Today I would like to share with you a small, but very efficient tip on how to save money and save the environment. Besides, the money you save you can invest in your financial fund of choice and get reacher sooner.

Global Warming

You probably have heard about Global Warming and the reasons it’s causing. One of the biggest reasons is the coal power plants that produce the most of electricity worldwide. USA and China are the biggest coal power plant owners, and US is the biggest producer of green gas emissions. The demand for electricity is rising on the daily basis because more and more houses are built, more and more electrical devices are bought. However, you as the consumer can make a difference! Our (consumers’) strength is in numbers: the less electricity each of us utilize, the less the demand. Every year they build several new coal plants to meet the demand for electricity, and each coal plant increases chance that our planet will become a Water World in 20-50 years when all the polar ice will melt (Do you remember that movie? If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend), and it’s not a joke! Do you want to live that miserable life on the artificial islands? Or do you want your children live that live?

Make the difference

How can you make a difference? You can simply decrease the amount of electricity you consume, and you can do that without giving up everything that you like! If you decrease the electricity usage by 50%, you will save 50% of your expenses, thus you decrease the demand, and your electric company does not need to build an additional coal plant.

How To Start

To start saving money on electricity does not require too much of an effort. You can do it several ways:
1) Turn off (or standby) your computer at night, or set it on the Sleep Mode after 1 hour of idling (Windows XP: Start->Control Panel->Display->Screen Saver->Power->Power Schemes->Settings for Home/Office Desk power scheme);
2) If you have an old CRT monitor, consider buying a LCD monitor; LCD monitors heat less and consume three times less energy; also set you monitor to turn off after 15 minutes of idling;
3) If you have an old refrigerator (more then 5-10 years old), consider replacing it with a new model; every 2 years refrigerators get new technology upgrades and usually more 20% efficient each time, and it’s the biggest electricity hog in your house!

4) If you have an old dish washing machine, laundry machine or a dryer, replace them too - you’ll start saving water and electricity (look for the Energy Star editions)
5) Every contemporary electric device consumes electricity even when it’s turned off, but plugged in, on average 5 Watts per hour. A good example is your TV, you turn it off with your remote control, but it still drains about 5 Watts of energy, waiting for another signal from your remote control. If you have 10 devices like that, it equals to a 50 Watts light bulb burning electricity 24×7x365, or 8.4KW per month. You may say it’s only about $0.6, however, if 200,000,000 people have it, it’s 1,600,000,000 KW of wasted energy every month! So, just think about it You can connect all the similar devices to a plug with a button which will break the circuit and stop those devices from draining the energy and money from your pocket.
6) If you own a house and have outdoor light, consider installing a motion detector to turn a light on when there is a person approaching, this will also add a security to your house if a thief will try to sneak in the house (or your back/front yard) and will be illuminated at night (they wont like it ), the light will stay for 2-5 minutes and will be turned off afterwards; I used to forget turning off the outdoor light and burn the 300W light bulb for 7+ hours…
7) If you have an electric water heater with a water tank, you can do several things to save energy:

• Turn down the temperature; the factory setting is the medium position, the lowest position is quite enough to keep the water warm for 2-3 bedroom house, you may save up to 30%!
• Replace it with a tankless water heater, so it heats water only when you use it, this will save you up to 70%! An average tank water heater costs about $500 a year to operate, tankless will be about $150

8 ) If your house has an old electric furnace, replace it as well with more efficient one (we used to pay $200 a month during winter with our old furnace); a good advice will be also replace your old windows with new ones, or keep them well insulated during cold weather;
9) And the easiest way: if your house still has the old fashioned incandescent light bulbs, replace them with energy saving fluorescent ones;

I can give you my personal example. My average monthly electricity bill was about $120 during a year, it was more during winter and less during summer. When we replaced all the bulbs and got new efficient washing machine (but not very expensive) with a dryer, our electricity bill dropped to the whooping $70-$80, thus we started to save $40-$50 a month! Surely, we paid upfront for the new bulb and appliances, but we got our money back in less then a year.

Fluorescent light bulbs

Fluorescent light bulbs were on the market quite for a long time, and the first ones were really expensive, but still were giving good saving opportunities. Usually, fluorescent bulbs consume 80% less electricity and give more bright light then the old incandescent ones.

Here is a bit of math to give a good reason why you need to replace your old bulbs. An average house has about 10 light bulbs burning during 5 hours every evening, and those are 60 and 100 Watt ones. Let’s say, the total wattage is 760 Watts (4 100W and 6 60W), thus during one day they consume 3.8KWatt, or 114KW a month ($9.12). Now, if we replace them with fluorescent bulbs, and save 80%, they will consume only 22.8KW ($1.8), and you can save at least $7.32. If you have more bulbs to replace, you will even save more! I assumed that an average KiloWatt is $0.08 per month, and yours can be different.

Invest Your Savings

Now, if you are smart (and I know you are!), you invest your new savings every month into a financial fund. Your $7.32 month contribution will make a total of $87.84 per year, and in 30 years will make you $15,894 in profit with 10% average annual yield. It maybe not much, but if you put it in your retirement, that will give you an additional $1,500 per year when you start using your retirement account. Besides, that’s only your savings from the light bulbs, you can add other savings as well! If I add my electric bill savings I was talking before, I can invest additional $40 a month, or $480 a year, and have $102,746.92 in 30 years (10% average annual profit) in addition to my retirement savings!

We can save our environment by saving our money, what can be better?!

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