Doing it cheaper - lighting and ceiling fans

About 5 years ago, my husband and I started discussing LED lighting.  At the time, LED light bulbs were very, very, expensive.  They're also more energy efficient than CFLs, and they don't contain Mercury (I'm not even going to go there).  We've watched, we've waited, the price has come down quite a bit.  So this spring we decided it was time to replace a couple of insanely ugly light fixtures with ceiling fans.  Ceiling fans are awesome when it comes to keeping the heating and cooling bills down.  We looked at a good number of fans, but we leaned hard toward those with LED light kits.

Does this new ceiling fan with LED lights produce as much light as the monstrous 20+ light bulb chandelier it replaced?  No, but I wasn't expecting it to (honestly was praying it wouldn't, that thing was bright, it was easier to stare at the Sun than that chandelier fully lit).  It does produce ample light for the space though.  And it's a ceiling fan, so it keeps me cooler than the chandelier.  And, even with the lights on and the fan on full, it still draws no more power than the monstrosity.  If I'm using it just as a light, it draws less than a 1/10th what the chandelier was drawing for power.  Lighting is an admitted small percentage of our overall electric usage, but if I'm saving $25 a year on my power bill because of a couple of LED lighting, I'm good with that.  The energy draw of the fan is less than the energy draw for those last few degrees of heating and cooling I'm not needing to achieve, which should trivially save me $100 a year (and quite probably a good bit more).

It's been a particularly temperate (read cold and rainy) summer here thus far.  While I've been running the A/C in the baby's room (set to 78 degrees), and in the office to prevent computer overheating (set to full blast as soon as my husband boots his computer because that thing can jack the ambient room temp by 5 degrees in about 15 minutes), I haven't yet run the A/C in my bedroom.  Even on the dozen or so nights where the temperature was above 85 degrees hours after sundown, I haven't really needed the A/C to be comfortable.  There was 1 night, just one, where I seriously thought about it.  I decided against it because the problem was more the greater than 60% humidity than it was the heat, and I was betting on it to rain overnight.  It didn't.  It was a rough night.  I had to wash the sheets the next day, and before I could get them out to line dry them, it was pouring.

Doing it cheaper - at work

I commit a good bit of thought to everyday actions.  I ask myself "is there a way to do this cheaper?"

Frequently, the answer is yes.

Back when I worked in the cubicle jungle, I broke myself of the habit of ordering lunch everyday in favor of bringing my own from home.  I took it a step further by storing some shelf stable foodstuffs for those off days when I'd forget my lunch.  This easily saved me $5 a day.  Then I worked on my coffee habit.  I wasn't about to give up my daily cup, but could I do it cheaper?  Yes, yes I could.  A couple of the other ladies were in when I told them I wanted to get a coffee pot so we could brew our own.  I'd been spending $1.50 a day on my midmorning cup, but for $1.50 a week I could go in on some high quality coffee.  Next, my afternoon soda fix was costing me 75 cents a can.  I popped across the street from my office, to the drugstore, on my lunch break and grabbed a full price 12 pack for $5.  I kept the 12 pack at my desk, and dropped 1 can in the office fridge in the morning.  I saved 33 cents a can.  I started watching the sales at the stores, and got in the habit of grabbing 12 packs when they went on sale 2 for $5.  Now I was saving 54 cents a can.  I was saving almost $40 a week, and I wasn't depriving myself at all.

Bringing your own lunch to work is often the first suggestion people get when they start looking for ways to save money on food.  Even if you're not packing leftovers (generally the cheapest lunch option), a homemade sandwich or salad will be several dollars cheaper than buying one.

I'm not just interested in saving money on food.  I want to save money on everything.  This is the first in a series.  Stay tuned.