One possible opportunity for further savings, especially if you enjoy fresh produce, is through community-supported agriculture.  The way this works is as follows:

• A farm offers shares of his production for sale, ahead of the production and growing season.
• People buy shares for a set price.  This offsets the farm’s operating expenses prior to the production season.
• As the crops are harvested (or the products made) each person receives their share(s), usually over several months.

There are some advantages of getting produce through community-supported agriculture arrangements.  First, the food is fresh.  It doesn’t get much fresher.  Second, there is the opportunity to understand exactly what goes into the food:  what kind of fertilization, what kind of feed, what kind of pest control, what kind of irrigation methods, etc.  This creates confidence that the food is wholesome because the growing method is transparent.  Third, it supports the local economy through job creation and maintenance.

All well and good, but is community-supported agriculture a bargain?

This arrangement is certainly good for the farm.  A share might give a lot of produce, or only a little produce, or possibly nothing, depending on weather and other acts of God.  That’s an inherent risk of the purchase of a share.  Regardless, the farm gets the money.  It’s a bit like the farm selling a futures contract, but the quantity is left undetermined.

But let’s say that the weather cooperates, and the crops grow well.  Some other factors come into play:

• Are the crops what you like to eat?  You might end up getting eggplant and turnips at 3 cents per pound, but if you can’t stand eggplant or turnips, you’re out of luck.  Check into what the typical crops are.
• Is the typical amount of food too much?  Your share is your share.  Can you go through all of the food that you’ve already bought?  If not, then it may be more economical just to buy it in the store.
• Is the typical amount of food too little for what you pay?  A CSA arrangement should be able to give information about what was delivered for a share in previous seasons.  Check out what was given, and see if the typical quantities are worth the price.
• How far do you have to travel to pick up your share?  One CSA arrangement we looked at was from a farm about 45 minutes away.  The farm wouldn’t deliver the food; we would have had to pick it up.  The gas would have nearly doubled the cost of the produce.  If the farm were nearby, then this wouldn’t have been an issue.  With gas north of $3 per gallon, this can be a significant consideration.

Buying a share in community-supported agriculture may be a bargain, but it can just as easily not be.  In either case, though, there are the indirect benefits that come from supporting a local farm that might be very important to an individual.  Then, cost may not be the big consideration.

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A little less than a year ago, sixteen states banned the sale of dishwasher detergents that contain more than 0.5% phosphorus.  My state is one of those states.  (For the record, the states are Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.)  Phosphates, particularly sodium tripolyphosphate (STPP), is an effective rinsing agent, but it also promotes algae growth to the point for which it can choke local water supplies.  So, in the name of environmental concerns (which I’m not dismissing as unimportant) the sale of phosphate-based dishwashing and laundry detergents has been curtailed by legislation and voluntary compliance from manufacturers.

All well and good, but the low-phosphate and phosphate-free detergents just don’t work as well as the higher phosphate content detergents.  They don’t rinse the grime and food away as well as the older detergents.  Because the change was made suddenly and without much fanfare, owner first suspected that something was wrong with their dishwasher because (a) the dishes weren’t getting as clean, and (b) the dishwasher was malfunctioning in odd ways because the grime and food weren’t being rinsed away effectively.

Like I mentioned at the top of this post, I just learned about this change in the formulation, so perhaps you didn’t know about it either.  You might want to check your dishwashing detergent package.  If you live in the sixteen states listed above, it will almost certainly say “low phosphate” or “phosphate free” somewhere on the package (because stores in these states have to sell that stuff).  However, for the other 34 states, you may be buying the low-phosphate version anyway!

In short:  If your dishwasher has been performing poorly within the past year, there’s a good chance nothing is wrong with the dishwasher, and you need to re-investigate how you clean your dishes, because the new formula has moved everyone’s cheese. (You know about moving the cheese, right?)

What to do, then?  Here are some suggestions.  Please note the disclaimer on the last one.

• Investigate the new best of breed dishwashing detergents. The new ones aren’t as good as the old ones, but a few are very good.  Try them to see if they work better than the brand you may be using now.
• More elbow grease. Not really an appealing solution, but less caked-on food going into the dishwasher means less caked-on food that needs to be rinsed away.
• Pre-soak the dishes, especially if the food is starchy. Loosening up the junk helps.
• Consider other rinsing agents like white vinegar. Some people have seen decent results with this trick, and have said also that it helps glasses look like new.
• Consider just carefully adding the phosphates back in if you’re allowed? If your stores can’t sell dishwashing detergent with phosphates, it may still be within your local laws to obtain the phosphate compound, put it back in yourself, and use it.  Disclaimer: I have not tried this myself.  It’s up to you to do any and all legwork to make sure that you can do it legally, safely, and correctly.  I cannot do that for you.  All I’m saying is that this may be an option for you.  It may also end up not being an option for you.

Some of the same arguments may hold for your clothes washer, too, though phosphates have been removed from laundry detergent for longer.

When something goes wrong, it’s important to figure out what changed.  In the case of suddenly dirty dishes over the past year or so, it’s probably not the dishwasher breaking.

Thanks to Control Your Cash for including this post in the Carnival of Personal Finance!

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It’s always a challenge to put a unique spin on frugal living, because the ever-present theme of “living below your means” tends to be as exciting as watching a couple of pennies turn green.  Mr. Yeager wrote a book on frugal living that was fun to read.  Mr. Yeager is a lively writer with a delightfully corny sense of humor.  The bulk of the book is his conversations with various and sundry cheapskates across the nation and the lessons we can learn from them.  Throughout he’s peppered “Cheap Shots” — little money-saving tips to which he’s affixed a dollar amount for the savings that you, the reader, can realize by carrying through.

The book has sixteen chapters:

1. The Phrenology of Frugality: 16 Idiosyncrasies of the Cheapskate Mind
2. Good Habits Are Hard to Break
3. Money Management, Cheapskate Style
4. The Oxygen Mask Approach to Raising Kids (think airplanes here)
5. Thrift: The Greenest Shade of Green
6. Clean Your Plate . . . and Save $1,500 a Year
7. Come on and Take a FREE Ride
8. We Can’t Retire.  We Went out to Dinner Instead.
9. The Joys of Horse Trading
10. Break the Mortgage Chains that Bind Thee
11. Bon Appe-cheap! Come on into the Cheapskate’s Kitchen
12. Don’t Laugh.  It Gets Me There . . . and It’s Paid For.
13. Cheapskates Come out of the Closet
14. Insurance: Betting on Yourself
15. Cheapskates Just Wanna Have Fun
16. Back to the Future?

Everyone picks out different nuggets from books with a lot of good ideas in them, and this book is no exception.  Here are a few that rang true with me:

• Buying things made out of 93% post-consumer waste isn’t green. Not buying the stuff in the first place is.  Daniel Newman, a person Yeager quotes in the book in Chapter 5, page 103, said: “Cheap equals green.  I’d go a step further and say that cheap is the only green.  It’s not about consuming green products.  It’s about consuming less.”
• “Don’t sell yourself short by naming a price.” (Chapter 9, page 139) This is in reference to haggling, and hearkens back to when I read Roger Dawson’s Secrets of Power Negotiating: The first person who speaks loses.  I recently bought a drum set from a pawn shop.  The marked price was $450.  If push came to shove I’d probably have paid $425, but I asked the guy what he could do on the set.  He came in at $325.  I would have paid $100 more than I needed to if I had offered my price first.
• “Shopping isn’t a cheapskate sport.” (Chapter 1, page 25-26)  This one hit me at my core presents on The Interwebs:  “There’s a common perception — a misperception, in my experience — that “cheapskate” is synonymous with “bargain hunter.”  Ouch, that hurts a little bit.   But the point is well-taken: The drive to not shop at all is more cheapskate-ly than the drive to shop for the best price.

I recommend Jeff Yeager’s book The Cheapskate Next Door.  No doubt just one good idea that hits your thrifty bone in the book will pay for the book many times over.

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At our other house, we were charged a flat fee for usage under a certain number of gallons every two months.  We never hit that amount, so our water bill was always the same, and we didn’t have to be super-careful with what we used.  Not that we went out of our way to waste it, but water conservation was off of our radar because it didn’t impact us financially.

Now, though, the sewer charge is based directly on our monthly usage: the more we use, the more we pay.  Being a bit more careful with water is back on the radar again.

Enter Sesame Street with a water conservation message

My daughter and I watch little clips on YouTube.  Sesame Street has officially put a bunch of their clips up, and one of them was this one dealing with water conservation. It’s pretty cute (if a little bit exaggerated).  Basic idea is that a kid leaves the water running while he brushes his teeth and washes his face.  While the water goes down the drain, the water level in a lake goes down, threatening the fish that lives there.  The fish calls the boy up on the phone and asks him not to waste water.

Now, when I catch my daughter leaving the water running, I tell her to “remember the fish” and she knows exactly what I’m talking about.  Hopefully it won’t be too long before she remembers the fish all by herself.

Time spent getting kids to be more mindful of conserving rather than wasting is time well spent.

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I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that we scored some great Mr. Rebates savings with our purchases at The Disney Store for our daughter’s Christmas (and birthday) presents.  Well, after taking inventory of her doll collection, she’s gotten to the point where some of the dolls she used to play with aren’t being played with much anymore.  There’s nothing wrong with that, but it happens nonetheless.

So, with some very mild encouragement from her mother — it didn’t take much at all — our daughter shared some of her collection with her friends.  (Our friends have two daughters around our daughter’s age; one is only nine days older.)

Looking back, there had been a number of times that we’ve shared things that were of limited use to us, but much greater use to them.

Sharing saves. It saves in a couple of ways:

• Sharing saves money. If the sharing works both ways, then it saves both parties money.  Both parties get use out of the same item, and it doesn’t have to be bought twice.  Spending less is one of the basics you can fall back on to get your finances under control.
• Sharing saves landfill space for a while longer. Most things eventually end up in the trash, but passing stuff on to other people — especially plastic things like dolls — pushes that day into the future.  Giving it to someone that you know can use it is even better than giving it to a thrift shop, because they might already have twenty of what you’re giving them, and they don’t need twenty-one.  It’s the green thing to do, if nothing else.  (Personally, I think we’ll run out of cheap oil far more quickly than we’ll run out of space to throw away the plastics, but no reason to trash the planet just because we can, right?)
• Sharing saves a measure of sanity. Getting rid of stuff has its own advantages: some of the visual noise goes away, and some of the stuff that’s weighing you down gets lifted off of your shoulders.  My parents-in-law are far better at this than I am at the moment, and it creates its own peace in their home and in their lives not to have boxes and boxes of things.

I wouldn’t be mercenary and eye all of your friends’ possessions to see if they want to part with them but looking for mutual opportunities to trade stuff on occasion is a good way to save in a number of important ways.

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I had considered the costs of electricity and manufacturing, but neglected to consider water costs.  Commenter “First Step” points this out:

I think you’re overlooking the real reason that the “efficient” washers are better for the environment–much lower water usage. If you live in an area where water is scarce and/or expensive, you will recoup the cost of the more expensive washer very quickly. We bought the $1000 washer 6 years ago when we moved to an area where water cost more than twice what we had been paying. On water savings alone, we recouped the cost of the washer in about 3 years. Our washer uses less than 10 gallons per load versus 40 for the previous model.

Since water is becoming scarce in more and more areas, expect to see more incentives to get the old style washers out of use.

I admit that water cost hasn’t been an issue where we live. We pay a minimum monthly fee plus a per-gallon charge after we exceed a certain amount. The only extra costs we’ve incurred on our water bill are for dumb things like forgetting to pay on time. We’ve never used so much water in one month that we’ve had to pay extra, so that’s probably the reason why I didn’t even consider the water costs.

Buying a water-efficient washer makes marginal financial sense for people in my situation, but I know  now not everyone is in the same boat.  If you pay for every gallon you use each month, then water efficiency becomes a factor.  Or, if you have a large family or use a lot of water for some other reason, and end up paying above and beyond some flat fee each month, then water efficiency becomes a factor.

“First Step” says to expect more incentives to get old-style washers out of use, but they’re not necessary.  Supply and demand should do this naturally.  As in, “Gee, my water bill doubled after they changed their pricing model.  Let’s look at payback time for a newer washer.”  Or, more directly, “Gee, I can only use 2,000 gallons of water this month, and my clothes washer consumes 400 of those gallons.  What about getting one that only uses 100 gallons?”

Anyway, bottom line is to take water use, as well as how you have to pay for that usage, when deciding what kind of washer to get.

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I mentioned in the roundup that we bought a used clothes washer and dryer.  We found the advertisement on our local Craigslist, went up, and found the set to be in very good shape.  A comparable set today would cost between $800 and $900, and we bought his two-year-old set for $400.

An $800-$900 washer/dryer set isn’t completely bottom of the line, but it’s not top of the line, either.  A water-efficient, energy-efficient top-load washer, plus a matching dryer, runs about $1,000.  The washer model at this level is Energy Star rated.  (The dryer isn’t, but I think that’s because dryers aren’t efficient in general.  That’s what clotheslines are for.)

There’s a big push for people to upgrade their appliances to more efficient models.  The government is even chipping in 30% of the upgrade cost on selected appliances, up to $1,500, in the form of a tax credit.  (Washers and dryers aren’t included.)  It would seem that we, and our greenness, took a step backwards by buying a used washer and dryer.

Well, it probably will not only less costly overall to get the used appliances instead of the new efficient ones, it will probably be greener, too. I’ll explain.  There are a couple of things to consider:  total cost, and total energy expended.

Let’s use these numbers, which are pretty close to what they were when we checked them out at Lowe’s.  The less-efficient set cost about $30 more per year to operate than the more-efficient set.  At a cost difference of $600 ($1,000 – $400) this means a break-even point of 20 years.  We’d be fortunate if either set lasted this long.  So, the difference in the total cost of ownership is a wash.  (Sorry.)

But what about total energy expended?  It’s true that I’ll burn more energy running the inefficient appliances, but that’s not the only consideration.  The energy-efficient appliances would have been brand-new, meaning they were constructed out of new materials.  This construction process is very costly in terms of energy. We’re giving the used appliances a second chance.  The appliances are already manufactured.  It’s a pretty green way to go, actually.  Why buy new when you can make do?  Why buy new when a place like RepairClinic.com will help you find the replacement parts you need?

It’s helpful to remember the second “R” of being green:  reduce, reuse, and recycle.  Used is great.  Take that, Energy Star!

Thanks to Cash Money Life for including this post in the Carnival of Personal Finance.

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I began to wonder what kind of money solar panels were going for.  So I hit up my trusty source: eBay.

I did a search for “solar panels” and checked the completed listings for items that sold.  I sorted from highest total price (final bid price plus shipping) to lowest.  Here’s what sold on the first 400 listings last night:

This is a very rough calculation, of course. I took new and used, monocrystalline and polycrystalline, with and without extra stuff, with cracks and without, all different brands, and just took the total cost and divided it by the total wattage to get the cost per watt. The average of the 84 auctions: $3.59 per watt.

How fast do solar panels pay for themselves? To figure this out we need to know how much electricity would cost elsewhere.  For us, it’s 9 cents per kilowatt-hour.  Let’s say that my power needs are 1 kw, 12 hours per day.  One kilowatt of solar panels will cost me $3,590, plus installation, which I have no clue, but let’s say that it brings up the cost to $5,000.  So, there I go, I’ve paid for my power needs.

If I pay 9 cents per kilowatt-hour, that’s $1.08 per 12 hours (day).  Diving this into $5,000 gives me a payback time between 12 and 13 years.  It’s a pretty expensive alternative at those prices.  Plus, I’m not even looking at power losses, cloudy days, tree shade, aging of the panels, etc.  It’s likely a better deal for people in sunnier states (and higher metered energy prices).

But on the other side of the equation, will power prices go up?  Will it be rationed?  Will it even be available?  This gets back to my friend’s original motivation:  self-sufficiency.  In any case, this is something to keep on the radar.

My analysis might use a little fine-tuning.  Any other things that are important to consider?

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We bought a unit and tried to put it in ourselves, but we ended up hiring someone to help us with it.  The folks who installed it answered a lot of questions we asked, and shared a bunch of tips.  Here’s what we learned from the experience:

1. Know when you don’t know. I found out that I didn’t really know enough to install it myself about half-way through the installation.  There is no shame in paying for competent help, because it will likely cost less in the long run.  We were glad we hired someone to help us.  I would have made a number of mistakes.
2. Don’t lay the water heater on its side when you take it home. It will probably say this on the box, but believe it!  Lowe’s said that they had gotten a lot of returns because one good bump while the water heater is on its side will ruin it.  It’s not designed to be sturdy on its side.  We were able to get away with it leaning a bit — actually, a lot — inside of our minivan, but I still had to drive carefully and take it out carefully when we got home.
3. If you buy plastic piping for the water leads, make sure it’s rated for hot water. Polyethylene (PE), acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS), and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) piping are not rated for hot water.  Chlorinated PVC (CPVC) is.
4. Get an aluminum pan 2″ wider than the base of the water heater and put the water heater in the pan. Install the drain pipe so that it goes from the pan right to the drain.  Twenty years down the road when it starts to go again, a slow-ish leak won’t flood your house.  It will just fill up the pan and go down the drain.
5. Drain the water out of the tank if at all possible, but try this if you can’t. A full 50-gallon tank weighs over a quarter ton.  We could only drain about 5 to 10 gallons out of ours before the water just stopped coming out.  (It was either a corroded drain valve, or too much sediment, or both.)  We had to get it out of the way down a couple of stairs.  Here’s the trick we used.  We had some wooden ramps saved from when we bought our lawn mower and needed to load it on to a truck to bring it home.  The ramps were constructed with a ramp kit like this and two long wooden boards.  We had enough room to rest the ramps on the top stair, down into our garage.  From there, we lifted one side of the (full, old) water heater and rolled it over to the ramps (by rolling I meant spun it on its base; it was mostly upright).  We were able to roll it onto the top of the ramps, and down the ramps into the garage.  From there it could be taken outside and tipped over when the water was cool enough.  If you feel the slightest bit edgy about moving these heavy objects around, get help.  It’s not worth permanently injuring yourself to be a hero. Seriously!
6. Know where the house water inlet valve is before you touch anything. Best to have the water pressure off if something breaks!  (Oh, and shut off the circuit breaker, too.  Test leads with a voltmeter to be sure it’s off.)
7. If you install new water inlet (outlet) leads, make sure that the water is always flowing down (up).  In other words, make sure the lead length isn’t so long that you have to run the inlet pipe back up before you attach it to the water heater.  If it’s too long, there is a reverse trapping effect.
8. Use Teflon® paste. Teflon tape will probably seal the threads on the inlet and outlet but paste will work better.
9. Once things are installed, fill the tank before turning on power to the unit. If the tank filaments fire before they’re surrounded by water, they’ll burn out very quickly and very messily.  The water cools them so that they don’t burn out.
10. After things are installed, occasionally exercise the water inlet valve, and the hot water outlet valve, but not the emergency pressure release valve. If the inlet and outlet valves are left to sit, the internal seals can corrode.  (My old inlet valve had corroded to the point where I couldn’t completely shut it off.)  However, don’t exercise the pressure release valve.  If a small piece of something were to get into that valve, it might not close completely, which would create a slow leak.
11. Remove sediment regularly. The people who installed ours said that once a month is what should be done, but that “no one really does that.”  Not removing sediment from the bottom causes the tank to corrode faster.  It’s probably what killed ours.
12. Oh, and don’t scald yourself. The people who installed ours could not set the temperature higher than 120 degrees Fahrenheit.  It’s the law in Virginia.  This is plenty hot enough, and it’s cheaper than keeping it at 125 or 130 degrees.

This is what we learned, and you may use them if you want, but they are no substitute for detailed knowledge, common sense, and professional help, if needed.  I give them freely, but I also assume no liability if you use them. They’re based on my very limited experience and on me talking with the guys installing my water heater for a few hours.  Nothing more, nothing less.

Having said that, if you can do the installation yourself and do it correctly, you stand to save several hundred dollars.

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It didn’t seem to get high enough for people to change their driving habits drastically — people were still sitting in the parking lot idling when it was over $3 per gallon — but it did get our attention.

A few days ago I drove to work with the window down to cool off the car instead of turning on the AC.  As I drove past the gas stations it got me thinking:  This recession is probably going to be the last hurrah for cheap gas. Oil prices, and gas prices, have nowhere to go but up:

• We’ll have a recovery (eventually). This will be a long, and hard, recession, but we’ll get out of it.  Once demand for “stuff” picks up again, we’ll need energy (oil) to get that stuff from one place to another.  That will drive its price up.
• We’ll have rising prices due to inflation. (Rising prices and inflation are not the same thing.)  All of that money that’s flooded into the banks over the past nine months will eventually be lent.  More dollars chasing the same amount of goods means prices rise.
• We’ll have rising prices due to dwindling supply. It’s not quite true that we’ll have more dollars chasing the same amount of goods.  They’ll be chasing fewer goods, specifically oil.  In the long run, $4 gas will appear cheap.  $2 gas will have been ridiculously cheap.

Continue to minimize your gas expenses. There’s likely not much that can be done to slow the eventual end of plentiful oil, as one person conserving enables another to guzzle.  The best that can be hoped for is to minimize your expenses to improve your bottom line.  Heck, pretend gas is $15 and sock away the $13/gallon.

Or roll down the window on a beautiful day instead of turning your car into a meat locker with the AC.

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