CFL analysis

This post is a little outdated, as CFLs have been replaced by LEDs, but the ideas apply, I believe.

Ok, read something that got me to thinking...it was about the cost savings of installing CFLs.
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(From Five Cent Nickel's pf blog)
"Now let’s work through the math so we can come up with some hard numbers.

Incandescent assumptions:
100 watt incandescent bulb
8 hours/day
365 days/year

100 watts corresponds to 0.1 kilowatts. At 10 hours/day that works out to:

0.1 kW * 8 hours/day * 365 days = 292 kWh

I just checked our latest power bill, and we are currently paying $0.108/kWh for electricity, so that one incandescent bulb would consume $31.54 worth of electricity per year.

Compact fluorescent assumptions:
26 watt compact fluorescent bulb
8 hours/day
365 days/year

Doing the same math as above, we have:

0.026 kW * 8 hours/day * 365 days = 75.9 kWh

At the rate for electricity, that works out to $8.20 per year — a savings of $23.34 per year just for switching out one light bulb. And that’s considering just the cost of electricity.

Given that most CFLs are rated to last an estimated 10x longer than incandescent lights, you’ll come out even further ahead if you can get them for less than 10x the price of an incandescent bulb. Since CFL pricing has come down dramatically in recent years, you’ll actually come out way ahead."
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I actually installed about ten CFLs in my house in various locations as the incandescents burned out, and I really haven't noticed any cost savings on my electricity bill.

So, I don't dispute that, for a given quantity of light over a given period of time, CFLs will use less energy, which is probably a good thing.

However, I don't think the theoretical cost savings will ever really be realized for most households.

In the first place, who leaves the lights on in their house 8 hours a day? In a commercial building, I can see that there would be significant energy savings, but at home? Most of us get up in the morning, turn on a few lights for whatever time it takes us to get ready, then turn them all off, and leave for work. When I come home from work, it's still lights out, and I don't turn on any lights until around 9 pm (in the summer time), at which point I've got another hour or so before I go to sleep, anyway. We turn off all lights except one on the nightstand, so on a good day, I've only got maybe 16 to 32 light-hours (kinda like man-hours) for the entire house. I suppose one could actually keep a journal of how many lights are on in the house, for how long each day, and actually make predictions based on that of more realistic cost savings from installing CFLs.

Second, who uses 100 watt bulbs in the house? Most light fixtures rated for home use say 60w maximum. Using 5C's methodology:
60 W incandescent
.06kW*8 hours/day*365 days = 175 kWh
14 W CFL
.014*8 hours/day*365 days = 41 kWh

that's a savings of 134 kWh at $.108/kWh = $14.42 per year per bulb replaced (THAT OPERATES 8 HOURS PER DAY).

From a financial standpoint, it only makes sense to replace "high use" bulbs with CFLs, if you're interested in ROI.

Third, as I mentioned before, I've seen little to no reduction in my electricity bills from the CFLs. Did I somehow purchase bogus CFLs? Or, is it just that the bulk of my electricity use is from other things. I suspect the latter. I have a refrigerator that runs 24 hours a day, an electric dryer that we run three or four 45 minute loads in each week, an electric dishwasher that runs 2 or three loads a week, an electric oven used to cook our food at least a few times each week, an electric fan in my heater/air conditioner that runs almost constantly, except in the spring and fall, an electric motor in the heat pump for the AC, computers, printers, routers, modems, coffee machine, can opener, toaster, microwave...you get the picture? CFL usage just isn't gonna cut it, in my opinion.

If you want to save the planet, you better learn to live without any of the modern conveniences, the light bill ain't the half of it!

Impulse Buying

From the Get Rich Slowly blog, I found the following list of questions to use on yourself to avoid impulse buying.

1. When will I use this?
2. Do I have another one like this already?
3. If I buy this, where will I put it?
4. If I buy this, can I pay cash?
5. Can I buy a good-quality, used version for less?
6. Do I know somebody who already owns one I can borrow?
7. Can I wait to buy this?
8. Why do I want to buy this?
9. Are there better options available?
10. What would my wife say if I bought this?

Great list, and I use some of these questions, myself.

1. This tends to ward off the "ooh pretty!" factor. I've always wanted a pair of snakeskin cowboy boots, just because they look so cool. I've never spent the money on them, though, because the number of times I'd wear them in my life is below trivial. They used to be mandatory wear for corporate VPs at a company I formerly worked for and owning them back then might have gotten me recognition, promotion, or respect, but I find cowboy boots extremely uncomfortable with my wide, ducklike feet, and I don't wear dress up clothes more than once or twice a decade.

2. This is a real kicker for me. It's why I have a monster card catalog of my books. I should have one for all my tools and gadgets, too, but it's way too much work to create. Failing to bring my card catalog along to bookstores these days keeps me from buying anything I'm not absolutely certain I don't already own, but it didn't used to be that way - I'd just take a chance.

3. I'll put in the garage, most likely. That's where most of my junk ends up.

4. Who carries cash any more?

5. Well, duh.

6. This one is great. I've managed to talk myself out of buying a pneumatic nail gun several times, as my neighbor, Dan, has a couple I can borrow any time. Same thing with a furniture dolly and my neighbor, Paul. I have another neighbor across the street who is a general contractor, so he's got all the tools, too. Sometimes, though, there's an immediate need for something and you can't wait for the person who owns one to get home. I'm always loaning out tools to people I know, too, so it all comes around.

7. This is one use for creative procrastination. At times, though, it leaves me scrambling around at the last minute before a trip or some other deadline, when I determine that I really do need it...NOW!

8. Aside from books, most of the things I buy have some rational basis in need.

9. You're talking about a guy who suffers from analysis paralysis here, so if there's a better option, you can bet I've researched it endlessly.

10. Usually, "just buy the darned thing!"

Money Matters

As I prepare to teach a personal finance class at church in the fall, I'm forced to think a bit about my personal approach to finances. One of the key pieces in anyone's financial puzzle is a thing called a budget. At its most basic level, it provides a framework or a plan for personal expenses, spending and saving. In a crisis situation, such as long term unemployment or a campaign to pay off debt, it can be a fairly restrictive structure.

There's an old method of budgeting called the envelope method, where money from each paycheck is actually placed in separate envelopes, labeled with spending categories, such as rent, groceries, clothing, utilities, etc. As money is spent on each of these things, it is pulled out of the envelope and used only for that purpose. If the envelope for a category becomes empty, in theory, one can't spend any more money on that category. In practice, one can raid another envelope - if it's a variable or discretionary category - for a bit more money to get through the pay period. There are other ways of implementing the envelope system that are a bit more modern, using online services or computer software, and one could probably even implement it in MS Money or Quicken. With the widespread use of direct deposit and automatic bill payment, the physical envelope system has mostly gone out of style, but a virtual envelope system still works quite well.

For a good number of years now, I've used MS Money to track my expenses. The first step in establishing a budget is keeping a record of what you spend your money on. If you don't have this information, getting your finances under control is simply impossible. I actually ran a triple-check system for a year or two, where I entered my transactions in my check register, in MS Money, and in an Excel spreadsheet of my own design.

Seems like overkill, right?

Well, each of those methods provided me with something that the others didn't. The checkbook register was a hard copy, not dependent on electricity, just like getting paper statements from banks and retirement accounts. I realize it's not trendy, but I do like to have a backup in case of power failure or natural disaster. MS Money provided me the opportunity to track multiple accounts and to get a great deal of granularity in how I categorize expenses, plus all the bells and whistles like charts and graphs and year end reports. The Excel spreadsheet gave me a bit more portability with my basic expenses and planning, and Excel has some great financial functions available for calculating ROI and future value, etc. I keep the spreadsheet on my thumb drive these days, so I can look at it when I come up with budget and planning questions. It's more of a brainstorming tool than anything else at this point.

Once you know what you're actually spending your money on over time, you can begin to control your money. The longer the baseline, the better off you're going to be, especially with respect to irregular recurring expenses, like car insurance premiums that show up every six months, annual dues in a homeowner's association, or Christmas presents. I've got records going back ten years or so, but I usually archive stuff after a couple of years, so as not to totally bog down my old computer.

BTW, this is a pretty old version of MS Money (98? or did I upgrade it in 04? (actually the 2K version)) I'm running, that I got free with some other software. Newer versions probably have more bells and whistles, but I've grown accustomed to its face, and I like it.

Whenever I enter a payment in Money, it shows a little "status bar" that tells me how much money I've allocated in my budget envelope for that category, and my current level of spending for the month. If you're under budget, it's green, and when you go over, it's red. Simple, yet effective. Money does have some budgeting features that allow you to move money around between virtual envelopes, though I don't mess with them much.

So, when all is said and done, I don't have a hard, fast budget with fixed amounts allowed for spending in each category - exceed at your own risk! What I do have is a strong historical average picture of my monthly spending for each category. When I exceed that average significantly, I'm alerted to it, and I can spend some time figuring out why the change has taken place. If it's a short term issue, such as spending more money on fuel because I've taken some driving vacations, or more on food because one or more of my kids has come to visit, then I can safely ignore it and move on. If it's a long term issue, with some sort of increasing trend, then I need to take steps to either fix it, or account for it by changing my expectations and plans to match. For example, if I spend $100 in a particular month on books, when my budget calls for $50, then I just need to stay away from the bookstore the following month, and after the jitters go away, everything will be all right. A recent example was getting a huge power bill for the month of July. I took some steps to reduce our power consumption, and I'll know at the end of this month whether they were effective or not. If those steps didn't actually help, then I'll have to adjust some of my other spending plans to account for a plain old increase in utility costs that ain't gonna go away.

What I try to avoid is the "perfect storm" scenario in my finances. M and I have a weakness for good food and beverages. Every so often, we get tired of cooking at home and go out somewhere nice. If we do that several times in a given month, and if, in that same month, I find several new hardback novels I just have to buy, and I have to do some emergency maintenance on a vehicle, and I spend several hundred dollars on some carpet for the basement...then it can really throw things out of whack when all the bills come due at once.

So, I try to plan things out, expense-wise, so that the overall experience is a bit more smooth. For example, right now, because of buying a new dryer, I have run my credit card right up to the amount I usually budget for an entire month's payment, and I've still got a week to go before the billing cycle ends. So, though the truck needs a tank of diesel, and my racquet needs restringing, and the banister I broke needs replacing, and I really want a 1T external drive...I've got a self-imposed moratorium on new spending until the cycle turns. But what if I absolutely have to spend some money?

Fire Season

(written in 2015)

As I was riding in to work the last couple of mornings, I noticed a distinct smoky tang to the air. We've been covered, lately, by a blanket of smoke from the wildfires in Oregon and California. One of my coworkers mentioned the haze seen out the office windows, and it got me to thinking.

Every year, the BLM and Forest Service (and probably other agencies) spend billions on fighting wildfires in this country. I hate to be a conspiracy theorist of any sort, but whenever there's this much money to be spent/made, someone has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

With the ability we have to deliver a JDAM strike halfway around the world on a particular building (with some modicum of accuracy), why can't we drop a fire suppression bomb (how tough can it be to design something that explodes over a wide area with a half ton of fire suppression chemical?) within minutes on a wildfire? Certainly it couldn't cost all that much more to use our network of satellites or some retired AWACS planes to watch for lightning strikes or other hot spots in our federal lands, and to have a fleet of fire suppression bombers (again, get some retired B52s or something) in the air during fire season.

The up front cost might still be about the same, but the damage costs ought to be significantly reduced. Isn't an ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure any more?

The Overwhelming Power of Stuff

While working on rebuilding the back porch of Dad's cabin with him, I reflected on the packrat mentality that seems to be an integral part of my family culture. I'm certain that it's a cultural and not a genetic thing, because I'm not biologically related to him, or to his father, the king of pack rats. For grandpa "Pa" Herman, it was an attitude that he learned as a young man experiencing the Great Depression. My father was born in 1936, and he remembers all too well the type of frugality required to survive in the pre-war years.

Anyway, all three generations of our family that I've seen as adults had or have garages and homes packed to the gills with "stuff". Not necessarily new shiny stuff, but just stuff, tucked away on a shelf or in a drawer, "just in case."

When the "just in case" was rebuilding the back porch 45 miles from the nearest lumber yard or hardware store, Dad had stashed away a length of 2x6 that was long enough to build a new joist, and a piece of 2x4 that was just about right for the new stair tread. If he hadn't tucked them away however long ago, we'd have had to wait until he'd gone home and come back, having made a trip to Home Depot in the meantime. Upstairs in the cabin there's a ton of potentially useful items mouldering away; lumber, pipe and fittings, wire and electrical fittings, and all kinds of tools - duplicates of things we have in our garages at home.

The "wise" thing to do, it would seem, is to only purchase one of each kind of tool we might need, and merely do a better job of planning what tools to bring from home to the cabin on each trip. However, in this case, and on many other occasions, having the right tools and supplies for the job on hand saved us time and money.

In my own garage, for example, the amount of stuff is overwhelming at times. There's partial rolls of fiberglass insulation and a half a bag of blow-in insulation, a bundle of shingles the same color as the roof on the house, partial cans of paint from each room's color. There's an entire box full of old hinges, door handles and latches, boxes full of plumbing fittings, electrical outlets, and sprinkler parts. There are extra trailer hitch balls, converters for every imaginable type of trailer lighting connector, and nearly any type of screw, bolt, nut, nail, staple or fastener. There's mortar, paste, glue, grease, and dozens of cans of spray paint.

Then, there's some truly odd stuff. I have a blade for an antique scythe, a couple of rings from horse collars, an old tv tube, two AT&T brand D batteries, a 120/12V transformer, two wheel weights from a long-dead riding lawn mower, a spare drawer for a vanity I don't possess, a bucket of extra socket wrenches, the bunk bed and back door (WHY??) from the old camper, six inches from the end of a logging chain, a jacuzzi pump (I don't own a Jacuzzi), two shovel blades, a kit to make a wood stove out of a 55 gallon drum, a sturgeon pole (never been sturgeon fishing), extra boot bolts and fins for wakeboards, and so much other stuff that it's really impossible to list.

When I'm working on little repair or construction projects around the house, I often wander out to the garage and find something that will help me finish the job without a trip to the hardware store. It's impossible to know ahead of time just what might be required, so I hang on to everything. A month or so ago, I poured a concrete box for my irrigation line near the driveway, and for some odd reason I held on to the used pieces of wood I'd cut out to fit around the pipe as a concrete form. Last week, when I was working on the irrigation project down at a neighbor's place, those same pieces of wood, with minor mods, worked perfectly to form up a box around the new pipe we'd installed and the old pipe, so we could seal things up with concrete. I just never know, and my packrat instincts work out for the best every so often.

As you might imagine, finding things in my garage can be a bit of a challenge, and I can often be seen wandering about with a puzzled look, muttering to myself, "I know I have one of those somewhere..." Would it actually be more time-efficient if I just ran to the store?

Regrets

It's been over a week since I actually finished a book and got a review posted. Summertime is making it very difficult to find the time to read, but I AM having lots of fun.

More when I get 'em.

The One-Page Financial Plan by Carl Richards

I really enjoyed Carl Richards' The Behavior Gap, both the book and his web site, and so I looked forward to reading his new book about financial planning. For me, however, there wasn't anything really new to learn here. I can see how it would be good for a person who was feeling intimidated by the magnitude of the financial planning task, but I really didn't have a lot of takeaways here.

He starts with goal setting concepts, and builds on a very simple framework of just doing the right things a piece at at time to accomplish those goals. What he really tries to do is to make a scary process seem folksy and conversational. You might buy this book for one of your kids who is just getting through college. 

Nothing bad to say about the book, but it didn't really float my boat.

Black Widow by Jennifer Estep

At least in this installment of the Spider's story, we get to return to a more deadly villain, as Gin finally gets the confrontation she's been expecting ever since Mab Monroe's daughter, Madeline M Monroe, arrived in Ashland. Madeline uses all of her connections around the city to launch a simultaneous group of attacks on Gin's friends and family. Finn is served with a lawsuit, Rosalyn gets cut off by her liquor distributor, one of Owen's big contracts falls through, while his sister Eva is suspended from college for cheating, and Jo-Jo's salon may be designated a historical landmark and deemed unsuitable to operate a business.

Then, horror of horrors, the health inspector arrives at the Pork Pit!

Accompanied by a posse of crooked cops, the barbecue joint is judged wanting and will be shut down. When Sophia trips the head cop, she is arrested for assault, and when Gin and her lawyer, Silvio, try to bail her out, Gin gets arrested, which was M. M.'s point all along. They immediately lock her away in "the Bull Pen", where prisoners get to fight each other to the death for the amusement of the crooked police force. Faced with five deadly opponents at once, Gin uses her mad fighting skills and elemental magic to not only defeat the thugs but to escape custody and take it on the lam.

Run to ground at the Pork Pit, the villainess surrounds the building with cops, then tosses Molatov cocktails inside, making sure that Gin cannot escape the flames.

Gin dies, her funeral is held and life in Ashland goes back to business as usual.

No? Well, you'll have to read the book to find out.

My only nitpick about this book was that it seemed a little rushed. The situations facing Gin's friends weren't really allowed enough time to become serious threats and concern us. A really good evil opponent would have allowed some time for despair to set in before the final blow falls.

Stonewalled by Sheryl Attkisson

After reading Sheryl Attkisson's book, I think I feel a great deal as does she, frustrated by my inability to get to the root truths of a number of recent political scandals of the Obama administration. Some of what she wrote filled in details about Fast & Furious, Benghazi, the (Un)Affordable Care Act, and the horrible waste of taxpayer dollars given to "Green" companies whose owners were donors. But the key questions still remain unanswered. How high in the administration are the people responsible, and are these stories all simply the result of incompetence or something more sinister? I knew before, and Attkission confirms, that the media is in deep with progressive interests as well as big business, and for the most part cannot be trusted to do old-fashioned investigative reporting which speaks truth to power.

"What did we really tell America on this night that they didn't already know?
My own network is passing up stories on the crumbling Affordable Care Act; an exclusive investigation I offered about a significant military controversy; an investigation uncovering a history of troubles surrounding Boeing's beleauguered Dreamliner; and massive government waste, fraud, and abuse. Largely untouched are countless stories about pharmaceutical dangers affecting millions of Americans, privacy infringement, the debate over President Obama's use of executive orders, the FDA monitoring of employee email, the steady expansion of terrorism, the student loan crisis, the confounding explosion in entitlements, the heartbreaking fallout from the Haiti earthquake, continuing disaster for government-subsidized green energy initiatives, the terrorist influences behind 'Arab Spring', various congressional ethics investigations and violations, the governments' infringement of and restrictions on the press, escalating violence on the Mexican border, the debt crisis, the Fed's role and its secrecy, to name just a few."

After the election, President Obama issued orders to all Federal agency heads, directing them he was "commited to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government."

But what was the reality?

"But barely into his second term, the Obama administration finds itself making history instead for its secrecy and assaults on the press. I, and other investigative reporters who are fully experienced in the indelicate art of prying public information from the tight grip of the government's hands, have now begun comparing notes about the daunting challenges this administration poses. There's delay, denial, obstruction, intimidation, retaliation, bullying, surveillance, and the possible threat of criminal prosecution. In my view, and that of other national reporters, this is proving to be the least transparent administration we've covered."

No time to go into an in depth description of all of the problems with the current administration, the bureaucracy and the incestuous relationship between big business and government today. Just go read the book.

Sparrow Hill Road by Seanan McGuire

This is one of those books which is difficult to classify. It fits more into the horror genre than urban fantasy, but isn't quite spooky enough to raise the hackles and cause insomnia. The whole thing is an abrupt change of pace for McGuire, but still enjoyable, though perhaps not as a steady diet - for me, anyway.

This is the story of Rose, the ghostly prom date who appears alongside the roads and byways of rural America, hoping for a ride home. She was killed on Sparrow Hill Road in a car crash on prom night, and has been doomed to an afterlife of rides with strangers.

One of the premises is that if a living human being offers her their coat to keep warm, she becomes solid to the touch and lives until the stroke of midnight causes her to become insubstantial once more. While she's "real", she can eat meals at truck stops and diners, enjoy warmth rather than the coldness of death, and even have sex.

One of her "jobs" is to help those whom the road also claims as victims to come to terms with their new existence, either to join the wandering ghosts of the road or to pass on to whatever heaven or hell awaits them.

The story is told in a series of vignettes and flashbacks, yet moves steadily forward to the resolution of a conflict with the man responsible for her death.

As I said, not my usual fare, but a pretty and dark yarn by McGuire.