Lazy Man and Money

Leasing Solar Panels Revisited

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Today over at Planting Money Seeds, there’s a very good article about leasing solar power panels to save money on your electric bill.

This is a very smart thing to do in quite a few states with high electricity prices… BUT… we’ll let’s leave the big “BUT” for later.

The idea is this. You let another company put their solar panels on your roof and you pay less money for electricity. In a lot of ways, it’s as if someone just offered to cut your electric bill in half. At least this is what happened in writer Rachel Gates’ case.

It’s a win-win, because you don’t have to put down money upfront… and solar panels can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Even with subsidies my panels cost around $25,000. It’s a win for the company leasing the panels, because they charge enough on the electricity they generate to make very good money on them.

When I first explored adding solar power to my house, I looked into leasing solar panels. This was based on an article by Evan from My Journey to Millions who looked into leasing solar panels as well. He reviewed the same company, Vivint, and decided against going for it. His reasoning was that saving $40 a month wasn’t worth some of the thorny issues that come up if you decide to try to sell your home.

I think it’s great to get both sides of the story, from someone who went for it and someone who didn’t. In Evan’s case, it was going to cost him 15 cents per kilowatt hour. In Rachel’s case it was going to cost 11.5 cents per kilowatt hour. That’s a big difference, and perhaps that’s why it makes sense for Rachel and not Evan. I’m not sure how they figure out the pricing. It could vary by state or even based on the estimate of how much power they think your home will generate.

When I did my research into buying panels, the cost would be about 7 cents per kilowatt hour accoding to this awesome solar calculator. That’s half of the average of Rachel and Evan’s prices. Perhaps more importantly, that 7 cents stays that way for 20 years… while Vivint can raise the price 2.9% a year. Near the end of Rachel’s contract, she could be spending nearly 20 cents/kWh. And while that will still likely be a bargain to what the power company is charging, it is certainly no match for paying 7 cents/kWh.

The “gravy” in owning panels comes in after 20 years. I don’t know what happens with the Vivint panels after that time. I presume the agreement is over and they haul off the panels unless you want to extend it somehow. Even then, I bet they’d want you to enter into another agreement with the latest technology, which will surely be much, much then (solar power is advancing exponentially fast). My panels could provide power for 30 years. They may be less efficient giving me a price equivalent of 10 cents kWh, but that’s still very, very good.

Perfect is the enemy of good. If leasing solar panels saves you good money, then go for it. However, I strongly urge you to look for the money to buy them outright, even if you have to finance them. It looks like the reason why Vivint is happy to lease panels is that they can do it at a price that makes them good money. If you have the means, why not keep the money for yourself?

LED Light Bulbs Are Now a STEAL!

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I’ve been on solar power for a whole 10 days now and it is amazing how it makes you think about energy use. The inverters I have are from Enphase and they come with a website that allows you track how much power you are producing at any given time. It produces a bar chart with production ever 15 minutes.

In the last 15 minutes (8:30AM local time) as I write this, the panels produced 497 watt-hours, enough power for 166 AA batteries.

In doing my regular reading of news stories and deals, I came across by far the cheapest LED light bulbs I’ve ever seen. Before I get to the deal, I feel like it’s worth taking a stroll down Light Bulb Memory lane…

I feel like I’ve been writing about light bulbs forever now. Back in 2007, I wrote about how CFLs save the environment by using less power. This was back before the concerns about mercury in them was widespread. No one even called me out in the comments… and quite a few people said that they switched their whole house to them.

In any case, they saved people a lot of money. As long as they disposed of them properly, they were good.

A little more than 3 years ago, the idea of a $50 affordable LED light bulb was bandied about on The Soap Boxers (the author, Kosmo, contributes here from time to time). He made a great case that the total cost of ownership of the light bulb, when accounting for electricity favors LEDs over incandescent light bulbs. And while those compact fluorescent light bulbs still had low cost and high efficiency some people don’t like how they require “warming-up” and the mercury issue with them.

It’s interesting to note that a good case was made for a $50 light bulb three years ago, because you can buy two of them for $5 at Home Depot. At $2.50 a bulb that’s 1/20th the cost back then. Instead of blowing $600 on a dozen to put throughout the house, you can spend $30.

There are a few minor catches, but I don’t think they should be too concerning:

  1. They are back-ordered until June. This tells me that people are snapping up this deal.
  2. They are rated to last “only” 10 years while other LEDs are rated to last 20+ years.
  3. They aren’t rated as dimmable, so you’ll have to get a slightly more expensive LED for those fixtures.

There’s a longer review of these at CNET’s website, but they stack up well to competitors in performance.

Now some people may balk at the shorter lifespan of these light bulbs. I actually think it is an advantage. The shorter lifespan is the result of the cheaper materials and cheaper cost to you. We get LED technology at a price that’s much closer to CFLs than they have ever been.

If they only last for 10 years, I won’t feel bad about throwing them away for the next technology. When I think about how far we’ve come from 2007, it’s fascinating to think about 2025. Maybe we will have OLED lighting then.

Am I really going to want to hang onto LEDs from 2015 in 2035? Light is light, so I probably won’t mind too much, but my guess is technology is going to do what it always done… march forward.

Personally, I’ve transitioned almost entirely to LEDs and I still have some CFLs that I’d like to use up (not sure how), so I’m probably not going to jump on this deal. However, if you haven’t jumped on LEDs, this is probably the best time to do it.

My Epic Treadmill Desk Purchase

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The word “epic” is often way overused, but I think it is fair here. I turned a process that should normally take between 60 and 90 seconds into something that stretched hours. Today, I’d like to take you on a journey to show you how I save money on big purchases… and give you a little peek inside my crazy mind.

On Friday, I was in a funk. I’m going to blame it on the snow adding to the record breaking amounts we’ve had in New England. It was only an inch and if it wasn’t the billionth inch of snow this year, would have been picturesque. In any case, I wasn’t feeling myself and the snow is the only thing I can think of accounting for it.

My wife came to me with a question, “If I were to buy you a bowling ball for your birthday, would you be mad?”

In seconds my funk was gone.

I love when my wife tries to speak my language… it is even better when she does it successfully. She knows that I don’t bowl. She was referencing an episode from the Simpsons where Homer buys Marge a bowling ball with his name engraved on it. It was her way of saying, “I am thinking of buying you something, but I want to use it too.”

I knew she was looking at my Amazon wishlist. We danced this dance before.

I responded, “The bowling ball is expensive, too much for a birthday present. I was thinking that it could be a purchase for the family. The “gift” is simply to have the discussion on if we should get a bowling ball and if we have a suitable alley to bowl in.”

And so we went and measured our office using the terms of “bowling ball” and “bowling alley”, not mentioning the term “treadmill desk” for a good 15 minutes. At some point, I had to admit that while I found a very well-reviewed treadmill desk, I hadn’t finished my research. Often I add items to my Amazon wishlist that represent ideas. This was a case where I was 80% sure of what I wanted, but I had to look and make sure of the last 20%.

Takeaway #1: The more expensive a product is, the more I research it to death. A $1500 purchase like this gets a lot of my attention.

At the time, I didn’t look into the feature sets of treadmill desks. I simply looked at reviews to see if people were happy. I knew I wanted something that folded up. I’m a huge believer in using vertical space as much as possible. That’s about all I had to go on.

Before I go too much further, I should mention that there aren’t many treadmill desks out there. At least not as many as I would have thought. There are plenty of treadmills. There are some standing desks. There are many solutions that people cobble together with those two. There aren’t a lot of pure treadmill desks. In fact every editorial review I read from CNET to the ReadWrite to the Wall Street Journal all used the same LifeSpan treadmill desk that I initially added to my wishlist.

That LifeSpan desk seems to deserve its great reviews and people seem to love how well it works as a treadmill desk.

(Can you feel the, “BUT” coming?)

But one thing raised a red flag for us. My wife is often a listening participant in a training or conference call. During those times, she isn’t limited to a walking speed. She can run. If there’s a “dirty secret” of treadmill desks it’s that they often top out at 4 miles per hour. They are great for walking while working, but if you want to put your work away and get a workout in, it isn’t going to work for even causal joggers. Also, that LifeSpan treadmill had no ability to adjust the incline.

The was something else that was important for consideration. My wife, being in the military, has to pass a fitness test every year. Half of the test is running. Our oldest child hasn’t reached his third birthday and our youngest is 15 months old… there was a lot of downtime from strenuous exercise. The inclement weather that I mentioned previously doesn’t help. As great as a walking-speed treadmill desk would be, we have a real need for a treadmill that can be used… as a treadmill.

I would want the same. Who has space for a specialty treadmill and multiple treadmills in their home?

I only found one product that:

  • Folded up
  • Could be used for running
  • Actually had a desk

It was this NordicTrack Treadmill Desk model #24951. The treadmill goes up to 10 mph, which is faster than I can run for any length of time. It also has a maximum incline of 10%. I think the incline will be a key feature. If I can’t type while walking too fast, I might as well walk uphill.

Here’s the video that sold my wife on this NordicTrack Treadmill Desk:

Often the most difficult part of buying an expensive product is making sure you made the right choice. For example, luxury SUVs is a pretty crowded field. The lack of competition made our choice much, much easier.

The next step was finding the best price. Again, the choice was fairly simple. I found two online retailers selling it, NordicTrack and Sears.

NordicTrack was discounting it from the usual $2500 to $1799. At that price, I’d buy it over the LifeSpan. When you are spending around $1500 anyway, it’s worth an extra $300 to get the full running speed and incline. However, Sears had it for $1499. There was no price compromise at all.

I froze like a deer in headlights.

I had only heard of the product a few minutes ago. I couldn’t possibly pull the trigger this quickly.

So I waited.

Later that night, I checked back in and it was $1489. I wasn’t going to jump on the $10 price drop. I hadn’t let the prospect of spending $1500 sink in.

I woke up the next day and the price had dropped to $1424. I think because it was the weekend some discount or special offer kicked in. My wife was running a few errands and popped into our local Sears store to see if they had it. They didn’t. However, the saleswoman mentioned that there was a 15% off as part of a “Friends and Family” deal on Sunday and we should call the stores in bigger cities about their inventory.

On Sunday morning, I refreshed again and found that the price had dropped to $1350.

I couldn’t helping thinking, “Sears, you sultry minx. Stop falling in love with me. You’re just gonna embarrass yourself.”

The Friends and Family deal was 10% off for fitness products. I read a little more about that discount and it was “up to 15%.” I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

I was willing to pay $1799 originally based on the functionality and value. I think the discount that brought it to $1424 was discontinued and the F&F rate more than made up for it. It would have been great if I could stack them both, but they make the rules. I just follow them as best I can.

It was now a matter of how much money could I save. It’s a competition. Game On!

I am going to empty the quiver to get the most money off I can.

The Temptations of Sears

Sears was pulling out all the stops with offers of discounts to get me to buy.

10% off vs. 20% in Shop Your Way points

The Friends and Family 10% discount is doubled if you take it as “Shop Your Way” points. Instead of getting $150 in a discount, I could get $300 to spend at Sears, Kmart, and maybe some other stores that had filed for bankruptcy in the past. My wife quickly reminded me of this possibility when I mentioned the points. We got many gift cards for our wedding and we went years before spending all of them.

Takeaway #2: A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. This is figuratively, but literally in value, the game that Sears is playing. In hindsight, I like to think that with my frugal shopping we could have gotten the value of 2.3 birds. In my wife’s defense, we are trying not to spend money unless there is a clear reason to do it. Given the caveats, we took the cash discount and run.

Let’s Welcome CardCash Into the Arena

As I explained in Home Depot Gift Cards Make My Money Go Further, I like to buy gift cards on a discount to save money. I dialed up CardCash on my browser as I’ve bought from there in the past. I held my breath as I bought 13 gift cards totaling $822.77. They were an 8% discount so the full value of them was $894.31.

Why not buy more? I had soaked up most of the inventory of printable eCards and they were down to cards less than $30. I later found out that Sears limits you to 15 gift cards for online purchases, so that worked out well.

This trick saved me around ~$72.

Sears’ credit card tempts me to get another 5% off

Sears has a standing offer that they will give you 5% off if you pay with a credit card. Normally, I don’t sign up for store cards, but I’ve got a pricing battle to win. And 5% of $1400 is $70, nothing to scoff at.

It wasn’t quite clear if the discount was on the purchase price or if it was on the amount billed to the credit card. Typically they are the same thing, but when you use nearly $900 in gift cards, they are very different. I hoped it was on the purchase price.

I decided to apply for the credit card. Then everything went downhill.

My application was declined. I was given a case number, a code, and a phone number to call. Citibank probably doesn’t have a lot of staff working on Sunday afternoon and after entering a pile of information, a recording told me call back later. Citibank, that was very rude. If you don’t have the staff, at least tell me that quickly and not ask me about my first grade teacher (I’m exaggerating a bit.)

Undeterred, I used the chat window that Sears had been annoying me with. I explained my issue with the credit card. The person was going to help me, but also gave me a new phone number to call. Now I’m working with her, the website’s standard ordering, and Sears’ credit card team at the same time. Fun!

God bless that support person. She was a saint. Whatever Sears is paying her, it isn’t enough. She put the order through for me manually. However, she had to do it twice, because her 5% code (in leau of the credit card) had to be entered first. It wasn’t an easy order, because there were 13 gift cards with 13 numbers and 13 pins.

Meanwhile, back on the phone, the Sears credit card person told me that there was a typo in my Social Security number. That was the reason for my denial. My bad. She happily approved it manually with the fixed information.

And she said I’d receive my card in about a week. I explained that I was applying for the sole purpose of getting the 5% on a very expensive item on the website. Unfortunately, when cards are approved manually, giving the numbers out is a security risk. More unfortunately, she didn’t explain this before approving my credit application.

So I asked for an annulment. That wasn’t possible, but she could send me to customer service to close the account. She did and I canceled it. I had $3000 of Sears credit for probably a total of 5 minutes. That’s going to do wonders for my credit report (he typed sarcastically).

While the account was cancelled, it might have been long enough to trigger a card being shipped to my house. In a week, the mail may give me a reminder on how I wasted a half hour of my time.

By this time, Chat Window Saint had finished typing up the order (the second time). I had her quote me the price to see if I got the 5% discount that I would have gotten with the credit card. It didn’t. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that an happily gave her my credit card to pay the remaining $477.95 that wasn’t covered by the credit cards.

The grand total, with sales tax was $1,300.92. (It included free delivery, which was a nice perk.)

We’ll get 2% back on the Fidelity Retirement Rewards credit card that I used. We also got 1% on ShopYourWay points. That’s $26 in cash back (I used it to by the gift cards at CardCash too) and another $13 to spend at Sears. That’s a value of $39.

A few hours later, I went on the website again to get some detail for this post and the treadmill had jumped to $1748.63. Today as I am about to post the article, it has jumped to $1942.92 and it labeled as a “Hot Buy.”

At the end of the day, I saved betwen $500 and $700 (counting the cash back value) by pulling the trigger when I did and how I did. The credit card fiasco ended up not saving me anything and just costing me time, but it is hard not to be pleased with the result.

When I get it and use it, I’ll be sure to write up a review for you.

Getting a Television on Black Friday? Read This First.

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To get a television or not? That is the question.

Just two months ago, I wrote about the next television revolution which combines two upcoming technologies OLED and 4K. OLED is a huge improvement for everyone with typical 1080P televisions (yes even those with plasmas). We’ll get to it in a bit, but 4K isn’t likely to make as big of a difference.

So if you are looking to buy a television this season, you’ll want to keep the following in mind: You probably shouldn’t, unless you should, and it doesn’t matter, unless it does and it doesn’t matter, except for when it does.

Confused? You should be. This is the most confusing time to buy a television I’ve seen in decades.

Is 4K (Ultra HD) Worth It?

I’ve been seeing some 4K televisions in the Black Friday ads this year. Since everyone remembers the huge improvement in going from SD to HD, the expection is that it will happen again with the switch to 4K televisions.

Unfortunately, 4K is mostly marketing. Most people (those with 20/20 vision) can’t tell the difference at a certain distance. It depends on your eye sight, where you sit and the size of the television. The bigger the television, the better your vision, and the closer you sit, the more it matters. There’s no point in getting a 30″ 4K television and sitting 15 feet away from it. However, if you are 7 feet away, you can probably tell the difference on a 70″ 4K television.

Fortunately there’s a great 4K television calculator here.

You want to start by figuring out your viewing distance. Most likely that’s going to stay constant unless you are planning to move or do room redesign. Let’s assume you aren’t going to do that. Most people sit around 9 feet away from their television… or at least that’s the popular Lecher distance median number.

The next question is how big of a television should you buy. CNET answers this question directly. THX recommends a 90″ television for that 9 foot distance. The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) recommends a 68″ television for 9 feet. CNET’s recommendation was for a 72″ television. Since you can’t buy 68″ or 72″ televisions, let’s just say that most people would be best suited with a 70″ television.

I’m going to send to my wife the above paragraph.

Now that we know where most people sit and we have an idea of what size television they should (optimally) buy, we can plug these numbers into the handy aforementioned calculator to decide if 4K is worth it. Plugging in a 70″ television with a 9′ foot viewing distance and 20/20 vision, there is only a 29% improvement for 4K.

As if there weren’t enough factors to consider, there is this. There isn’t a lot of 4K content out there. In fact, there is almost none. So any kind of benefit you might see, may be masked by the source you are watching.

So in the typical case, even if you are spending a lot of money for a large 4K television, you aren’t getting much benefit. If you drop the television size down to 55″ (the most common 4K television size marketed on Black Friday) there is zero benefit.

However, if you have a nice little man (or woman) cave where your viewing distance is close and/or you have better vision than the norm, a 55″ 4K television can make sense.

What About OLED?

As I wrote in the beginning of the article, OLED is where the best picture is. The problem is that only one company, LG, has been able to figure out how to make them efficiently enough to bring them to the audience. That’s why a search for OLED televisions on Amazon gives you only choices by LG.

It’s fun to read the reviews on the LG 55″ Curved OLED TV… everyone is screaming about how incredible it is. You simply don’t get that with all the 4K televisions. Of course, those 4K televisions don’t cost $3,500 either.

If you are looking for something in the 55″ range and want the best picture, you are better off skipping the 4K exercise above and going with this television. Of course it’s going to cost you twice as much, but another way to look at it is that it would have cost you $15,000 last year.

And if you want the best of both worlds, you can get a LG Electronics 65-Inch 4k Curved OLED TV for only $9,999. I’d say that’s my dream television, but there’s a 77 inch version coming that’s only $24,999. If you are wondering that’s a better fit for my room size and seating distance (obviously not so much for my wallet).

What Do You Do?

It’s impossible to give blanket advice on televisions. I can’t say what’s right for everyone.

However, the impossible hasn’t stopped me before, so here’s my two cents (which you get for free!).

The price of 4K televisions that are going to be big upgrades for most people is still too high – especially given the lack of content. OLED is really exciting, but again, the price is very high. I’m not sure Lazy Man and Money readers are the type to spend that kind of money. If you are, hopefully it’s because you’ve been reading my site for years and made ridiculous amounts of money (if so, please share it with me).

If you have an older and/or smaller television and you can get a good deal on an upgrade that will keep you happy for the next 4-5 years (or longer) it might be worth taking that plunge. (As a preview for my next post, I am thinking of doing such a crazy thing!)

Otherwise, my best advice is to sit on the sidelines and wait for technology to do what technology does… get cheaper.

Deal: Top All-time Blu-Ray Movies for $3.99

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Every now and again I see a deal that I just can’t pass up. I usually don’t write about them, because I don’t think they will interest most people. Today is different. If you like movies, which I feel is almost everyone, you’ll probably enjoy this.

Amazon has a bunch of Blu-Ray movies available for $3.99. I could never see paying $20 for the Blu-Ray version of a movie that I can for $3-4 on DVD, but for $4, I’m in. They aren’t terrible movies either. Here’s the three that I picked up:

I’d like to say that those three are in my top ten, but that list gets crowded when you start adding Serenity, Shawshank, and a bunch of others. Fight Club probably still is in my top 10, with Usual Suspects in the top 15 (maybe top ten) and Darko probably in my top 25. Overall, the three movies tell you a little bit about my taste in movies, don’t they?

There are plenty of other great movies. Some of the ones that were $3.99 have already gone back up to their $12+ prices. So if you like it pull the trigger quickly.

Some examples of those expired deals are the X-Men and Bourne series, and Something About Mary. Actually, there are still some of the X-Men movies available at the $3.99 price as I write this, but not all of them. However, you can still nab The Terminator and Spaceballs (25th Anniversary Edition).

Browse all Blu-Ray Movies for $3.99. Some may be slow to ship, so they might not be ripe for gift giving.