Taking a Break This Week

I will be taking a break from posting this week for the holiday. I don't expect to post anything through Christmas but should return with regular posts sometime after Christmas.

Replacing a Broken Furnace

We got some bad news yesterday. The furnace in one of our rentals has broken down again. This is the second that furnace has broke in the past few weeks. The first repair was fairly minor and was only around $150 to get done. However this time the repair would cost us around $400. We had the same furnace break down last winter as well and I can't remember how much it cost to get fixed that time. The furnace is fairly old now at least 15 years and is likely to keep failing at this point. Rather than keep pumping money into repairing it we decided instead to get the entire furnace replaced. Repairing the furnace is about $2000. So we could spend $400 today on a repair or spend $2000 to replace it. Thats really a $1600 difference to get an all new furnace and not have the risk of more repair calls next month or next week.

This is a good reminder that if you want to own rental properties that you really need to have some working capital. If we didn't have $2,000 readily available to spend and we were on a tight budget then we'd end up just paying the $400 to repair the furnace. I see that as a short term solution that would end up costing more in the long run. You don't want to keep pumping money into repairing an old item.

Retracting a previous article on New York Life insurance

I had previously posted an article saying that New York Life Whole Life Policy Ad Overstating Returns. After a comment from a representative of New York Life they correct a mistaken assumption that I had made. I originally thought they had overstated their returns by not counting the annual premiums in their calculations, but they had in fact added in the premium costs so I was incorrect. SO I've edited that article to state that I am retracting it and I put the word "NOT" into the title.

In this case I was wrong so I've corrected it.

How Much Does the Electricity to run Christmas Lights Cost?

Last year I talked about some ways that you can save on electricity costs on your Christmas Lights.

This year I decided to measure and find out exactly how much electricity my own Christmas lights use. I've got a simple string of the icicle style Christmas lights up decorating our house right now. I've had them setup on a Kill-a-Watt meter to see how much electricity they use. The lights are setup to turn on and off with a mechanical timer.

The string is using 72 W of power. The meter is showing 8.07 kWh of total usage. The meters timer shows its been running for 387 hours total which is 16 days and 3 hours. I have a timer setup to turn the lights on sometime around 5pm and then shut them down around 11pm (give or take). The lights are on about 6-7 hours a day. Its a mechanical style of timer so the times aren't super exact.

So in about 16 days I've used a hair over 8 kWh of power. That works out to 0.5 kWh per day of operation. My electricity is about 10¢ per kWh.

So the bottom line is :

1 day of operation costs 5¢ in electricity.

The whole Christmas season will cost me around $1.50.


Photo by antony_mayfield