Money – Page 8 – John's Random Thoughts and Discussions

Fun is Where You Find It (Part 5)

Last year about this time, I posted the original Fun is Where You Find It! where I discussed the egg decorating kit we purchased for Easter. Of course, it’s a fun activity, so we did it again this year with Paas Basket Buddies egg decorating kit. Imagine seeing the cutest kittens and puppies on your Easter eggs and you’ll have an inkling of the results of using this kit. The online price of $4.99 is a little more than the $3.99 price we paid at our local store. The kit is on par with last year’s price. Eggs are a lot more expensive though at $1.59 for large eggs.

The dyes used in this kit are a bit better than last year’s kit—I’m not sure why. It could be that the tie dye kit instructions were designed to produce better mixed results. We did use the vinegar method described on the box and soaked the eggs for around thee minutes each to obtain the results shown here.

For once, our results actually matched those on the package for the most part. The six colors are: red, blue, green, yellow, orange, and pink. No matter what we tried, we couldn’t get the pink to turn out right. You can see the single pink egg in this dozen is speckled. It’s a pretty egg, but not the results we anticipated.

This is the kit to use if you have young children and don’t want any kind of a mess. Except for dipping the eggs, there really isn’t much risk of creating any sort of damage to clothing or furniture and an adult could perform the dipping part. The kit does come with 9 Eggarounds, which are wraps you put around your eggs, and then shrink into place. The Eggarounds look like this initially.

Notice the somewhat tight fit. You have to use large eggs with the Eggarounds because they won’t shrink enough for medium eggs. On the other hand, some large eggs proved a little too large. Still, in the two dozen eggs we made up, there were plenty of eggs the right size. The box talks about two methods of working with the Eggarounds—the water shrinking method is messy and proved unsatisfactory. Using a blow dryer works as advertised. Here are the results we obtained from our eggs:

You can see that our first egg has a few ripples in the surface. Playing some with the technique produced smoother results as we went along. I don’t think it’s possible to get a completely smooth surface without a lot of practice. However, the results are eye pleasing and fun to work with.

The kit also comes with 90 stickers. The Eggarounds took care of the decorating needs for 9 of the 24 eggs we cooked up. That left 15 eggs or six stickers per egg, which really isn’t enough to do the job. We decided to leave the pink eggs as they were, speckled, because they really are eye pleasing that way. Using eight to ten stickers per egg produces a nice result. Here is a typical result using eight stickers:

Overall, we found this kit extremely easy to use. It required about 2 hours worth of effort for us to complete the 24 hard boiled eggs—making for some extremely cheap fun that we can benefit from later. The kit won’t support more than 24 eggs unless you don’t mind having some undecorated eggs at the end (colored, but without stickers). What sort of results do you get out of the egg decorating kits that you’ve tried? Let me know at [email protected].

Working from Home

I heard an interesting statistic on the radio this morning-most Americans would be willing to take a 5 percent pay cut in order to work from home. This is something that may intrigue entrepreneurs; not only could they save money on staff wages, but costs on renting an office space could be lowered. Although it may seem like there is no argument as to why businesses would want to be stationed at a rented office, many entrepreneurs still see the need for a professional and reputable office address to maintain the respect that business partners and customers have for the company. However, with virtual offices becoming ever more prevalent, which you can learn more about at https://www.fuer-gruender.de/blog/virtual-office-geschaeftsadresse/, it seems that working from home may grow even more over the next few years. I’ve been working from my home for 25 years now and must admit that I really wouldn’t want to work anywhere else. However, I started thinking about the whole concept of a pay cut after the radio announcer finished and thought that we’re looking at the issue from the wrong perspective. Sure, the 5 percent pay cut is real, but is it actually a pay cut? Let’s examine that for a moment. The 5 percent pay cut to work at home would result in the following savings:

Reduced driving needs, which means lower insurance
Less gas used
Less wear and tear on the car
Lower cost, more nutritional eat-at-home lunches
Less need for expensive clothing
No day care required
Less time wasted in travel (and time is money)

If you don’t already have a home office then you will need to make one. These means buying furniture such as a desk, office chair, drawers etc. and getting some tech like a laptop. Of course, this costs money. However, you can get some good office furniture at good prices from places like Office Monster and it’s a one-off cost and long term investment. I still think in the long run you would save money because from a financial perspective, both the employer and employee come out ahead. In short, the benefits of working at home only start here. This is just the tip of the iceberg. If you’re an employer, you want your employees working at home. According to Business News Daily and many other sources, employees who work at home are significantly more productive in the right circumstances. So the employer not only saves on the pay required for a work at home employee, but also gets more for the employee’s efforts (assuming that the employee is actually working and not getting distracted). Even if you are unsure whether your staff are being productive, you don’t need to bring them back into the office because there are ways of keeping track of it whilst they are working from home. A lot of companies use a survey for remote work for this. In addition, there are other financial benefits for the employer such as reduced absenteeism and reduced infrastructure requirements, such as desks and office space. Because working from home is becoming more of a reality for many Americans, a number of authors have taken a stab at making it work out better for everyone involved:

The one essential tidbit of information that you should glean from most of these posts is that you need some sort of schedule. In fact, a few of these sources actually draw you a picture of a schedule. Having goals that you want to meet each day is an essential part of the work at home experience.

There is no doubt that the effects of working at home extend well beyond the benefits that both employer and employee can obtain. Working at home can be better for the environment because the worker isn’t driving anywhere. However, whether the environment gains or not is really a matter of the environment in which the employee is working. A basement office using incandescent bulbs, a plug in heater, and old computer equipment is hardly energy efficient and could actually end up increasing the employee’s carbon footprint.

Although, there’s no doubt that the employer will have to upgrade the payroll system, as with employees working from home, the hours may vary. Recording these hours and calculating pay can take up a lot of time and energy for the employer, and can result in a lot of dissatisfied employees if done wrong. Luckily, the benefits of outsourcing payroll far outweigh doing payroll manually, and should definitely be considered if working from home is a reality for your business.

The health benefits of working from home are also well documented. Employees who work from home are less stressed, eat better, and spend more time doing something other than driving a car. The mental and physical benefits of working in a familiar, cozy environment make it possible for employees to live better lives. In addition, even when an employee does get sick, it’s often possible for the employee to work part of the day, rather than miss an entire day at work, so the employer gains as well.

I’m not a parent, so I have no personal experience with child rearing. However, in researching work at home statistics, I did run across a few articles that suggest work at home parents actually give their children a better chance of performing well later in life. I’d be interested in hearing from people who have significant experiences one way or the other-especially in situations where one child was raised at home and another in childcare.

Will working from home work for everyone? The answer is absolutely not. Certain professions require that employees still trudge to work. In these cases, working as close to home as possible will still save travel time, wear and tear on your car, reduce insurance payments, and still benefit the environment to some degree. Working close enough to walk to work or use public transportation is even better. However, some people will continue to go to work at a factory or office somewhere, no matter how much technology progresses.

If your employer doesn’t
offer work at home, create proposal that makes it more likely that the
employer will at least consider allowing you to do it. Everyone
benefits! Do you think you could perform your work at home? Are you doing it now? Let me know your thoughts on the whole work at home question at [email protected].

Fun is Where You Find It! (Part 4)

For many people, this time of the year is extremely depressing. There are all sorts of acronyms associated with this time of the year, such as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). I have no doubt that these disorders, diseases, and disabilities all exist and are quantifiable in some way. In fact, I imagine that there are tests to determine precisely which of them you have and to what extent you suffer from them. The bottom line is that the holidays are over, the weather is stormy, and the budget tight. Excitement is nowhere to be found-at least, not the sort of excitement that many people consider fun today.

It’s this time of year when Rebecca and I engage most strongly in crafting. Making things tends to take your mind off of all of the things that would make you SAD. For example, this is the time of year that I make knitted items most. A craft need not be expensive or require skills that most people lack. I’ve known more than a few families who have gathered pine cones in the fall, drizzled a bit of glue on them, dipped them in glitter, and added a bit of yarn to string the pine cones up. Not only do them make attractive Christmas ornaments, you can hang them up in a room as decoration. The cheerful colors and the occasional glint of the sun dancing off the glitter can dispel the gloom in any room. Stenciling and other forms of decorative art are helpful this time of the year as well. I got the idea for bright colors in a room from some of the displays in European Village at the Milwaukee Public Museum. Old world houses weren’t drab–they were colorful to keep things cheery during the winter months. This form of decoration improves your ability to withstand the drab winter months and could very well help keep SAD at bay. The best part of all is that you can get the supplies for any of the crafts I’ve mentioned for less than $20.00 and some, like stenciling, can consume an inordinate amount of time that you’d otherwise spend feeling bad.

Of course, not everyone likes crafts and I wouldn’t want you to saddle yourself with something that you won’t ever enjoy (no matter how hard you try). This is also a good time of the year to take a winter walk. Wait for a nice day and go into the woods. The woods are amazing this time of the year and if you’re careful, you’ll see some interesting animals, such as a fox or weasel. You have to look extra hard in some cases. Some animals change color in the winter to better blend in with their environment. A white rabbit on white snow is incredibly hard to see.

So, you’re not into the outdoors and crafts have no interest. There are still things you can do to make this time of the year better. Some people live for sports. Gambling and betting on games is a lot of peoples hobby and their favourite part of sports. By choosing one of the many betting formats, such as by clicking here, you can bet online and enjoy the game even more. The Superbowl takes place in two weeks. Personally, I’m not much of a sports fan. In fact, I just barely know the names of our teams here in Wisconsin (much less the rest of the country). But if you asked my friends, they could practically tell you every player for every team. They are huge sports fans, and they especially love the Superbowl. It’s what they wait all year for. So, I wouldn’t be surprised if they decided to have a look at these Sportsbook Promo offers to make a bet. If I had as much knowledge as them, I’d definitely decide to look at gambling because I wouldn’t be surprised if they manage to win a decent amount of money from it. I hope they don’t ask me for my advice because I wouldn’t have a clue. Even though I’m not much of a Superbowl fan, I do like action movies, so we have a Super Action Hero Bowl on Superbowl Sunday. Here are the steps for creating your own Super Action Hero Bowl:

Create a list of the action heroes that appear in your movie collection (or that you know you can borrow free from somewhere like the library).
Place the names in a hat and have someone draw four or five names.
Create lists of the movies that you own for each action hero.
Place the movies for a specific hero in the hat and draw out the name of a movie for that hero.
Create movie lists and draw a movie name for each of the remaining heroes.
Now that you have a list of names and movies, create a scorecard. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, but each member of the family who participates in Super Action Hero Bowl should have a separate scorecard.
Watch the first movie on the scorecard and mark that movie’s rank. Each movie should be ranked from 1 to 4 (or 5, depending on how many movies you choose). No two movies should receive the same score. (No peaking at your neighbor’s scorecard please!)
Continue watching movies until you have completed them all.
Tally the scores from each of the scorecards for each movie. The movie with the lowest score (the highest rank) wins.

It’s a good way to spend a day in family fun. It’s inexpensive and the competition adds a certain appeal to the event. Of course, just like the Superbowl, you can grab some special foods from your larder and serve them during the course of the day. If you don’t feel like you have a wide enough variety of superhero or action movies then it might be worthwhile looking at the likes of internet proxies that can allow you to visit the pirate bay online to find and download or stream a very large selection of movies, this will also help you keep it all as inexpensive as possible.

Just because the holidays are over, doesn’t mean you have to make things drab. Rebecca and i usually store some special goodies in the larder for this time of the year. When there is something to celebrate, we make an impromptu personal party using these items. We’ll play games, listen to special music, put puzzles together, or do other things to make the event special. Get a good report from the doctor? Why not have a party to celebrate it? It takes a little effort to avert the drudgery of this time of the year, but you can do it and it doesn’t have to cost a lot (or anything at all).

How do you avoid the January blues? Do you like crafts, a bit of nature, some mild competitive fun, or a bit of a party? Let me know at [email protected]. Make sure you also view the other Fun is Where You Find It posts for other ideas.

Desire

Desire,
the fire
that keeps everyone thirsting for more.

We buy
and pile
our stuff in ever greater hoards.

To spend
without end
seems rude in a world starving by inches.

Our lust
gets stuff
to pile so high, there is no end.

Some homes
so filled
with things no one will ever use.

Such waste
a stain
as the world looks on in tears.

Your heart
can sense
the needs of those around you.

Your eyes
see pain
our consumer society sows and reaps.

We can
become
the solution to economic woes.

Learn how
the less
you need, the more you get.

Our life
is not
about goods we have, but the good we do.

Considering the Inefficiency of a Global Economy

A lot of people have said a lot about the global economy—how it exists and is pretty much unstoppable. However, a recent article in ComputerWorld, amongst others, have highlighted problems with the global economy. In this case, flooding in Thailand has impacted the availability of hard drives—driving up the price that everyone pays. If manufacturing were decentralized, flooding in a single country wouldn’t have much of an effect. In short, the emphasis on cost of individual products instead of emphasizing the reliability of multiple sources of hard drives at an increased cost has proven a shortsighted strategy that inevitably hurt the world supply.

Some countries are using the global economy as a source of blackmail. According to the New York Times, China has consolidated its grip on rare earth metals used for everything from compact fluorescent lights to displays used in smartphones. The blackmail started after a disagreement with Japan. As a consequence, the price of any item that requires rare earths has gone up and will continue to increase. It’s another instance where price advantages offered by a global economy have come back to haunt us. In fact, this problem is so significant that the United States government is doing everything it can to create alternative sources, no matter the cost. Unfortunately, it will require nearly 15 years to fully develop those alternatives.

These two stories, and many more, only hint at the potential problems of a global economy. The problems are actually far more severe than you might initially think. When someone ships a hard drive all the way from Thailand to your home, the carbon footprint of that drive is quite large. It takes a lot of gas to move that hard drive. What the global economy does is it trades fossil fuel for price. The cost of the oil, plus the cost of the object (whatever it might be), is less than the cost of producing the object locally. The short term monetary gain takes priority over the cost to the environment and its eventual cleanup. In the long term, that hard drive will cost everyone a great deal more than if it had been purchased locally.

This blog has contained more than a few self-sufficiency posts (60 as of this post). You’ve seen discussions of how to grow your own food and reasonably recycle products instead of dumping them in a landfill. I even told you how to obtain CFLs for free (see CFLs for Free). All of these posts are practical—I’ve worked hard to write posts that demonstrate techniques that improve the condition of your wallet, decrease your health problems, and still help everyone around you by producing a greener environment. Even with these measures, I’m well aware that my carbon footprint is huge because a global economy forces me to buy articles from overseas. These items aren’t available locally and I can’t make them myself.

In the long run, it’s unlikely that we’ll be able to sustain a global economy unless the equation changes dramatically. Fossil fuels aren’t unlimited—we’ll eventually run out, so from a practical perspective, transportation of items from overseas must change or we won’t be able to transport them. However, long before that happens, the damage to our environment will take a dramatic toll on everyone. The question is why anyone would wait around to see it all happen? Is the world determined to wait until everyone is so sick and so without resources that we have no choice but to toe the line? Does no one think about the effect they’re having until it’s too late?

I ask these questions because the global economy is simply a bad idea. Producing goods locally is far more efficient, even when the initial price for the good is higher. Eating and using what you can produce locally is far better for everyone. You do have a choice. Even with the global economy in full swing, you can buy local goods—in fact, insist on them. Tell local stores that you’re willing to pay more for local goods that are good for the environment. Your money matters. When stores find that they can’t sell those overseas items at any price, they’ll buy locally. “Give the customer what they want” is a cliche, but it’s also a fact. Vote with your cash to bring down a global economy that is ill conceived and killing us all. Let me know your thoughts about the global economy at [email protected].

Windows 7 and the PowerCfg Utility

On page 327 of Administering Windows Server 2008 Server Core, you find the PowerCfg utility and may not even find it all that interesting. Yes, this utility makes it possible to configure the power settings for a system from a remote location. An administrator can use it to ensure that everyone has a power saving setup by adding the command to the user’s login script. However, as utilities go, it isn’t all that interesting. For that reason, the command doesn’t even appear in Windows Command-Line Administration Instant Reference. A number of beta readers said they didn’t even use it.

Microsoft is showing an increasing interest in power management with each version of Windows. In fact, from what I’ve been reading about Windows 8, power management is going to take a relatively large leap forward (read about the changes in, “Building a power-smart general-purpose Windows“). With this in mind, the Windows 7 version of the PowerCfg utility has added four new command line switches:

/Requests: Enumerates the application and driver power requests. Applications and drivers make power requests to ensure that resources are available when needed. However, sometimes these requests can also become a problem when they’re abused. Power requests can also prevent the computer from automatically turning the display off or going into hibernate mode, which wastes power.
/RequestOverride: Forces the system to disregard an application or driver power request. The positive aspect of this command line switch is that you can enforce a power management strategy when you have applications and drivers that abuse power requests. However, by denying applications and drivers access to resources, you could also cause system instability or data loss when the application or driver crashes.
/Energy: Performs an energy survey of the system. This is probably the most important addition that Microsoft has made. Using this particular feature, you can detect system elements that are consuming a lot of power and reduce its energy footprint. Generally, you use this feature with just the system running to determine what the system uses. However, you can also use it with single applications open to detect the energy cost of using that application, which I think is actually the more revealing way to use this command line switch. Most people don’t associate an energy cost with using an application. This feature makes the energy cost significantly more apparent. Yes, every application you use has a cost, so keeping needless applications open is costing you money.
/WakeTimers: Displays a list of timers that are set to wake the system from sleep or hibernate states. Waking a system too often also costs you money. For example, it costs more to perform individual maintenance tasks at separate times than to perform them during a single time. An organization could use this command line switch to ensure that every system wakes at the same time, performs required maintenance, and then goes back into either the sleep or hibernate states.

As mentioned in the list, I consider the /Energy command line switch the most important PowerCfg addition to date. If you’re interested in self-sufficiency, as I am, then you begin to count even the pennies of energy usage. For example, in my CFLs for Free I discuss how I bought just one CFL and turned it into a complete setup for my entire home. This particular feature has allowed me to perform an energy survey of the applications I use. I found out, for example, that streaming audio using Firefox does indeed cost less than using a separate device for the purpose (such as a radio) and also delivers clearer audio. However, streaming impacts system performance and tacks a network bandwidth penalty onto other applications that rely on Internet connectivity, so there are times where using the separate device is actually better.

Let’s look at the /Energy command line switch in a little more detail. The easiest way to use this command is to open an Administrator command prompt, change directories to a directory you can write in (I’m using C:\Temp), and then type PowerCfg /Energy and press Enter. I purposely ran the command with a number of applications running and some misconfiguration in place to generate some errors, warnings, and informational messages as shown here.

The report required a little over a minute to generate. You can see the results in the Energy-Report.HTML file. Here are the results I generated from this run.

The PowerCfg utility makes it possible to diagnose energy problems with a system and significantly reduce the cost of running it. The language of the report does require a little interpretation at times, but normally the language is plain enough for an administrator to figure out with little effort. By correcting every error and 12 out of the 13 warnings, I was able to reduce the power requirements of this system by about 15 percent (as measured by a watt meter). So, how does that equate in dollars? You use the equation: Cost = ((Watts / 1000) * Hours Used) * kWh rate, where kWh is the kilowatt hour rate provided by your power company on your electrical bill. This system was averaging a little over 520 watts before tuning it. For the sake of argument, let’s say you’re using it 60 hours per week and the electrical rate is $0.12. The weekly cost of running this system is:

((520 / 1000) * 60) * 0.12 or $3.74

After tuning this one system the power usage was only 442 watts on average. That means the weekly cost went down to:

((442 / 1000) * 60) * 0.12 or $3.18

a savings of $0.56 for this one system each week or a total of $29.12 for the year. I have three systems that I tuned this way, so I’m hoping for a $87.36 savings from performing this tuning. Each system required about 30 minutes to tune, so I’ve made $58.24/hour from this activity. If you’ve read other posts, I do like to put a dollar figure on my time—you should too. Not many people can afford to throw away money like this and the PowerCfg utility, along with a watt meter, can help you better understand how your system uses (and abuses) power.

There are two additional command line switches you should know about when using the /Energy command line switch. The /Duration:Time command line switch changes the duration from 60 seconds to some other value. For example, if you want to change the duration to 120 minutes, you’d type /Duration:120. Longer testing times are often required when you’re trying to determine how an application is using energy. Take my advice and don’t set the duration lower than the default 60 seconds—you’ll be disappointed with the results.

The /XML command line switch outputs the data in XML format so that you can incorporate the information into a database. If you have a large setup, the XML format is absolutely essential. No one has time to look at individual HTML pages. Using XML output and a centralized database also makes it possible for you to look for organization-wide trends, which could produce even bigger savings.

The /Energy command line switch can also be used with the /Trace command line switch to trace energy usage without performing any analysis. This output isn’t as helpful or as accessible as using the /Energy command line switch alone. The output is an Event Trace Log (.ETL) file. To view this file, open the Event Viewer console found in the Administrative Tools folder of the Control Panel. Right click the Event Viewer folder and choose Open Saved Log from the context menu. You’ll see a dialog box asking whether you want to convert the .ETL file into the new format used by Windows 7. Click Yes. You’ll see a list of energy events like the ones shown here.

By carefully reviewing the events, you can discern energy usage patterns, filter data about specific events, and perform other analysis. However, this raw data is a little hard to use and the administrator would be better off generating the report, unless your organization has an application designed to analyze the raw data in some way.

So, how do you save energy in your organization? Do you rely on specialized tools such as a watt meter and PowerCfg? If not, how do you tune your equipment to deliver optimum service and minimum cost? Let me know at [email protected]

More on CFL Usage

Readers came back with a few questions about CFLs after reading my CFLs for Free post. The one thing I want to get across clearly is that the article is emphasizing that you can buy new CFLs using the savings from previous purchases. You need to make the investment in the first CFL to get started and then use the savings from that investment to buy future CFLs. No one is going to mysteriously pay you to buy CFLs, but if you buy smart, you can indeed get future CFLs for free after making the initial purchase. Eventually, you’ll pay off the initial purchase using the savings as well.

A number of people asked about the startup surge (also known as inrush current). The startup surge is something that occurs when you first apply power to the light. This surge is extra electricity that’s required to get the bulb started. The amount of power the bulb requires decreases as it gets to operating temperature, which isn’t very long in most cases. Of course, some people are worried about this electricity surge as some people often think they are experiencing a power surge. Luckily, these two things are quite different. If a homeowner did experience a power surge, it would be worth them contacting a company like Safe and Sound Electric to install some surge protection to prevent this happening again. However, this bulb requires that extra surge, so don’t be concerned if you notice a quick surge. I’ve read a number of conflicting opinions about the startup surge of CFLs. My take on everything I’ve read is that the startup surge will vary by bulb vendor and type of light. A tube light has a smaller startup surge for a significantly smaller time than the twisted bulbs. Vendors who meet Energy Star requirements tend to produce bulbs that have a smaller startup surge than the less expensive bulbs.

A few readers also asked about long term efficiency of CFLs. From personal experience Rebecca and I have found that CFLs do provide an efficiency advantage if you use them for one long interval, rather than several short intervals. In other words, if you burn the light for four hours solid instead of two, two hour intervals, you’ll gain an efficiency advantage. In addition, turning the light on and off reduces its life expectancy.

Efficient energy use is why Rebecca and I tune our work schedule to follow the sun. We get up at 5:30 am (sometimes a bit earlier) during the summer months to make maximum use of the daylight hours, but we get up at 7:00 am during the winter months to ensure we won’t have to turn the lights on in the morning. The actual difference between summer and winter work times is 2½ hours due to the effect of daylight saving time. We do work later into the evening during the winter months to make up for the later start time, so everything evens out. Using this approach has had both health and monetary benefits, but we also understand that it’s not a solution that most people can use.

There are a lot of myths, misconceptions, and outright controversies about CFLs online. In addition, I’m finding that people have individual experiences based on how they use lighting in their home. However, after researching this topic intensively, I’m finding that the following tips about CFLs seem to be true for just about everyone:

Buying CFLs with the Energy Star label tends to pay dividends in reduced operating costs and longer life, but you must weigh these benefits against the increased initial cost. In general, buying Energy Star products save you money.
If you must use a CFL in a socket controlled by a dimmer, buy a CFL designed for that purpose. Using a standard CFL in a dimmer-controlled socket greatly reduces bulb life and could damage the dimmer.
CFLs require more air to work properly. They’re more heat sensitive, so putting one in a can or recessed fixture will result in a reduced life expectancy. The exception is that there are CFLs specially designed to work in recessed fixtures, but you’ll also pay a premium price for them.
CFLs also don’t like
damp or wet conditions. If you need to use a CFL in a damp or wet
condition, make sure you get one rated for that purpose.
Standard CFLs don’t work well in fixtures that vibrate, such as the lighting kits for fans. If you want to use a CFL with a fan or other fixture that will vibrate, you need to get a CFL designed for the purpose. (I finally gave up using a CFL in my garage door opener light socket because even the CFLs designed for use in vibration don’t last long in that particular application.)
Excessive on and off cycles in a given day will most definitely reduce the life expectancy of your CFL. I researched this one a lot and didn’t get a definitive answer for you. The most common guidelines say that you should strive to keep on/off cycles below 20 for any given CFL during one day. It’s commonly said that CFLs have a life expectancy of 7,000 on/off cycles if you observe the 20 on/off cycle per day limit. The source of problems in this case is the electronic ballast that CFLs use, which aren’t designed for heavy on/off cycles.
Faulty wiring affects CFLs considerably more than incandescent bulbs. If your wiring is such that it causes flickers or flashing with an incandescent bulb, it might be a cause for concern and you should probably look to get more info from an emergency electrician. Your CFL also won’t last very long in this instance. Even if you can’t see the flickering, small dips in power can cause early CFL failure. If you find that your bulbs aren’t lasting very long, have the power checked and bring in an electrical repair company similar to https://electricalsynergies.com/ to fix it. Faulty wiring also affects the cost savings from a CFL in a big way because the bulb never quite gets to its operating range.
Line noise will also affect CFLs. For example, if you have a heavy duty motor (such as a refrigerator) on the same line as a CFL, the drop in line current when the motor starts can affect the life expectancy of the CFL. Line noise will also affect the cost savings you see from a CFL because the bulb isn’t operating properly.

Some readers have pointed out that CFLs are overrated. I’m not quite sure how to respond to this question other than to say that there isn’t any free lunch. Just about every solution we now have for fixing the planet’s carbon problem is flawed. Even if we were to all go back to burning candles, there would be problems. However, I did spend some time online looking for something a bit less hysterical and a little more scientific than something that says CFLs and other modern technologies are bad. You should embrace CFLs and other good for the planet technologies with open eyes. The best post I found on these issues is one entitled, “Directory:Compact Fluorescent Lighting (CFL) Downsides.” If someone else has a non-hysterical source of additional information, I’d be happy to address it in another post.

I’d welcome verifiable tips from other people. I verified each of these tips against three sources (including government sites when available). That doesn’t mean that every tip will work for you personally, but most people find that these tips work for them. Let me know about any additional thoughts you have about CFLs at [email protected]

CFLs for Free

If you haven’t heard about the Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL) by now, then you haven’t been paying much attention. They’re talked about on billboards, the television, radio, magazines, and in stores. In fact, it seems as if you can’t escape the CFL. Yet, many people are still buying the old incandescent bulbs created many years ago by Edison. Yes, incandescent bulbs were a marvel at the time, but today they’re costing you money.

A CFL is basically a fluorescent tube light put into a compact form. They consume considerably less energy than incandescent bulbs and last longer too. When I talk to people about CFLs, the biggest complaint I hear is that they cost so much money to buy. (The second biggest is that CFLs output harsh light or that the bulbs have a short life expectancy, neither of which is true any longer.) Of course, the expense is a legitimate complaint—one that I plan to address in this post.

Rebecca and I have switched our entire house to CFLs. When we first moved into our home, our average monthly bill was over $120.00 a month. Today, due to a number of energy saving techniques, we often get by for $50.00 a month despite a lot of price increases over the years. CFLs are a big part of that savings.

There are some tricks you can use to make the changeover a lot more palatable. Start by investing in high quality CFLs. Avoid the cheap Chinese knockoffs—get a good bulb from GE or Sylvania, even though the initial cost is higher. Track the amount the bulb saves you each month. You can do that quite simply by checking your bill for a reduction or you can do things more scientifically. Keep a log of how long you use the bulb each day for a month—this represents the hours you use the bulb, then use this equation:

Savings = ((Bulb Watts / 1000) * Hours) * KWH Rate

Let’s say that you replace a 100 watt bulb with a CFL equivalent and you use the bulb for 4 hours each evening for a 30 day month. Your KWH rate (available from your electric bill) is $0.12. The new bulb takes only 26 watts. The original cost of using that bulb is:

((100 / 1000) * 120) * 0.12 or $1.44 per month

The cost of the new bulb is:

((26 / 1000) * 120) * 0.12 or $0.37 per month

Your savings are $1.07 per month from just that one bulb. OK, you can pocket that $1.07 and buy half a cup of coffee with it, or you can put it aside. In one year you’ll save enough money to buy a 12 pack of 100 watt CFL replacements for free (at least, you will if you shop smart). Now you can replace 12 incandescent bulbs and it won’t cost anything.

Here’s the payoff. Each of those replacements will also save on your electric bill. If you use each of those bulbs for the same amount of time each day, your savings increase to $13.91 each month, which means that you can buy the next package of CFLs in a month and end up with around $1.47 in change.

As you get new bulbs that haven’t cost you a penny because you would have spent that money on incandescent bulbs anyway, you can quickly replace all of those incandescent bulbs with CFLs that last longer, produce the same quality of light, and reduce your electric bill.

If you are interested in reducing your electric bill further, then you might want to consider using someone like the best electric companies in Texas, as sometimes changing providers can help reduce your electricity bill as well (although, the best thing that you can do is get things like new bulbs, to help you when it comes to energy savings).

Now you can move onto other things. Start with a programmable thermostat. You’ll find that it saves you money each month as well. If you use your CFL savings to buy the thermostat, it won’t cost you anything. You can extend this to weather stripping and all kinds of other energy saving additions—each of which provides a payoff—an incentive for using it.

It took us about 5 years to replace everything we could in our house that would readily provide a payoff and achieve that energy savings that I talked about earlier. Now, we’re pocketing that extra money. The cost savings will help keep our costs low (and in this economy, who can afford to turn away extra cash).

Eventually, we’ll look at other technologies to reduce our carbon footprint. There are many technologies now that we’ve looked at carefully that don’t actually put any money in your pocket. For example, we looked at windmill technology. By the time you pay for your own personal windmill, not to mention batteries, inverter, and other requirements, you’ll have to wait way too long for payback. Hopefully, this technology will improve with time. The same problem occurs with solar power and some other promising technologies—they have no payoff right now (they don’t put money in your pocket).

The next technology that does look promising is solar heated hot water. Right now you still have to replace the system before you get a payoff (the longest lasting setup I could find is about five years—not long enough for payoff), but I think this is going to change in the near future. As the reliability of these systems improve and more people use them, but the cost will come down and there will be a payoff for those of us who have to be concerned about payoff.

There are also some changes we’ll make simply because we have to, even if there isn’t a payoff. For example, we’re going to have to replace our windows at some point. The old wooden windows are literally rotting in place. When we do make a replacement, we’ll look into buying a higher quality window that will at least partially pay back its installation cost in reduced energy costs. What I’ll try to do is balance the expected energy savings against the additional cost to find that magic point where I get a payback of a sort (the windows won’t ever pay for themselves, but the energy savings will ultimately make the windows less expensive than if I had bought cheaper windows).

Do you often find that the people selling energy saving devices miss the point? I find that the brochures stop short of telling people what the payoff is and how to obtain the devices without spending anything. There is usually some message about doing the planet some good and saving it for our children. These are certainly laudable goals, but the question that concerns me most is, “What’s in it for me?” In our case, it has turned out to be about $70.00 per month—well worth the effort involved. Let me know your thoughts on using energy saving devices at [email protected].

Fun is Where You Find It! (Part 2)

One of my more popular previous posts is Fun is Where You Find It! In this post, I suggested that family crafting can provide a source of cheap entertainment. Finding crafting activities that the entire family can enjoy is productive from a number of perspectives, not the least of which is promoting communication between family members. Of course, not every activity has to be craft related. Every year Rebecca and I put together a number of jigsaw puzzles. They’re inexpensive, require a few hours to complete as a minimum, and also promote communication. We discuss all sorts of things while putting our puzzles together.

One of the complaints about jigsaw puzzles is that they’re boring. In order to make the jigsaw puzzle interesting, it has to have a twist. Some have jigsaws with a theme or find a way to make their family pictures into puzzles. A simple Google search for ‘Turn Picture into puzzle‘ reveals a whole host of options, but for us, we liked our twist to come with a theme. The glow in the dark puzzle offered such a twist, but it was probably more complex than the average family would want to do and the subject matter was along the lines of a Gothic image that many people would dislike (it was of several women walking through a medieval forest at night to a party of some sort). Families will also want to avoid the double-sided and 3D puzzles because they can prove difficult to complete. Some of the jigsaw puzzles we’ve done are quite exotic. We put one together that glows in the dark and some are works of art that we’ve displayed for weeks on the dining room table before begrudgingly packing it away. A few have been oddly shaped or had other special features. In a few cases, we’ve even discussed using Mod Podge to preserve our treasure for all time, but have never quite made it to that point. Should we ever decide to do so, we could easily frame our treasure for everyone to see. Given the number of puzzles we do though, it’s unlikely that any particular puzzle will prove so spectacular that we’ll actually go this extra step.

However, a puzzle we just completed could prove interesting to quite a few people, Murder at Bedford Manor. You put the puzzle together, read an associated booklet that contains the basic story, and then look at the completed puzzle for clues as to who committed the murder.

The puzzle took about 22 hours for two people to complete and solving the murder required another 3 hours, for a total of 25 hours of fun for the low cost of $26.00. Where else can you entertain two people for 25 hours at a little over $1.00 an hour? We actually worked on a 1,000 piece version of the puzzle, but the 500 piece version will probably work better with a family that has younger children with shorter attention spans. The point is that you need not spend vast sums to have fun–a good time can be had for just a few dollars, which is perfect for the self-sufficient family on a budget. What is your favorite jigsaw puzzle? Let me know at [email protected].

Health Benefits of Self-Sufficiency (Part 2)

One of my earliest posts on self-sufficiency touted the health benefits of this form of living. I most definitely stand by that post–anything you can do to improve your health is good. In the time since I wrote that post, I’ve gotten critical illness insurance quotes, looked into any illnesses common in my family, improved my diet even more, had more frequent doctor check-ups and lost still more weight – and I now control my diabetes using diet alone. In fact, I no longer take any sort of medication to manage health issues. I’m still not out of the woods–nor is my wife. We both know that we have further to go if we want this lifestyle to produce the desired results. However, it’s nice to see the progress that we’ve made. We’re intending to have the condition of our health regularly checked over by services that can be provided by Southwest Care or a similar health clinic to ensure we are always progressing in the right direction.

Some people are under the wrongful assumption, however, that simply changing diet, losing weight, and living healthier will undo the wrongs of the past. My situation is a case in point. Losing weight has actually caused a health problem in my case and I recently had to have my gallbladder removed to solve the problem. Many sites tell you that rapid weight loss will cause the formation of gallstones, but this isn’t quite true. Every medical professional I’ve talked with has told me outright that any weight loss greater than 50 pounds can result in gallstones. If you’re diabetic, the gallstones are especially troublesome because they can cause problems with the pancreas–an organ already overextended by diabetes. Certainly, my 4 pound per month average weight loss isn’t rapid and well within the recommended guidelines. My take on all this is that there is no free lunch–if you’ve abused your body you’re going to pay a price for it.

However, in the grand scheme of things, losing a gallbladder is certainly preferable to the problems I’d experience if I remained at my former weight. Diabetics have all kinds of increased health risks, including loss of eyesight, heart troubles, kidney damage, and nerve damage. Getting my weight and diabetes under control was the right thing to do, even if it cost me a gallbladder to do it. You can easily live without a gallbladder, but you can’t live without a heart and life is far less liveable without eyes. In fact, if you’re living a healthy lifestyle, you’re unlikely to even notice that the gallbladder is gone once you get over the surgery.

What bothers me in all this is that the medical profession is lax about telling anyone the potential consequences of a seemingly healthy decision. Perhaps the thought is that any discussion of anything negative will only discourage people so that even fewer will take a positive course of action. Everything you do has a consequence, so it’s best to be informed. I hadn’t gotten very far along my current path when I discovered this potentially negative side effects of weight loss, but I had to conduct my own research to obtain the information. Of course, that’s my recommendation to you as well. You need to go into any health-related decision with eyes open. In my case, I made an informed decision and realized early there were risks.

So, what does this all have to do with self-sufficiency? Getting rid of the medications, learning to eat right, exercising nearly every day–all of these goals are part of being self-sufficient. As part of my self-sufficient lifestyle I’ll maintain more of my muscle mass far later in life (my 78 year old uncle can still lift 100 pound bags of feed), but I’ll pay for that ability with additional joint wear, so I imagine that I’ll need hip and/or knee surgery at some point. A self-sufficient lifestyle isn’t for everyone, perhaps you prefer the gym or simply a walk in the park, but getting healthier is a benefit to everything–most importantly yourself. I encourage you though to research your decisions and make the best decisions you can, realizing that there are always risks that you’ll have to deal with as part of that decision. How are your healthier living goals progressing? Let me know at [email protected].