Saving Money While Stuck At Home

by Simon 23 Replies latest jw friends

  • Simon
    Simon

    So you're stuck at home, you may be worried about your income, welcome to the world of filling your stuck-in-the-house time with saving some money!

    Here in Canada, our energy costs are going up because we have a carbon tax. Today, in the middle of the crisis, Trudeau is raising it by 50%, probably as some perverse "thank you" to all the truckers delivering vital goods. Insane.

    Not only does it add to the costs of products such as food and groceries, it is also added to the cost of electricity that you consume which may be used for some heating and of course to power all those electronics.

    In fact, you probably have so many electronics, more than you may realize, and many are plugged in all the time.

    What you may also be unaware of is how much power some of them consume, even when they appear to be switched off (or rather in 'standby').

    What you can do is buy a power monitor. This plugs in between the device and the outlet and shows how much power the device is consuming. They usually cost $20-$40 and will be like this:

    https://www.amazon.com/Poniie-PN2000-Electricity-Electrical-Consumption/dp/B0777H8MS8

    Go round all your devices and see how much power they consume when the device is in use and also when it isn't. Some continue to consume a fair amount of power and this "phantom" use can inflate your electricity bill.

    Work out the cost of your electricity including not just the Kw/h price but also factoring in distribution and tax costs. Then multiply that to work out how much the device costs to leave plugged in 24x7.

    Some devices could be costing $100's per year just to be plugged in all the time. When you find some that are expensive, consider getting a switched outlet or even upgrading the device - it could work out less expensive over several years to upgrade a TV or other appliance to one that consumes less and have proper standby with a low drain.

    There are some meters such as https://sense.com/ that can monitor your whole house from the breaker box. Some even try to identify individual appliances from the electrical noise using AI, to vary degrees of success judging by accounts, but just making the immediate consumption visible goes a long way to reducing how much you use.

    You can also get smart sockets similar to the plug-in meter than combine the metering ability with home automation to turn it on an off. These are quite expensive though but hopefully prices will reduce over time.

    Remember when your parents would go round turning everything off and unplugging things in an evening? Turns out they may not have been crazy after all!

  • Phizzy
    Phizzy

    Thanks for the advice Simon. Here in the U.K we don't have a price hike at present on utilities, but for Old Farts like me, on a small pension, any money saving advice is much appreciated.

    I have found that because of self-isolating and all the spare time, I have been saving money, ordering On-Line out of necessity, but finding ever cheaper deals for all sorts of things, even including delivery. Just one example, we love a decent Wine, but can't afford top-notch stuff, but I am now importing direct from Vineyards in Portugal, saving about 20% per bottle on the stuff we used to get anyway from the Supermarket, and delivered too ! There are a number of other things, going to the manufacturer, or their chief agent direct, O.K, we have to order in greater quantity, but it is all non-perishable, and cheaper and delivered.

    It just shows that really I should have put some effort in, and not been so lazy, before this all kicked off !

  • Sigfrid Mallozzi
    Sigfrid Mallozzi

    Trudeau should pay Canadians a refund since everything is shut down because of the Corny Virus and it has resulted in a drastic drop in air and water pollution and you have voluntarily been assisting in the greenhouse co2 gasses.

  • Simon
    Simon
    Just one example, we love a decent Wine, but can't afford top-notch stuff

    Another money saving tip - buy a home-wine making kit. Here they cost about $60 for the one-off equipment and the kits for the wine (that you buy each time) start at about $40. That makes about 30 bottles of $15-$20 per bottle equivalent wine so you save money very quickly.

    Just like with the electricity monitor, you could always club together with friends and share the cost instead of buying one each.

    Trudeau should pay Canadians a refund since everything is shut down because of the Corny Virus

    It's nonsense - adding a tax to something doesn't do anything for the environment because most usage is essential, it just becomes a drag on the economy and affects the poor the hardest as all their input costs rise (food, going to work etc...)

    Maybe Trudeau will create a Covid-19 tax to try to prevent it ... it would make as much sense as the carbon tax.

  • Simon
    Simon

    Looks like prices are already coming down, just got 2x smart plugs that you control from an app and include energy monitoring for $19.99 CAD from Costco.

    https://www.cesmarthome.com/LA-WF7.html

    https://www.costco.ca/ce-smart-home-wi-fi-smart-plug-with-energy-monitoring%2c-2-pack.product.100476838.html

  • road to nowhere
    road to nowhere

    Spending extra on groceries. No comparison shopping

  • RubaDub
    RubaDub

    Spending extra on groceries. No comparison shopping

    road to nowhere ...

    Same here. We are saving some money by not eating out for lunch as much but spending more by my wife insisting on having food delivered. You don't see all of the specials (a lot of 2 x 1 specials at our supermarket). The website only shows the standard prices. So if I buy one brand of pasta and could have bought something similar and get 2 x 1, I don't see some of the specials.

    Plus, I can't pick and choose the fresh stuff (lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, bean sprouts, oregano, parsley, cilantro, lemon grass, beets, kale, swiss chard, fennel, mangos, pineapples, limes, kiwi, strawberries, bananas, etc. etc. etc.). I could go on and on.

    I can't pick and choose. If something looks good and is the right price, I buy it. If not, I pick something else. If the strawberries don't look good or too expensive, I'll buy blueberries or blackberries or whatever looks good.

    Now I feel at the mercy of some kid shopping for me and in the end spending a lot more.

    Plus, there is no way in hell I am letting some kid pick out a piece of fresh fish for me, let alone pick out a whole fish and try to explain how to look at the eyes and how to press the side of the fish and see if it springs back quickly or how to determine how fresh it is.

    Fortunately, I may just wait until my wife is on a long business call for an hour or so and slip out the back door and walk to the supermarket (about 10 minutes away) since she hid my car keys.

    I'll see if I can pull it off. If not, I do have a tent if I get caught and have to sleep outside ... lol.

    Rub a Dub

  • Black Sheep
    Black Sheep

    Constantly switching off and on expensive equipment can come back to bite you when they break down early because of the expansion and contraction that occurs in the circuit boards every time you cut the power to them and let them cool down.

  • Sigfrid Mallozzi
    Sigfrid Mallozzi

    If you remove the electric meter and turn it upside down and reinstall it, or put a copper wire from one side to the other this will "cut down on electricity used".

  • stan livedeath
    stan livedeath

    home wine making. easy once you get into it. no need for kits--unless you want something a bit special. for a nice white wine--i used supermarket fruit juice. 1 litre of apple juice to 1 kilo of sugar--dissolved in warm water to make up a gallon container ( demi john ). add yeast and nutrient, which you can buy online or in home brew shops. make sure to fit an airlock or it will go bad ( vinegar). .. leave it to do its magic.

    once it has stopped fermenting, say 4-6 weeks, syphon the clear wine off the sediment. its drinkable --but better left for a while. you can experiment with lots of varieties.: orange, pineapple--grape even ! fully fermented out it will be about 15%proof.

    i used 5 gallon fermenting barrels, always had 4 on the go--and a dozen or so 1 gallon demi johns. did it for years.

    i'm still alive, but i dont make it any more. rarely drink wine now.

Share this

Google+
Pinterest
Reddit