Seriously – this probably reveals issues, but I’m taking it as a homeschooling win for now…
Noticing our escalating cost of living and dire need to save money to finish our house, (specifically the roof), I had the bright idea to have a ‘lesson’ on basic economics…
I asked everyone to guess what our outgoings were per week, then started going through all of our bills converting them into a weekly figure.
We are very open with our kids about bills and ‘real ‘life’. but they were still very surprised by just how many bills there are each week (even without the usual holidays, entertainment and outings that we have always foregone).
I was also surprised that they thought of quite a number of things that I had escaped me…
The figure was double what any of us thought, despite leaving off:
– clothes (which we normally get free or secondhand),
– education (our homeschooling is eclectic to say the least),
– building (the variables are large depending on the current building project),
– rent / mortgage and
– electricity, which was our focus for today.
For the next part of the lesson, we worked out 1) how much electricity we used, 2) what the normal cost of this and 3) how much our large hybrid solar system had saved us.
We worked out the electricity cost for everything from having a speaker plugged in, to toasting a piece of toast, to hot water for showers to microwaving a meal, to fans running all nigh…
This was just to give them an idea of how small things add up to a surprising amount of money over the course of a year, but it had an un-untended outcome:
I could tell they were taking things on board, but didn’t realise quite how much until the next morning…
A number of jobs had not been done, the excuse: ‘an older brother told me not to use electricity until the sun was up so the solar would cover it'(!).
Next I was told that the kids had unanimously decided we should disconnect from the grid to save even more money. Cold showers had already been implemented months ago, and now Sharmini agrees that we will have sun-cooked food (or cold dinners)… only using power when the sun was up.
Next was a discussion about how the dogs cost too much to keep, followed by different foods we ‘no longer need to eat dad’…
Oh boy, what have I awakened?!
We have always been frugal (or just downright cheap!), but things may be able to to get a lot worse…
And, please pray for our dogs, they may be looking for a new home (or going on a severe diet) very shortly!
I’m glad I don’t have extravagant tastes / purchases or I think I’d be out too!
#operationroof #skimpsave #issolarworthit
[For those interested in our real-world solar consumption & savings, we may publish detailed analysis on our blog at a later date. The conclusion: solar *can* reduce costs if done correctly, but there are other ways to save more, for less outlay…]