My wife is impressed with the hand dryer that they have installed in the restrooms in a local store. It might be hard to see why anyone would be impressed by a hand dryer. My wife likes it because it actually works as opposed to the old hand dryers which don't really get your hands dry unless you stand there and rub your hands for half a minute. The handdryer in question is the Dyson Airblade. The Airblade blows your hands dry in a few seconds and it really gets them dry. This hand dryer blows use
s very high pressure air to blow the water off your hands rather than the traditional hot air heater style of hand dryer.
In addition to being effective at drying your hands its also effective at saving money. This analysis of the savings of a Dyson Airblade shows that over a year a business can save about $710 per dryer. The machines cost $1200 - $1400. So they should pay for themselves in around 2 years give or take.
Say you spent $1500 to get one and have it installed. Your initial cost is $1500. Assume you save $710 in paper towel costs over a year. 5 years later you would have saved a total of $3,550. If you had taken $1500 and put it in the bank you would need to make 18% annually to equal $3,550. So installing a Dyson Airblade at a business is like investing $1500 at 18% annually.
Now it should be said that installing a hand dryer is not going to be worth the cost unless you get a certain amount of use. The savings analysis cited assumes that you have 100 uses per day and many restrooms do not get that much use. It would certainly not be cost effective to install such a device in a family home.
Now I know most people don't own businesses that have restrooms getting 100 uses a day. But you likely have opportunities your own own home where you could spend a bit of up front cash to get a good annual savings. Buying and installing Compact Fourescent Lamps (CFL) or simply buying a reusable grocery bag are a couple examples.
June 22, 2009
How a Business can get an 18% return by Installing a Hand Dryer
June 21, 2009
5-20% off online shopping with Discover Card
The Discover Card has a discount shopping service called Shop Discover. The system is setup for online shopping and you follow Discover Card's link to major online retailers and you can get a 5-20% discount. Plus on top of the 5% or more off you still get the Discover card cash back reward (up to 1% usually). Most of the rebates are in the 5-10% range and only a few are in the 15-20% level. But there are a lot of good merchants in the 5-10% level.
As I've discussed before Ebates gives you cash back on purchases through online merchants so I figured I'd compare Ebates to the Shop Discover rebates. In every case below Discover beats Ebates.
Below are a few of the retailers that you can get discounts from. For comparison, the Ebates discount is in parentheses ().
Shop Discover 5% discount at :
Best Buy (1% at Ebates)
Cabelas (3%)
Bluenile (3%)
Carnival
Dell (4%)
Gap (1%)
Hotels.com (3%)
Hotwire (2%)
iTunes (3%)
Kohls (2%)
Lego (1%)
Walgreens (4%)
10% at :
EddieBauer
Footlocker (5%)
1800 contacts
Nike (6%)
If you have a Discover card then these are some pretty good discounts. I still like Ebates but the Shop Discover discounts generally beat them for merchants that Discover covers.
June 20, 2009
Number of Millionaires by State
Ever wonder how many millionaires there are in your state? The table below lists the total number as well as the percent of the population. The figures are from 2004 and actually its not exactly $1 million but $1.5M (close enough I figure).
| # people | % of pop | |
| Alabama | 18,000 | 0.4% |
| Alaska | 1,000 | 0.2% |
| Arizona | 36,000 | 0.6% |
| Arkansas | 11,000 | 0.4% |
| California | 428,000 | 1.2% |
| Colorado | 32,000 | 0.7% |
| Connecticut | 47,000 | 1.4% |
| DC | 8,000 | 1.4% |
| Delaware | 7,000 | 0.8% |
| Florida | 199,000 | 1.1% |
| Georgia | 56,000 | 0.6% |
| Hawaii | 7,000 | 0.6% |
| Idaho | 5,000 | 0.4% |
| Illinois | 101,000 | 0.8% |
| Indiana | 32,000 | 0.5% |
| Iowa | 18,000 | 0.6% |
| Kansas | 21,000 | 0.8% |
| Kentucky | 18,000 | 0.4% |
| Louisiana | 22,000 | 0.5% |
| Maine | 8,000 | 0.6% |
| Maryland | 50,000 | 0.9% |
| Massachusetts | 83,000 | 1.3% |
| Michigan | 47,000 | 0.5% |
| Minnesota | 33,000 | 0.6% |
| Mississippi | 8,000 | 0.3% |
| Missouri | 33,000 | 0.6% |
| Montana | 7,000 | 0.8% |
| Nebraska | 13,000 | 0.7% |
| Nevada | 15,000 | 0.6% |
| New Hampshire | 7,000 | 0.5% |
| New Jersey | 79,000 | 0.9% |
| New Mexico | 9,000 | 0.5% |
| New York | 168,000 | 0.9% |
| North Carolina | 59,000 | 0.7% |
| North Dakota | 1,000 | 0.2% |
| Ohio | 61,000 | 0.5% |
| Oklahoma | 17,000 | 0.5% |
| Oregon | 15,000 | 0.4% |
| Pennsylvania | 86,000 | 0.7% |
| Rhode Island | 8,000 | 0.7% |
| South Carolina | 14,000 | 0.3% |
| South Dakota | 6,000 | 0.8% |
| Tennessee | 25,000 | 0.4% |
| Texas | 108,000 | 0.5% |
| Utah | 8,000 | 0.3% |
| Vermont | 4,000 | 0.6% |
| Virginia | 59,000 | 0.8% |
| Washington | 50,000 | 0.8% |
| West Virginia | 12,000 | 0.7% |
| Wisconsin | 26,000 | 0.5% |
| Wyoming | 5,000 | 1.0% |
Data is from : The population estimates at the Census. Census estimate on the number of $1.5M net worth holders per state.
June 19, 2009
Best of blog posts for week of June 19th
Trent at The Simple Dollar has a good way to avoid clutter in your email inbox while you sign up for deals online. He recommends making a A Deal-Collecting Email Address
My Money Blog discusses how Income-Based Repayment of Federal Student Loan Debt Starts July 1st
JD at Get Rich Slowly covers An Investor’s Manifesto: 20 Guiding Principles for Investment Success from Kiplingers which has a good set of points to live by as an investor.
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