Thursday, April 9, 2009

Oh! The "green" part is the cash!

I finally realized why they call it a green movement! If you do it right you can save real cash. Or, you can get a lot better return on your investment than the stock market! That's green!

Lets see, if you held $2600 in GM stock or you bought a pressure reducer and ET controller for your sprinklers, like me... OK, that's not fair...let's just say a S&P index fund. I have a projected 79% savings. $616.84 a year. If the price of water doesn't go up, it will be like my fund is returning a $616 dividend a year, or 24%!

Another way to look at it is in typical accounting terms for rate of return on my investment, ROI. $2,600 returning $616 a year is a 24% return on investment. Tax free! Bernie Madoff couldn't do that for you...legally.

That's without considering the price of electricity, water, natural gas, etc going up, which they always do over time. My ROI will get better, but in 10 years without increases, I will have turned that $2,600 into $6,160 of value. I also know my home will be worth more with sensible energy and water bills.

Bottom Line - Applying these principles to natural gas and electricity, which I can assure you will go up, will provide even greater savings opportunity. My purchase of a $100 programmable thermostat paid for itself so quickly I wish I needed two.

No comments:

Post a Comment