgment call and the gamble paid off.
  • I’ve read that you can crisp the wings by broiling them a few minutes afterward. They are great without doing that, so I’m not sure it is worth the extra work, so I’ll leave it as a reader exercise.
  • I’ve been blogging for ten years and even my wife wrote “Lazyman” (one word, lowercase “m”) before I edited this. Are people getting this from the logo?
  • It looks like I’m making ice cream in February. Little does my wife know that I’ve been looking up avocado ice cream recipes since it clearly gives Tom Brady super powers. Aldi has avocados on sale this week. Game on.

How to Save $150 on Cable

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My husband and I are pop-culture nerds. We love chatting about the latest music, video games, and television shows. In the past, we planted ourselves happily in front of the TV for hours before and after work. But then, the bills started adding up.

Cut Cable Bill
Image from the WSJ

In 2013, we were paying an astounding $190 for cable, which did not include premium channels like HBO or Showtime. Even more frustrating was the horrible customer treatment and unreliable service, not to mention the dozens of channels we didn’t even watch but were paying for.

When we started saving up for our wedding, we looked for ways to cut costs. The cable bill was one of our biggest expenses, but much of what we watched was online anyway – even currently airing shows, which we often watched on Hulu or network sites. We realized that we could save $150 a month on our cable bill every month by doing something almost unthinkable for pop-culture nerds like us: we cut our cable service.

How We Still Tune In Without Cable

We’ve learned to get creative in order not to miss our favorite shows or programs. Here’s a quick rundown of what has worked for us (and associated costs):

Get an Antenna

Hi-def antennas are ubiquitous for anyone without cable. Costing anywhere from $40-120, these little devices, similar to the “bunny ears” our parents used to use, allow us to watch live local network broadcasts. This way, we don’t miss the shows we actually watch live, like The Amazing Race and The Good Wife. Depending on where you live, you may have to spend some time configuring the location of your television or the antenna’s receiver to get the best reception – but it’s totally worth it.

Stream for Free

Streaming services are already inexpensive – currently around $8-15 a month. But it’s even better if you can get it for free. For example, we nabbed a promotion from a local bank to get Netflix free for a year – and we have a coupon code from our internet provider for another free year, which we can redeem next year. If you can’t get one of these great deals, try asking for gift cards or subscriptions for birthdays or holidays. It’s a great way to reduce bills without cutting down on your TV watching.

[Editor: If you are going to stream television, the very best money you can spend is getting a PlayOn Plus account. It turns streaming television to a computer into a full DVR. See my review: PlayOn Plus Will Change How You Watch Television]

Split Costs

My dad loves cable; he’d never cut the cord. However, he’s more than happy to share his login with us, so long as we contribute to his bill. By splitting costs, we’re able to watch our favorite cable series like Game of Thrones and South Park, and he’s able to cut down on his overall cable costs. We can even stream live sports and children’s TV for our daughter!

[Editor: Show your father how he can eliminate his cable box (DVR) monthly fees! and he might let you have that login for free each month.]

Connect to Your TV

Did you know your TV was made for streaming? It’s true! HDTVs have connections for HDMI devices like Roku and Chromecast, and most laptops even have HDMI ports to connect to your television. These devices are all inexpensive and allow us to watch everything we want in stunning HD. All you need is an internet connection and a device, and you’re set to go!

So far, cutting cable has helped us save nearly $4,000 to pay off debt, travel, and pay for our wedding without going into credit card debt. While I still sometimes get jealous of my friends who have hundreds of channels at their fingertips, I honestly believe cutting the cord has greatly improved the quality of our lives. By reducing our cable bill, we have learned how to prioritize the things that matter in life.