Lazy Man and Money

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.

Digging into LED Light Bulb Savings

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Here in New England, it’s become clear that winter is coming (Does Game of Thrones have a trademark on that? I don’t want to get sued?). With that in mind, it seems natural to look towards saving some money on energy to offset some of the costs of heat. I’ve been doing the typical looking for drafts, when I noticed that one of the lights in my kitchen was out. No big deal, just run to the nearby Home Depot and get a replacement…

Somewhere between the time that I replaced most of our home’s lightbulbs with CFLs (~2006 or so?) and today, shopping for a light bulb has gotten a lot more confusing. Now there are the old school incandescents, CFLs with evil mercury inside, and LEDs which cost tons and tons of money. Fortunately, there’s a lot of information on the boxes to help guide the decision-making process.

I was looking for a 65-watt BR30 flood light, which I was surprised to find is quite common. The incandescents were around $4 for 2 bulbs (I think), but I could buy a pack of 9 for around $10. I grabbed that box and figured that I’d have replacements for years. On the way. The lighting facts on the box here said it would cost $7.83 per bulb per year for their 600 lumen output (it’s important to focus on lumens as watts don’t help you as you move through the technologies).

On the way to the check out, I walked by a big display for Cree brand LED bulbs. Each bulb was $20… what a rip off, right? The information box said that it would only cost $1.14 per bulb per year. It might take three years, but I’d start saving money… every year. The advertising for LED light bulbs is quick to point out that they can last for 20 years, so one bulb over those 20 years should end up saving you $150 (or more) in energy and replacement costs.

Spending $20 to save $150? That’s the kind of forward-thinking that I wanted the Lazy Man brand to stand for. Sure, it will take a number of years for these savings, but you don’t have to work for it.

Still, I wanted to see if I could do better. If Cree made these light bulbs, perhaps other companies did as well. Back to the lighting section. I found that several companies did indeed make BR30 LED bulbs… and this Philips one was subsidized by my local energy company for $12. That particular bulb wasn’t 9.5w and 650 lumens like the Cree, but it was 13w and 730 lumens. That would raise the price per year to $1.57. The $0.43 cents saved per year for 20 years comes out to around $8… which was the price difference between the two bulbs. It’s essentially a wash, close enough that it isn’t my time to pinch the last penny. I figure might as well get the savings up front with the cheaper bulb.

I only bought that one LED light bulb for now. I wanted to try it out, write an article, and see if other money-saving readers are doing the same. In trying the new Philips bulb, I found that I liked it better than the other bulbs. It was definitely brighter (maybe the previous owners had the 600 lumen Sylvanias that I was going to buy). So now, I’m thinking about replacing all 6 of the bulbs. With each bulb saving around $6.25 in electricity per year (more if the price of electricity goes up) that will be around $30 in pocket each year. Clearly, I’m not going to be retiring in the Hamptons any time soon with those savings, but it’s enough to cover the government taxes on my Ooma Telo Free Landline. And quite frankly writing this article is more difficult and time-consuming than changing the light bulbs.

I was at Home Depot once again yesterday and they’ve lowered the price on the Cree’s to be competitive with the Philips’. They are still a dollar more, but they’ll save that 43 cents a year. They aren’t as bright (730 vs. 650 lumens), but still brighter than I what I currently have (650 vs. 600 lumens), and my research online says that people can’t really tell the difference. Perhaps more importantly, I like supporting the smaller company. Fortunately, I’ve got one random BR30 in another room for the Philips one, so the Cree’s will all match. I haven’t figured out what to do with the old incadescents. Yard sale or just junk them? Any thoughts?

I’d change more light bulbs around my house to LED, but most of them are very energy efficient CFLs as it is. This is one of those one-time money optimizations.

Finally, if you want to prematurely reinvest those savings, there’s some cool technology from Philips that has LEDs that change colors and can be controlled by your smartphone. They pitch some cool effects like waking up naturally as a light dims to full brightness to mimic the sun. Also, I can see some pretty good accent lighting uses with these. The problem is that they are expensive. Give it a look: Philips Hue Starter Pack

Spending Money to Save: Focus on the Total Cost of Ownership

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My friend Kosmo over at The Soap Boxers wrote an article that reminded me to write of something that I’ve been meaning to write about for some time. Many consumers focus too much on the cost of something now, and rarely take the long term financial considerations into account. The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), is a business term for analyzing all the ramifications of purchase decision. Microsoft has used this for years to keep customers from defecting to Linux, a free operating system.

[Note to Regular Readers: I know you may already know this. However there are still millions of consumers who don’t. If you know someone who this could help, please spread the word.]

The Total Cost of Ownership of a LightBulb

Let’s start with Kosmo’s article: Is a $50 Light Bulb Affordable? The article shows the math of why spending $50 for an LED lightbulb will end up saving you around $75 over the life of the bulb. It doesn’t sound like much, but if you are as Lazy as I am, you like not having to buy and store a bunch of incandescent bulbs and changing them, while saving money.

This is a no-brainer to me. The only question is whether you prefer to save even more money by going with Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs (CFLs), which have mercury and require special handling.

I suppose there’s the small percentage of people out there who can tell the difference between the types of light. I would imagine that most of those people would adapt to it. Chances are if CFLs came first, incandescent bulbs would seem odd.

The Total Cost of Ownership of a Mobile Phone Service

Like the lightbulb, people focus too much on the cost of the phone itself. They ignore the more expensive component, the cost of the service. When the iPhone came out, I thought it was pretty cool, but I already had a smart phone that did email better (physical keyboard) had music, the web, and a bunch of other stuff. It was the Palm Treo 600 (or 650). The data plan cost me $30 a month. The iPhone evolved (even learning how to SMS photos), but the plan jumped up to around $80 for most people. That’s a large chunk of change.

For awhile I jumped on board the expensive cellphone plan with Sprint. For around $70 a month, I could use a Palm Pre. It was good for awhile, but finally, I saw the light and went to Virgin Mobile’s $25 unlimited data plan (it’ll cost you $35 now). I’ve got an Android phone in the Motorola Triumph. While I think it is a large step back from the Palm Pre, the mass market has spoken and they like Android slab phones. So instead of spending $840 a month on service ($70 times 12), I’m spending $300. Each year I save around $540.

The difference in the price of the phone is miniscule compared to the $540 I’ll save every year.

The Total Cost of Ownership of Landline Phone Service

Let’s take the mobile of the above example. I used to pay around $40 a month for plain old telephone service (POTS in industry jargon). When Vonage came out, I switched to their $15 plan saving me $25 a month. It was a simple subscription change, I didn’t have to buy anything upfront.

However, a year ago, I switched to Ooma Telo free home phone service, and it has been awesome. I paid around $150 upfront (I got a deal) and now only pay about $3 in taxes and regulatory fees a month for home service. Since I had to pay those with Vonage, I have saved the full $15 a month that I paid with Vonage. In ten months, I broke even. The last two months have been savings. Each year I stick with Ooma, I’ll save $180.

The Total Cost of Ownership of Fresh Water

Okay ownership of water is a weird one. I know a number of people who don’t own a Brita water pitcher. I see these same people buying bottled water. I don’t understand it at all. A one-time investment for a Brita pitcher is under $20 and the filters last months working to give you many, many gallons of water.

I get that there’s a convenience factor to bottled water. However, with just a little planning ahead, you can save your $1 very easily, and get a better product. What? A better product? Yep. Bottled water isn’t necessarily filtered or as pure as Brita. In fact, it is about the same as tap water. In addition, with the Brita solution you can avoid that whole BPA nastiness.

The Total Cost of Ownership of Website Hosting

I know most of you probably won’t care about this one, but it home for me recently. I had be running this website using Amazon Web Services, a service that is very economical if you happen to have some Linux technical skills. I didn’t choose Amazon Web Services just to save a couple of dollars, I did it because I wanted to brush up on some technical skills that had gotten a little rusty. It all went smoothly until my website was attacked. Then it started to take too much of my time to defend the attackers.

The solution was to move the site to WP Engine, a hosting provider that fights the attackers for you. This site is much faster now than it was before the attack. I pay $100 a month, where Amazon was costing me around $60, but it is worth it, because I don’t have to deal with any attacks. If something goes wrong, they are on it right away. In the past, when something went wrong, I would put on my Linux system administrator and spend time fixing it. Now I can use that time to write articles like this one. Focusing on my business gives me a greater return than the cost of the more expensive hosting.

Unlike the other examples, this web hosting one is more about me spending money to save time and using that time to make more money. Still, I felt compelled to include it as it is just the most recent reminder of spending more to save.

These changes don’t seem like much, but they add up to save you probably a $1000 a year or more. Do you have more tips on how to spend a little money to save more in the future?