Green Light For Getting Rich
The following is a guest post from KuleKat.
Let me straightaway apologise for drawing you in with a misleading heading. I’m not talking about green lights as in traffic lights, and nor are you going to get rich by reading this. A little “richer” maybe, but not exactly pre-crash banker, snout in the trough, rich as Croesus, rich.
Let me explain… there are two basic techniques for increasing your disposable income (or getting richer). Plan A is to increase your earnings and Plan B is to decrease your expenditure.
The upside of increasing what comes in is that there is no theoretical limit to how much it might be possible to earn; the downside being that it is hard to do. Whereas decreasing outgoings is something you probably do have some amount of control over, even if there is a pretty obvious limit to how much extra disposable dosh this can liberate.
I therefore put before you, readers of this blog, Exhibit A: the electricity bill. Everyone has one and everybody wishes it would go on a diet. But in fact, cutting this bloated monster down to size is quite simple. It boils down to understanding three things:
- A large part of the average domestic electricity bill is due to electric lighting;
- The cost of electric lighting is effectively the cost of electricity – the running cost;
- Low energy lighting can slice a nifty chunk off this running cost.
Low energy lighting is easy to install, will often pay for itself within a year and will save a great deal of money over time. As I pointed out in an earlier post, avoid CFL light bulbs if possible and consider switching to LED lighting instead.
LED kitchen lighting in place of halogen downlights is a good starting place. For general lighting applications (other than spotlights) then Cree LED globe light bulbs give out as much all round light as a traditional 100w incandescent bulb. The only caveat I would add regarding LED lights is that you very much get what you pay for and to obtain high quality, low energy lighting that will last for a great many years you need to invest in quality, brand named products.
The savings from using LED lighting are not difficult to calculate. As a rough guide LED lights consume 1/10th of the electricity of their incandescent equivalents. So assuming you retrofit LEDs on a like-for-like luminosity basis (i.e. replace a 50w incandescent with a 5w LED) you will cut 90% of the cost of running that light fitting.
Here’s some boring math. Assume your electricity spend on lighting averages $1,000 per annum and you replace half your lights with LEDs. Your bill now drops to: $500 + ($500 * 0.10) = $550. Replace the whole lot and that $1,000 suddenly looks more like $100. Not bad huh?
Clearly your own mileage will vary, and I haven’t accounted for the write-down of the initial investment (buying the LEDs). Still, as a piece of fun, you could figure out your own potential savings then consider how large a before-tax pay hike you would need to demand (and secure) in order to match this using Plan A.
Personally, for an easier and more assured outcome my money’s on Plan B and LED lighting.
KuleKat is interested in the defining features of our times (climate change, oil depletion, technology and so on) and what it all means and more importantly what WE as individuals can do about it.
Photo Source: BabyDinosaur via Creative Commons
