Weekend Project…Light Bulb replacement.
The following is a reprint of a post that I made from my old blog Getting Out Of The Poorhouse: To find out why, see here.
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Pay of debt. Save money. Reduce your expenses. Seeming as I’m probably the last pf blogger on the planet that still uses regular light bulbs, I felt it was time to walk the talk and practice what I preach. So for my weekend project, I decided to replace my regular bulbs with those energy efficient CFL’s.
I counted and found 45 light bulbs in my house with an average wattage of 65 watts. Went to Costco and looked for some equivalent CFL’s. Found some that were comparable to my regular 65 watt bulbs that only used 15 watts a bulb for $9.88 for a pack of six. I bought 8, total cost: $85.83.
Went back to the house and replaced the bulbs and tested them. Not bad, they actually seem to be brighter than my old bulbs after warming up.
Afterwards I found this energy savings calculator from GE and plugged in put in the number of bulbs replaced and hit calculate. Here are the results:
Annual savings: $328.50
Savings over the life of the bulb: $1800 (In 5 and a half years at an average use of 4 hours a day.)
That’s awesome. That’s like ivesting $86 and turning it into $1800 in 5 and a half years. That equates to a rate of return of 56.59% compounded monthly! Now if only we can find another investment that has comparable returns 
Not sure if CFL’s are right for you? Check out Llama Money’s article on 6 Myths about CFL.
What are your experiences with CFL’s?
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