Savings Challenge, Week 9: Cutting cellphone costs

This week's topic in the Bankrate 52-Week Savings Challenge is saving on cellphone service. This is apparently a bigger item in most people's budgets than I realized; according to a financial firm cited in the article, "the nationwide average bill is $90 per phone." Another source puts the number even higher, saying the three biggest carriers all charge upwards of $140 a month. That's more than we pay for our home phone, Internet, and cable service combined.

The personal story linked to this challenge is a bit different from the others I've read so far. While most Bankrate reporters are only trying out a given challenge out for the sake of the article, reporter Barbara Whelehan  had a genuine need to trim her budget after a whopping 50 percent drop in household income, and she saw their equally whopping $160 monthly cellphone bill as a likely spot to cut. She'd already managed to negotiate her personal bill with T-Mobile down to $55 a month from $87, so she tried them again and took advantage of a special deal: "two lines with unlimited talk, text, and data for $100 a month." The process of switching was a hassle—not on T-Mobile's end, but getting her husband's former "Ma-Bell company" to unlock his phone—but it ended up cutting their bill by 60 percent.

According to the mobile editor at Bankrate, Mike Cetera, Whelehan is getting a "very nice deal" paying just $100 for two phones with unlimited talk, text, and data. However, he says they could have paid even less by going with a "discount carrier" such as Ting, which works on a "pay-what-you-use" basis. Given that Whelehan says she generally uses her phone "to call, text and occasionally scan the news if I'm stuck on the road," this would probably be a good deal for them, as they're currently paying for a lot more plan than they need (at least for her phone). With Ting, according to the carrier's website, an average 2-phone family pays just $42 per month. Republic Wireless, another discount carrier, offers plans with unlimited talk and text (plus data over wi-fi only) for as little as $10 a month.

If Whelehan and her husband were willing to accept some limits on talking and texting as well as data use, they could potentially lower their bill even more by switching to a prepaid plan. Their current carrier, T-Mobile, charges only $3 a month for a bare-bones pay-as-you-go plan that includes 30 minutes of talk or 30 text messages. Additional minutes or messages are billed at 10 cents apiece, and you can tack on a data pass when you need it for $5 per day or $10 per week. Admittedly, this isn't nearly enough phone time for most people, but for users like us, who truly do want a cell phone only for emergencies, it's plenty. We switched to this plan a few months ago, and we've never gone over the 30-minute limit. And since we have only one phone between the two of us, that means our phone bill comes to $3 per month total—not exactly an overpriced luxury that's ripe for budget cuts.

So I guess the moral of the story here may be that the best way of all to cut your cellphone bill is to use the phone less. Keep it down to half an hour, and you can get by with a $3 prepaid plan, whittling your bill to just one-thirtieth of the average. (If, on the other hand, you really need that unlimited talk and text because your cell phone is your primary phone, maybe you should just drop your landline instead.)

Savings Challenge, Week 8: Lawn care (or lack thereof)

Once again, I've fallen behind schedule with the Bankrate 52-Week Savings Challenge. I couldn't find any way to link this week's challenge with last week's to cover them both in one post, so instead I'm going to devote this post to last week's challenge, "Mow Your Own Lawn." Then I'll cover this week's challenge in my next post to get caught up again.

Mowing your own lawn isn't exactly new territory for us: since we bought this house nearly eight years ago, we've been cutting all the grass with a manual push mower. This is only feasible because our "lawn," if you can even dignify it with that name, doesn't cover all that much area: a patch about eight paces by ten in the front and maybe two to three times as much total space in the back. Nonetheless, it's not exactly an easy and pleasant chore. The front yard is a sort of raised, semi-enclosed area that we can only reach by hauling the mower up a flight of steps and over a short wall, and the back yard has a sloped portion that's hard to run the mower up and down. The difficulties are compounded by the fact that our "grass", far from being a smooth carpet of uniform green blades, is a dense, motley assortment of grasses and weeds: clover, chickweed, dandelions, and mugwort, punctuated by thick, mower-resistant tufts of crabgrass.

On top of that, I must confess, we're not too good at following the Bankrate article's advice about mowing frequently to keep the grass healthy. They quote an expert who advises to "Mow grass as needed and not as a scheduled weekly chore," but we're doing well if we get to it once every two weeks. On the plus side, we're great at following all the other tips in the article. It says not to overwater; we never waste water on the lawn at all. It recommends "cutting it high and letting it lie"; we keep the mower blade at its highest setting, and we couldn't bag up the clippings if we wanted to, since our little push mower won't even take a bag. And we avoid the perils of "Fertilizing at the incorrect rate or the incorrect time of year for your type of grass" by eschewing fertilizer altogether.

Nonetheless, our attitude of benign neglect hasn't exactly made our lawn easier to deal with. So what we're trying to do instead is gradually whittle away at the size of the lawn so there will be less of it to mow. Over the past seven years, we've cleared strips of grass from the front yard to make room for creeping phlox and day lilies, as well as adding three plum trees surrounded by islands of mulch. (Side note: They bloomed for the first time this year, so we might actually get to pick a few plums this summer.) In the back yard, we converted formerly grassy areas to beds for our bush cherries and rhubarb, as well as replacing a big swath of lawn with our patio. Yet even so, there's more grass remaining than we'd really like.

We're not prepared to go quite as far as the Bankrate reporter who attempted this challenge, who says that just one sweaty session of mowing her Florida lawn with an electric mower was enough to make her consider swapping out the lawn for "low-maintenance rocks and dirt." What we'd prefer, instead, is a nice, easy-care ground cover that can tolerate being trodden on occasionally. We've considered several alternatives, and we actually had a go at seeding an area in the back yard with Dutch clover, but the results were uninspiring to say the least. However, we had much better luck in the front yard with a single creeping thyme plant, which started out as a circle a few inches and "crept" at surprising speed to encompass several square feet. The Mother-of-Thyme plant we tried last year has also thrived, but on a less impressive scale; after a year, it's still less than a foot across. It's lower and denser than the creeping thyme and would probably look nicer spread across the entire yard, but it would just take too many plants to make that happen. With creeping thyme, by contrast, we could probably start with a dozen strategically spaced plants and have the whole lawn area covered in a couple of years. So if we can succeed in finding the plants at the upcoming Rutgers plant sale, I think it's worth taking the plunge. Even if we can only rustle up enough thyme plants to cover half the yard, that's still half a yard we'll never have to mow again.

Ecofrugal Living podcast #19: A traditionally built footprint

Here's the latest Ecofrugal Living podcast, based on the blog entry for May 25, 2011.

 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Provisioning a Yard-Sale Expedition

This Saturday, Brian and I spent the morning indulging in one of our favorite spring/summer pastimes: yard sale shopping. We'd seen a flier advertising a town-wide sale in Princeton, which meant that we could expect the yard sales to be reasonably thick on the ground—which, according to Livingston's First Law, would maximize our chances of coming home with something useful. But even if we didn't, we'd still spend a pleasant morning walking around town in the nice spring weather, and we could stop at the Trader Joe's on the way back, so the trip wouldn't be wasted.

Since the yard-sale territory was about 40 minutes' drive from home, we made a point of packing a bag before we left with everything we were likely to need while we were out. And it occurred to me as we did so that, while I've written before about important things to do when preparing to host your own yard sale, I've never actually written about how to prepare when heading out for a day of yard-saling. So here, based on my 20-plus years of yard-sale experience, is my list of:

Essential Provisions and Preparations for a Yard-Sale Expedition

1. Dress in layers. Particularly if you are planning to be out for several hours, the temperature can change a lot over the course of a day, so it's handy to be able to add or shed layers to adjust. If you are planning to do any shopping for clothes, then the ideal outfit for yard-saling is like the one I favor for thrift-shopping: layers of clothing that allow you to try on other clothes under or over them. On top, your undermost layer should be a snug-fitting tank top or camisole, so you can try other shirts on over it; on the bottom, a long, loose skirt worn over tights lets you slip another skirt or a pair of pants on under the skirt without exposing yourself. (For the fellas, trying on clothes is trickier. You can probably strip down to your undershirt without raising too many eyebrows, but there's really no way to try on pants without taking off the ones you're wearing. Probably the best you can do is to wear a pair of bike shorts underneath, so you can drop your trousers and still remain technically decent.)
2. Wear comfortable shoes. You are going to be on your feet all day, so it's essential to choose a pair of shoes that fit well and don't cause fatigue. Sneakers, hiking boots, or well-broken-in loafers are good choices.
3. Be prepared for changes in the weather. Bring along both a folding umbrella and a bottle of sunscreen, so you're ready for rain or shine. A wide-brimmed hat is also useful, though if it's a straw one, you may have to shed it if a rainstorm blows up.
4. Bring sturdy bags to carry your haul. Avoid bags you have to carry in your hands, since (a) that gets tiring and (b) you'll have to keep setting them down to pick other things up. Instead, go for a backpack or a roomy bag with shoulder straps. This is where all those tote bags sent by charities and public radio stations come in handy. 
5. Have plenty of cash. Most yard sales are cash-only, so if you run across a great $70 futon when you're carrying nothing but 85 cents and a credit card, you're probably out of luck. Some sellers might be willing to take a check for a large item, but flashing a wad of cash is more likely to close the sale at the price you want. Ideally, your wallet should contain a good mix of large and small bills, as well as some small change, since yard-sale sellers aren't always organized enough to make change for a $20 on a $2 item.
6. Carry provisions. You may be walking for several miles, and you don't want to get dehydrated or suffer a blood-sugar crash. Stopping somewhere for a bite to eat isn't always an option, and even when it is, the cost of the meal could outweigh all the money you saved on your yard-sale bargains. So make sure you have a bottle of water with you and a portable, quick-energy snack, like a peanut-butter sandwich or a couple of granola bars.
7. One thing you can't take with you is a bathroom. You may well need one during a multi-hour excursion, however, so make a point of checking a map ahead of time and scoping out the available public restrooms in the area. In our case, we were heading into familiar territory in Princeton, so we knew there would be one at the public library right in the middle of town—which turned out to be very useful information.
8. While you've got your map out, check the parking situation. In most suburban areas, you can simply pull up on the street next to a likely-looking sale, but if you're in a more built-up area, you may have to put the car in a lot and hoof it. Paying for parking will also eat into your yard-sale profits, so if necessary, figure out where you can stash the car for free. (Years of living in Princeton had acquainted us with a handy side street where parking is free for two hours, and even that limit is rarely enforced.)
9. If you're hitting a town-wide yard sale, as we did on Saturday, see if there's a map or an app available that shows where the sales are. This will help you full advantage of Livingston's First Law by focusing your attention on the areas with the highest concentration of sales. It'll also allow you to plan out an efficient route to hit as many sales as possible in a given area.
10. Even if you can't find a map app, bring your smartphone if you have one. It can help you check important details that you might not know offhand, like "Is $10 really a good price for this or would it only cost $15 new?" and "Is this the same brand as the blender we used to have that broke down so spectacularly?" A smartphone would have come in handy for us on Saturday when we came across a make-your-own-book kit that included a free bound copy, which we thought would have made a nice present for a niece or a nephew. The only snag was that we weren't sure whether the company that made the kit was still in business, so the item might have turned out to be useless. If we'd had access to the Internet on the spot, we could have checked on it and made an informed choice. (If situations like this keep coming up, we may want to revisit the issue of getting a smartphone.)
11. Lastly, if there's anything in particular you're hoping to find at the sales, make sure to write out a list of what you're looking for. You may think you'll remember, but in my experience, these things have a way of popping right out of your head just when you need to know them. And, if you're yard-saling with a partner, run through the list ahead of time and agree on what you're willing to pay for each item, so that you're on the same page when it comes time to negotiate.

So there you have it: Livingston's Second through Twelfth Laws of Yard Sales. May they serve you as well as they have me.

What I Did for Earth Day 2015

This year's Earth Day, like last year's, didn't involve any grand gestures for us. We didn't spend the day cleaning up a river, or planting trees, or upgrading to more efficient appliances, or doing anything extra-specially green. In fact, Brian couldn't even ride his bike to work, due to predictions of thunderstorms and high winds in the weather report. He'd already missed his ride on Monday and Tuesday due to rain, and it was perfectly sunny and nice when he went out the door, grumbling, "If it doesn't rain today I'm going to be pissed." But fortunately, the thunderstorms and high winds showed up as promised in the afternoon, so he didn't have to feel any guilt about driving. And he's making up for it by riding to work this morning, even though he has to be in by 8am for a meeting and the temperature is currently around 45 degrees.

Nonetheless, I did manage, as usual, to do a lot of little things in honor of the earth. Here's my Day in the Green Life:

1. I learned to say "climate change" when I mean "global warming." Though the two terms are often used interchangeably, they don't really mean the same thing. Climate change is any long-term shift in the earth's overall climate. Global warming is a specific type of climate change: the long-term trend toward higher average temperatures over the past century or so, which virtually all scientists agree is a result of rising greenhouse gas emissions. However, according to a poll at Cornell that I read about on Accuweather, "global warming" is an issue that most people have firmly made up their minds about, one way or the other: that is, with the scientific consensus or against it. (See, I just proved the point.) When you use that phrase, people are likely to respond by citing and sticking firmly to the opinion they've already formed, no matter what evidence you may cite to the contrary. By contrast, when you use the phrase "climate change," people are more open to hearing about the data and possibly altering their views in response. So the Cornell professor who ran the study suggests using the term "climate change" in place of "global warming" if you want to get a real discussion going, rather than just, "Is not!" "Is too!" (Of course, Governor Scott of Florida has apparently anticipated this strategy and banned both phrases—along with "sustainability"—in any documents issued by his staff. But that just shows that there are some people it really isn't worth trying to reason with.)

2. I ran into some problems with paper reuse. Brian and I routinely use one-side-used paper (scavenged from his office) for our printer at home, but our new 3-in-one printer seems to have some problems with it. When I try to print out my daily crossword puzzle, the printer sometimes grabs multiple sheets and spits out blanks along with the printed page. This isn't a big problem, since I can always just feed the blank ones back into the paper tray, but this time it actually spread the crossword across two pages instead of one. This used to happen with our old printer too, but we thought it was the printer's fault; now we have to consider the possibility that there's something wrong with the paper. Brian thinks the problem may be that the used paper is sometimes bent at the corners, so the printer is mistaking two sheets folded together for one extra-thick sheet. So it looks like we may just need to be more careful when feeding paper into the printer, making sure the sheets are all neatly aligned and leaving out any that are too badly bent or torn.

3. I corrected a misapprehension about energy use. An article in the Dollar Stretcher about quick tricks for trimming your budget mentions unplugging off any electronic items you're not using, since many of them continue to draw a trickle of power even when they're shut down. This is perfectly sensible advice, but the article goes overboard by advising readers to "pull the plug on the toaster oven, coffee maker, [and] lamps." The author seems to be under the impression that all electrical devices use power whenever they're plugged in, not just electronic ones. A fact sheet from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory about standby power use explains that you can usually identify phantom power users because they have "an external power supply, remote control, continuous display (including an LED)," or internal batteries that require charging. Now, I suppose some ultra-fancy modern toaster ovens or coffee makers might include a display screen (though my 20-year-old models definitely don't), but a lamp is basically just a wire that you run a current through to produce light. There is no way it can draw power when it isn't switched on. There was no place to leave comments on the article itself, so I sent a gently worded note to the editor asking him to let readers know that there's no need for them to go around unplugging all the lamps in their houses in order to save electricity. Instead, they can just focus on electronic devices, which are easy to power down by plugging them all into power strips that can be switched off at night.

4. I got my first quote on a solar power system. Last Tuesday, I got a preliminary estimate on the cost of solar power from a website called EnergySage, and the numbers were encouraging enough to convince me to register with the site and let solar installers contact me with quotes. So far, two installers have expressed an interest, and one has actually come forward with a quote on a 2.5-kW system. The bad news is that their quote was quite a bit higher than the initial estimate I got from the site; they say it would cost $10,600 to install, or $7,420 after the tax rebate. The good news is that in addition to the $500 or so we could save on our electricity bills each year, they think we could also earn about $420 (at least the first year) by selling SRECs (Solar Renewable Energy Certificates) to PSE&G. Thus, they claim, over the course of 20 years, the system could net us $11,200, for a return of better than 10 percent on our investment. Of course, that's assuming an annual increase of 3.5 percent in electricity costs, which may or may not be right. But at least it's a starting point for figuring out whether this is a plunge we want to take.

5. Following a link from Google's home page, I rechecked my global environmental footprint on the Earth Day Network site. I've used this site before and been frustrated that, despite all my green lifestyle choices, my footprint still comes in at more than 3 Earths. A few years back, I discovered that this appears to be less because of how I live and more because of where I live; there's simply no way to live as an American without weighing in at 3 Earths or more. A person living only a moderately eco-friendly lifestyle in South Africa, by contrast, would have a footprint of just over 1 Earth. So this time, just for the heck of it, I decided to see how my current lifestyle would measure up if I were living exactly as I do now, but in Ontario. And I noticed that, first of all, the questions the quiz asked were different for Canadians than for Americans. Instead of asking how much I spend on my utility bill, for instance, it asked what temperature I heat my home to (which is a good thing, because I have no idea what my heating bill would be in chilly Ontario). But even so, answering the questions just as I would in real life, I found that my footprint had magically dropped from 3.3 Earths to only 2.1. The biggest section of U.S. Amy's ecological footprint, shown in pie chart form, was "services," which the site defines as "governmental and social service activities" that "can only be indirectly altered through social influence for governmental change." By contrast, Canadian Amy's footprint was about 1/3 services, 1/3 food, and 1/3 for everything else. So apparently, Canada's social policies make it an inherently greener place to live than the US, despite its shorter growing season.

6. While I was at it, I also rechecked our carbon footprint on the EPA website. It, too, has changed its format in the past year. The new version says our household carbon footprint is now 12,143 pounds per year, which is an improvement from last year's estimate of 13,575 pounds. However, we're not doing as well in relation to the average American, who now uses only 28,919 pounds per year as opposed to around 36,000 last year. But then, I guess that's good news, right? Also, unlike the earlier version, the new edition of the planner actually offered some useful information about reducing our footprint. It says, for instance, that we would have saved about 728 pounds of carbon a year with a high-efficiency boiler (though I think that estimate is high; my calculations last year showed a savings of only 351 pounds per year). However, this pales in comparison to the amount we could save by replacing our windows with Energy Star versions: a whopping 2,947 pounds per year. Of course, this estimate is probably high as well; the site may be assuming that our house has more windows than it really does, and that they're old single-pane windows instead of the fairly modern double-glazed ones we really have. (The calculator also claimed that this move would save us $150 a year on our energy bills, but a more precise estimate on the Energy Star site shows that in our area, upgrading double-pane windows will save only $91 a year.) But it's still interesting to know that the energy-efficient windows offer bigger savings than an energy-efficient boiler. After all, we'll have to replace these windows some time, and since the costliest part of that job is probably labor, it might actually be worth going for the super-duper-efficient ones. Another interesting detail gleaned from the site: the green steps we already take (such as washing our laundry in cold water, line drying, maintaining our car, recycling, and using green power) are saving us about 4,000 pounds per year.

7. To protect our supply of local produce, I planted my second installment of arugula and lettuce in the garden. Staggering the plantings like this, planting one square each week instead of the whole area at once, allows us to spread the harvest out over a longer period, instead of ending up with 36 bunches of arugula in one week. While doing this, I discovered a downside of the "carpet bombing" method we've been using to grow plants from seed. It's great for choking out the weeds and ensuring that we have enough healthy plants, but it also makes it harder to allocate the seeds over the numbers of squares to be planted. I discovered when I'd finished planting this batch that I had just barely enough arugula seeds left for the one more square I still need to plant, and even less of the lettuce. So I'll have to fill that last square by combining the few Blushed Butter Oaks lettuce seeds I have left with the remainder of my Tom Thumb Baby Bibb seeds from last year, throwing it all in there, and hoping for the best. And next year, I should either husband my seeds more carefully or just buy a bigger packet.

8. I sent off a sample of our household water for testing. On our last visit to Home Depot, there was a display near the checkout with packets labeled "FREE WATER TEST," each containing an envelope and a small plastic vial. You just fill the vial with your household water, fill out a form with your contact information, pop them both in the prepaid envelope, and get back a report on your water quality. We already get regular water quality reports from the local water department, and they always say that our town's water meets or beats all federal and state standards, but I figured it couldn't hurt to find out how the numbers look for our specific location. So I popped the envelope in the mail yesterday, and if the results reveal anything interesting, I'll share them here.

9. I did a little reading about asbestos. The Mesothelioma Cancer Alliance contacted me last week, asking whether I'd be interested in doing a post about asbestos and its dangers. Since I've been fortunate enough to have no personal experiences with asbestos in my life, I did a little research to learn more. I was surprised to discover that asbestos hasn't actually been banned in the U.S. The EPA tried to ban it for most uses in 1989, but a court overturned the ban, so now it's only banned for a few specific uses, like pipe insulation. Though it may be found in homes, most people who develop asbestos-related illnesses were exposed to it at work, particularly in the shipbuilding industry. Wikipedia reports that lawsuits over asbestos exposure are "the longest, most expensive mass tort in U.S. history." If you'd like to know more, you can find lots of information on the MCA's asbestos page.

10. Finally, during my afternoon walk, I made a deposit with Terracycle. When I first learned about Terracycle back in 2011, I didn't think it would be very useful for us, since the only packaging they were taking at the time was things like juice packs and candy wrappers, which we didn't use. More recently, however, we've learned that there's a bin at one of our local churches that will take lots of stuff we actually use, including toothpaste tubes, cereal bag liners, deodorant tubes, and all sorts of foil-lined wrappers (including the ones from Fiber One bars, which have lately become a minor obsession of mine). So we now keep a small basket on the shelf with our other recycling bins in which we deposit all items of this sort, and whenever I notice it's looking a bit full, I dump the contents in a bag and cart them off to the bin. Yesterday, I dropped off a dozen or so bag liners, several foil wrappers, one toothpaste tube, and one deodorant tube—about a pound or so of waste that will now be kept out of the waste stream. (Of course, on the way home, I got caught in the promised thunderstorm that had kept Brian from riding in to work that morning. But thanks to my raincoat and sturdy umbrella, I only really got soaked from the knees down. Which, I guess, is one way of getting in touch with nature.)

Salad of the Month: Colorful Rice Salad

Since the weather has finally warmed up, I thought a salad would be more appropriate for April's Recipe of the Month than a soup. At first, I was thinking of trying a recipe I found in Redbook for a grilled avocado with shrimp salad, but I eventually rejected it because it didn't really seem like my idea of a salad. Yes, it had a vegetable in it, if you consider the avocado a vegetable rather than a fruit, but it was also 350 calories for one serving: half an avocado topped with about two ounces of shrimp. That didn't look like it would do much for my ultimate goal of eating healthier, less calorie-dense meals.

So instead, I turned for guidance to my culinary Bible, Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. There were a couple of salad recipes in there that I'd bookmarked to try later, and this seemed like a good time for it. The first one, Chick Pea Salad with Arugula, looked tasty, but it seemed like a pity to make it now with store-bought arugula when there's fresh arugula just starting to come up in the garden that should be ready to pick in a couple of weeks. So instead, I turned to a section called "The World of Rice Salads": one basic salad recipe with a whole series of variants that incorporate different flavors from international cuisine.

Since this was our first time making it, we decided to stick with the basic recipe, which is extraordinarily simple. You just toss cooked, cooled rice with a variety of chopped veggies—scallion, celery, carrot, and red or yellow bell pepper—and a simple red wine vinaigrette. Season it with salt and pepper and a sprinkling of parsley, and boom, it's done. We already had most of the ingredients for it on hand, although I did have to shell out $1.50 for one out-of-season yellow pepper. Our scallions in the garden aren't up yet, but we were able to harvest enough from the potted scallions we keep on the plant shelf in the guest room, and we got the parsley by cannibalizing the two extra seedlings we potted that didn't end up going into the garden. (They were getting too big for their starter tubes anyway, so we'd have had to repot them and give them away if we didn't eat them.)

The resulting mixture is nice and colorful; in fact, with the yellow pepper that we used, the mix of colors matches the rather flamboyant team colors of my Morris dance team. And for something so extremely simple, it's surprisingly flavorful, as well. Brian didn't add a single thing to the recipe—in fact, he didn't even use any pepper, just a little sprinkle of salt. So the only seasonings in it were the olive oil, salt, and vinegar in the dressing, which allowed the fresh flavors of the vegetables themselves to shine through.

Having enjoyed the basic recipe, we're now keen to try some of the variants, like Japanese style (with miso sauce, tofu, nori, and sesame seeds) and citrus (which leaves out the veggies and uses any sort of citrus juice in place of vinegar). But we'll definitely be making the basic recipe again, as well. I figure this dish would be an excellent choice for a potluck party, because (a) it doesn't need to be kept warm; (b) it's both vegan and gluten-free, so pretty much everyone can eat it; and (c) it's something that I myself can eat as much of as I like with virtually no guilt. And better still, if the potluck is hosted by the dance community, we can label the dish as Millstone River Mor-Rice Salad.

Rethinking solar

It's been a little over a year since I last crunched the numbers on the possibility of installing solar panels at our house. What I found at that time was a pleasant surprise: based on my back-of-the-digital-envelope calculations, it looked like a solar array on our roof would, in fact, pay for itself eventually. However, it'd cost between $5,000 and $10,000 to install, and it would take anywhere from 9 to 13 years for us to make that money back in energy savings. Given that we're already powering our house with renewable energy through New Jersey's Clean Power Choice Program, it didn't seem worth the hassle of getting set up for solar if the payback time was going to be that long—especially with the prices of solar panels still dropping. It made more sense to wait until we needed to replace our roof, and then look at what it would cost to add solar panels at the same time.

Last weekend, however, I suddenly found myself bombarded on all sides by promotions for solar energy. Saturday brought an e-mail from Green America, urging me to get quotes on the cost of a solar installation. Then InboxDollars, one of my survey sites, sent me an e-mail on Sunday morning, offering a free quote on a solar system from SolarJoy. And then on Sunday afternoon, my Morris dance team performed at an Earth Day fair, and a friend of mine was there, staffing a table for a company called Solar City, which leases solar panels to homeowners. With the message "Go Solar!" coming at me from every direction, I started wondering whether maybe the universe was trying to tell me something. So I figured, well, maybe it couldn't hurt to look into the question one more time and just find out how the numbers looked for us at this point.

I clicked on over to the Green America site, which offered the option of an "instant estimate" to see how much I could save with solar. I figured it made most sense to do that before getting actual quotes, since there was no point in going through the process if it didn't look like a solar system would be cost-effective. And, unlike most other solar cost estimators I've tried, with this one the "instant" claim was pretty accurate. I only had to answer two questions. First, it asked for my address and pulled up a map so I could pinpoint the location of my roof. Second, it asked me how much I spend on electricity "in an average month." My electric usage actually fluctuates quite a bit from month to month, but since I keep track of it in a handy little Excel spreadsheet, it was quite easy to average together the numbers from the last twelve months. (The total I gave it, $42, includes the few bucks a month I pay as a surcharge for green energy from the Clean Power Choice Program. I knew that might make my electric use look a little higher than it really is, but I figured that's what I pay for green power right now, so I might as well try to get an apples-to-apples comparison.)

The site crunched the numbers for a minute and came back with some intriguing and surprising results:

1. Our house has 180 square feet of sunny roof space. That's enough room for a 2.6-kilowatt system, which would be enough to meet 100 percent of our energy needs (on average). This estimate is roughly in line with the one I got from Affordable Solar last year.
2. We could buy such a system outright for a net cost of only $5,400. That's after rebates and tax credits, which the site says could cover 30 percent or more of the cost. Presumably the up-front cost would be around $7,700, and we'd be able to get about $2,300 back.
3. The site claims this system would pay for itself in only 5.8 years. However, I'm not clear on how they came up with this number, since when I divide a net cost of $5,400 by our $507 per year in energy bills, I get a payback time of nearly 11 years (10 years and 8 months, to be exact.) Maybe the site is assuming that the price of energy will be rising every year, while my solar panels, once paid for, will stay paid for. Given how volatile energy prices are, though, that assumption seems a little iffy to me.
4. The site claims that, over 20 years (presumably the lifetime of the solar array), this system would net us about $13,000 in total savings. Once again, I'm not sure where these numbers come from. According to my calculations, over the course of the next 20 years, we should expect to spend about $10,100 in electricity bills; deduct the net cost of the solar system, and that cuts our savings down to $4,740. Even if you assume that our electric bills will gradually double over that 20-year period, our total savings still wouldn't hit $10,000.
5. According to the site, buying the system outright is actually the most cost-effective option. Buying the solar panels with a loan at 0 percent down would only save us $9,900 over 20 years, because the interest payments would eat into our savings. And renting the system, though it would cost us nothing up front, would yield only $4,200 in savings over 20 years—about a third of what we'd save by buying.

If these numbers can be trusted, it looks like buying a solar system is definitely our best option, and the up-front cost isn't actually that bad at all. However, given that the site's numbers are way out of line with mine, I'm still skeptical.

So perhaps the best way to do a reality check on these figures is to go ahead and get some real quotes. It'll be a lot more work, since I may need to spend a lot of time on the phone with the different companies giving them all the same details about our property, or possibly even having installers out to look at the site in person. But in the end, I should have a more accurate idea of just how much we could actually save with solar panels, and over what time period. And, even if it doesn't turn out to be cost-effective at this time, it seems like an appropriate way to commemorate Earth Day.

Of course, there's also the possibility that we'll sign up to get quotes and won't actually receive any, because our energy needs are so low that no company would want to bother with the piddly little system we'd require. But hey, that's useful information too.