Brighten Your Life and Lighten Your Spending

Yesterday I was at Home Depot getting Weatherstripping (see yesterday's post), and I had been thinking about replacing a few light bulbs. I am not crazy about CFLs because of their mercury content and we have some dimmable fixtures in our house, so I hadn't really moved away from incandescents.

My money guru Mr. Money Mustache got me thinking about how much money I'm frittering away, so back to my Home Depot trip. I passed by a display with LED bulbs, a two pack for $14. I got two packs, took them home and began contemplating which fixtures are used the most per day. You know how bathrooms have those strip fixtures with four bulbs each? We already only used half the bulbs, but I unscrewed all but one incandscent in the master bath, and in addition I put an LED bulb (of the same wattage: 60 watts). When my husband got home, he said, "It looks brighter in here." Test passed! I put the other three in commonly used locations, also unscrewing extra incandescent bulbs. So we have the same amount of useable light and will pay six times less on lighting costs, according to this article. And, per this article, one LED bulb lasts 11 years, which is a whopping 50 times longer than an incandescent!*

I called my sister to share this exciting news (well she called me but that's neither here nor there), and she said, "Yeah, my husband's been saying we need to go energy efficient too, but he can't get over the up front costs of a more expensive bulb." She said she'd have to drop $49 (at least) to do the lights in her house, and he'd definitely notice that.

So I said, "Here's what you do. Instead of going to Wal-Mart and buying pants (off the cuff example), get a two pack of LEDs instead. Replace them slowly over a few paychecks and he'll never feel it, and he'll be saving SIX TIMES what he's currently paying on lighting costs."  (So even if a kid breaks on once in a while because she has young kids and open fixtures, they'd still come out ahead.) She liked that idea. I think he will too, once he notices the decrease in his electricity bill.

*See that on the lower left of the pic? That says 'estimated energy cost $1.20 per year'!! For my kwh rate it would be $1.35. The same use of an incandescent 60 watt bulb (using my area's price per kwh) is $8.08! My brother in law will want me to figure in the actual purchase price of the bulb, so I spent the last agonizing thirty minutes trying to figure that one out. The LED bulb costs the same amount for one year as running the incandescent if you figure in the purchase price of the bulb, THEN you save $6.73 per bulb per year for the life of the bulb, which is 11 or more years. :)