How we get there

You may be wondering what specifically you can do to save money by using less energy, fortunately that's what we're here for. This section includes some links to our favorite money saving guides in the My Part section. We have separated them out into everyday things and larger investments. In addition, at the bottom of this page, you will find a brief description of how you can figure out when any energy efficient investment will pay itself off, as well as a very simple calculator (coming soon!). If you want more information on how to do a more detailed analysis, contact us and we can try to point in the right direction (Jeff loves this sort of stuff).

Everyday Things

These things help you to reduce your budget by saving money without making any sort of major investment.

• Adjust Your Thermostat: Adjusting your thermostat by one degree can save up to 3% on heating and cooling bills.
• Put All Loads on Power Strips: Putting things on power strips and turning them off reduces parasitic loads, which account for up to 10% of an electrical bill.
• Eat Less Meat: Eating less meat, especially beef and pork, can save money on your grocery bill every week.
• Use a Low Flow Showerhead: Using a low flow showerhead reduces your water consumption and the heat needed to make hot water, reducing two bills at once.
• Break Out the Caulking Gun: Sealing any cracks in your walls or around windows or doors can make an immediate impact on your heating and cooling load.
• Install Better Light Bulbs: This is one of the simplest things you can do and will make a little dent in your monthly electrical bill.
• Drive Less: Try to find a simpler way to save money on gasoline.

Not-As-Everyday Things

While not necessarily the sort of thing you're going to go out and do today, these larger projects have the potential to save you a lot of money over time by reducing your recurring energy costs. Plus, usually once you do them once, you're done for quite a while.

• Solar Hot Water: Installing a solar hot water system can mostly eliminate your water heating bill and is not too invasive of a process.
• Upgrade Your Windows and Doors: Replacing old windows and doors can result in significant decreases in your monthly heating and cooling bills.
• Super-Insulate Your Home: Just like installing better windows and doors, this can reduce the amount of energy needed to keep your house at the temperature you want.
• Buy High Efficiency Appliances: Spending a little bit more up front on appliances that save energy and water can often pay off over the life of the appliance. Check out the calculator below to figure out just how much you'll save.
• Buy a High Efficiency Vehicle: Not something that you're going to go out and do particularly often, but if you're in the market for a new vehicle, high mpg cars, hybrids, and especially the plug-in hybrids coming to market soon can save a lot of money over the life of the vehicle. Not all vehicles are worth the extra money, but check out our guides to figure out which are.

Calculating Payback

A big part of saving money is knowing how to look at an energy saving investment in the long term. While we don't claim to be financial experts, we can give you a number of points that you may need to take into account when deciding how much an upgrade will save or cost in the long term. If nothing else, this allows you to get decent numbers that take care of some of the less obvious factors that go into an energy savings investment.

Among the important things to consider are the cost of the upgrade vs. the cost of not doing the upgrade, and how you would pay for each of these. Would you have to take out a loan, and if so at what interest rate? Or would you pay for it in cash? And if you pay for it in cash what could you have invested that cash in instead and how much money would that have made? Of course you need to figure out how much your energy costs would be with the efficient thing vs. the status quo. A more advanced analysis would also include the lifespans of the two products, general inflation costs, and the increase in the cost of energy of time. The calculator tool below will help you do a basic calculation.