The Simple Dollar

Dressing like Elvis on your first day of work would help you get known quickly, but you might want to follow these tips to build a better brand for yourself at a new job. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

How to dress for success at a new job

By Trent Hamm, Guest blogger / 05.04.10

Anne writes in:

After searching for most of a year after getting my degree, I finally found a great job which I’m starting just after Memorial Day. The problem is that I don’t know what to wear. I don’t want to stand out as being poorly dressed but I don’t want to dump thousands into a work wardrobe. What should I do?

Here’s my game plan for this situation.

First, contact your new co-workers, particularly your soon-to-be-boss. If you don’t have this information yet, contact the company and request it. You may be able to find more of them using tools like LinkedIn.

Contact them individually, asking what normal attire is in the workplace that you’ll be joining. Ask what they wear – brands, level of attire, and so on.

You should pay particular attention to what your boss-to-be actually wears. Don’t be afraid to ask this.

Your best bet would be to dress at a level similarly to your boss, but not in a way that’s miles beyond the workers at your level. In most workplaces, you’re better off overdressing a bit than underdressing. The problem is that each workplace has something of a different definition of what “overdressing” and “underdressing” is and by finding out what your coworkers wear, you can get a bead on that right off the bat.

Once you’ve figured this out, go shopping. In my experience of buying clothes that work for professional use at good prices, I’ve found that the best place to shop first is at consignment shops. It’s often amazing how many very nice clothes can be found there. That’s where you’ll find business attire – often barely-worn stuff – from people whose life situation has changed direction, and it’s often available at great prices.

Rather than buying a lot of clothes right off the bat, you should stock your work wardrobe with fewer items that can easily be mixed-and-matched. Don’t go for the flamboyant – go for the presentable items that you can rearrange easily to create the appearance of a fresh outfit. For example, you’re a lot better off with six shirts and six ties than ten shirts and two ties – not only is the former set of clothes cheaper, it’s also easier to create the appearance of a more diverse wardrobe.

You should also be patient and be picky. You don’t have to buy everything right off the bat. Look at lots of consignment shops. Don’t be afraid to buy a few new items to mix in with the consignment items.

If you’re unsure what looks good, identify a consignment shop or two with a number of items you’re interested in and then take a friend. I usually let my wife be involved in the selection of such clothes because she has much better taste and a better eye than I do – I tend to often fall in the “if you’re clothed, then you’re good” path. Take someone along who can identify what is well-made, what items go together well, and what items simply look better than other ones.

If you’re uncomfortable dressing up for work – as I have been – do what I used to do. Put on comfortable clothes – like a t-shirt that you like to wear – and dress well over the top of that. I would often wear my favorite t-shirts and shorts under my dress clothes for work and sometimes I would literally take the dress clothes off on my way out of the workplace at the end of the day.

A final tip – it’s almost always a large net savings if you read the instructions on the tag and follow them for cleaning purposes. If you’ve got a nice wardrobe, it might seem cheaper to just wash them with minimal cost and effort, but you can drastically extend the useful life of good clothes by following the garment instructions.

Good luck.

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The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. To add or view a comment on a guest blog, please go to the blogger's own site by clicking on the link above.

Reaching personal goals can be difficult, but using this personal finance trick can help you get there. (Biswaranjan Rout/AP)

A popular personal finance method applied to meet other personal goals

By Trent Hamm, Guest blogger / 05.03.10

One of my favorite personal finance tactics is “snowflaking.” For those unaware, “snowflaking” refers to the idea that if you make little frugal steps throughout the month, you simply add the amount you saved with that method and include the total as an extra payment at the end of the month. So, for example, if you used coupons to save $5 on your normal purchases, you would then add $5 to an extra debt payment at the end of the month. This knocks $5 off of the total amount you owe, reducing your interest owed in future months and getting rid of the total debt that much faster.

“Snowflaking” is almost always used in a debt-related context – the name itself comes from the popular “debt snowball” – but I’ve actually found that snowflaking is incredibly powerful for almost any goal in life. In fact, I use snowflaking all the time in my own life for bigger goals.

Here are some examples for how I use snowflaking for some of my personal goals.

Bigger savings goals The biggest savings goal that Sarah and I have right now is for our next home. We intend to buy a piece of land in the country with some wooded area on it (expensive) and then build a house to spec on that land (even more expensive), along with a barn (whew!).

That’s an expensive goal.

So I keep that big goal in my mind as often as I can. I have a picture of a home with a barn and some woods in the back that I look at all the time to keep myself reminded of it. When I make a choice to save a few bucks – buying something in bulk or some similar little effect – I log onto my online banking and transfer that amount to a separate savings account, never to be touched until we’re ready.

With every little choice, that account grows and we move a little closer to our dreams.

Motivational goals I’d like to get a better pair of walking shoes. Instead of just going out and buying a new pair, I simply pledge that if I reach the 250 mile mark with my walking this spring and summer, I’ll allow myself to buy the shoes.

Again, this is snowflaking, just in a little bit different form. If I don’t have the motivation to go on a really long walk, I’ll just talk myself into a short walk around the park near our house. I’ll kick out a mile and a half or two miles and be back at the house in less than a half an hour, but that little bit contributes to my larger goal.

Cash snowflaking can work well alongside this non-cash goal. If I talk myself into walking for an hour instead of renting a pay-per-view movie or something like that, I can contribute the savings to an account for that goal.

Splurges Let’s say, hypothetically, that I wanted an iPad. I might want that in the short term, but still want to save for the bigger goal in the long term. What do I do?

I could simply split the snowflakes, putting half of the money into the big goal account and the other half into the iPad account. I could also just go for the short term goal now, putting all of it towards the iPad and moving back to the other goal once I have my gadget.

My preferred way, though, is to snowflake in certain ways for one goal and snowflake in other ways for other goals. So, for example, if I save money by choosing free entertainment instead of something with a price tag (like I might normally do), I’d save that money for an entertainment splurge (like an iPad). On the other hand, if I save money with smart food buying, that would go towards the house instead.

Of course, this is a hypothetical assumption that I want an iPad instead of, say, a good paperback.

To put it all simply, snowflaking is a great tactic for any financial goal. It creates a powerful connection between big goals and the little choices we make each day, often in a very tangible fashion.

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The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. To add or view a comment on a guest blog, please go to the blogger's own site by clicking on the link above.

The amount of money it takes to be “rich” usually equals somewhere around one hundred times what a person has made in the last year. But in the end, being rich has nothing to do with money. It has to do with being happy with what you have and not desiring more. Being rich is having enough. (Newscom)

What does it mean to be rich?

By Trent Hamm, Guest blogger / 05.03.10

If you wander by the personal finance section at your local bookstore, one of the first things you’ll notice is that a lot of books use the word “Rich” in the title. Rich Dad, Poor Dad. How to Get Rich. Smart Couples Finish Rich. I Will Teach You to Be Rich. Heck, one of the most popular personal finance blogs out there is named Get Rich Slowly.

Rich. What does it even mean?

I’ve said before that my idea of richness is merely financial independence and a full life. I truly don’t want to have mountains of money – if I did find some way to earn a lot of money, I’d likely give most of it away once I’ve established long-term financial independence for my immediate family. (Trust me, writing isn’t it unless you’re Dan Brown or Stephen King.)

But I’ve put a lot of thought into that question. What does it mean for people who are simply trying to make ends meet?

I asked a big handful of people on Facebook this very question. “How much money does it take to be rich? What would you do with that much money if someone just handed it to you?”

Most of the responses were very consistent with each other.

The amount of money it takes to be “rich” usually equals somewhere around one hundred times what a person has made in the last year (at least, based on what I could estimate that people make). So, someone that makes $20,000 a year would say that two million would make them rich. Someone making $100,000 a year would answer that ten million would make them rich.

What was interesting is the consistency in how they would spend it. Almost all of them mentioned buying material things. Out of the twenty people I asked, only two of them mentioned investing the money at all, although quite a few did mention paying off all of their existing debt. There were lots of mentions of ridiculously expensive cars and several mentions of new houses. A few people said they would quit their jobs.

Mostly, though, they would just spend their riches on a higher grade of the same stuff they already have. They’d buy a better car and a better television and a better house.

Obviously, many of the people I wrote to are perfectly happy with their lives and upgrading material elements of that life would just put icing on the cake.

But if you’re not happy with some aspect of your life, simply doing more of the same thing won’t help. You’ve got to do something different, and that often means completely changing the routine of your life.

If you’re happy with what you have in life, more money is just icing on the cake – a means to secure what you have and buff up certain parts of it.

If you’re unhappy with what you have in life, more money to buy more of the same stuff won’t help at all. Money helps in that it buys you the freedom to make the changes you want.

Having the money to buy that nice item you’re dreaming about won’t bring you happiness. Either you’re already happy with your life or you’re not. Money can, however, put a bit of sugar on the cookie if you’re already happy and allow you to find a new path if you’re not.

In the end, being rich has nothing to do with money. It has to do with being happy with what you have and not desiring more. Being rich is having enough. Some people working minimum wage jobs are rich and some people with millions in the bank are not.

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The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. To add or view a comment on a guest blog, please go to the blogger's own site by clicking on the link above.

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In this 2006 file photo, Yoshio Jackson (left) gets instructions from Chef Emeril Lagasse as part of Cafe Reconcile's program in New Orleans working with teenagers in danger of being swallowed up by life on the streets. Teen help through apprenticeships can be rewarding for both the apprentice and the professional. (Judi Bottoni/AP/File)

Teen help: Is apprenticeship an answer?

By Trent Hamm, Guest blogger / 04.28.10

I’m going to go a bit off the beaten path here…

Why Nerds Are Unpopular by Paul Graham is one of the most thought-provoking essays I’ve ever read. I’ve re-read the thing several times over the years, each time realizing how much it actually hit upon some of the fundamental truths of my teenage years. In short, I felt completely lost in most teenage social situations and I felt most useful and happy when I was involved in actually learning elements of a trade from an adult who would teach me (for example, my father integrating me into his fishing business). An excerpt:

Teenage kids used to have a more active role in society. In pre-industrial times, they were all apprentices of one sort or another, whether in shops or on farms or even on warships. They weren’t left to create their own societies. They were junior members of adult societies.

Teenagers seem to have respected adults more then, because the adults were the visible experts in the skills they were trying to learn. Now most kids have little idea what their parents do in their distant offices, and see no connection (indeed, there is precious little) between schoolwork and the work they’ll do as adults.

And if teenagers respected adults more, adults also had more use for teenagers. After a couple years’ training, an apprentice could be a real help. Even the newest apprentice could be made to carry messages or sweep the workshop.

Now adults have no immediate use for teenagers. They would be in the way in an office. So they drop them off at school on their way to work, much as they might drop the dog off at a kennel if they were going away for the weekend.

What happened? We’re up against a hard one here. The cause of this problem is the same as the cause of so many present ills: specialization. As jobs become more specialized, we have to train longer for them. Kids in pre-industrial times started working at about 14 at the latest; kids on farms, where most people lived, began far earlier. Now kids who go to college don’t start working full-time till 21 or 22. With some degrees, like MDs and PhDs, you may not finish your training till 30.

The point here makes sense. Most teenagers have no idea what their parents actually do for a living (at least beyond anything but a vague sense) and they have no idea how the things they learn in the classroom will relate to anything they will ever do.

The solution to that, of course, is right at the start of this: apprenticeship. Instead of loading teenagers up with extracurricular activities or menial jobs after school, why not pair them with actual professionals in meaningful relationships that benefit both of them?

Here’s an example of what I mean. Let’s say there’s a teenager out there who dreams of being a writer. The school puts out a notice in the community looking for a writer who would take on an apprentice ten hours a week. The apprenticeship would pay something around minimum wage, but would also involve the apprentice building something of value on their own with at least some of that time. So, for example, I might have the apprentice spend five hours a week doing grunt work for me, then I would spend five hours each week with that person helping them to build a blog to share their writing, polish their writing skills, and so forth.

The student gets real experience in a field they’re interested in. I get to trade five hours of grunt work a week into five hours of meaningful mentoring a week.

You could do this at almost any job. Ten hours of apprenticeship a week. Five hours is spent handling grunt work for the master and five hours is spent doing meaningful work that builds into something more. Even better, in many cases, that meaningful work could be open-ended (like writing), enabling the apprentice to take the bull by the horns in their spare time and go even further.

Here are five additional examples of how this might work.

A computer programming apprentice might spend five hours doing very basic system support and cleaning of equipment and five hours getting mentored as a contributor to a high-profile open source software project.

A park ranger apprentice might spend five hours doing park cleanup and an additional five hours getting intense mentoring, going out on patrols, and setting up and running a large-scale project for park improvement.

A basketball coaching apprentice might spend five hours handling managerial grunt work for the team and five hours watching game film and receiving lessons on how to motivate others, culminating with actually coaching lower-level sports.

An administrative assistant apprentice might spend five hours collating and five hours involved in actual preparation of documents for the business.

A graphic design apprentice might deal with correspondence for five hours and then spend five hours getting mentored on how to create great designs for real-world projects, culminating in handling a few smaller projects all on their own.

From there, it’s not hard to see how apprenticeship could work well in many career paths.

An apprenticeship, done well, can give a purpose and direction to a teenager that didn’t exist before. It can directly tie their classroom lessons to real-world work and initiate them into the true adult world that they often seek.

With that in mind, I am considering doing this very thing with the local high school, seeking out a student who is interested in writing to serve as an “apprentice” starting in the fall.

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The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. To add or view a comment on a guest blog, please go to the blogger's own site by clicking on the link above.

Craigslist.org CEO Jim Buckmaster (left) and founder Craig Newmark are photographed outside of their office in San Francisco in this 2005 file photo. The site is one of 15 websites that can save consumers a lot of money. (Jeff Chiu/AP/File)

15 websites that saved me money in 2010

By Trent Hamm, Guest blogger / 04.28.10

At the start of 2010, I decided to start an ongoing list of websites that directly saved me money with the intent of sharing that list (and my money-saving experiences with each entry) when the list hit fifteen sites in length (perfect for a good post – not too few and not too many). I fired up OneNote (my default note-taking app) and just started jotting down any experiences I had where a website directly saved me money.

It only took until mid-April to reach that count.

Here they are – the fifteen websites that have directly saved me money so far in 2010, along with how exactly each one saved me money.

Craigslist (and its’ cousin, Freecycle)
http://www.craigslist.org and http://www.freecycle.org
This is definitely the big one, at least to this point in 2010. About a week ago, I posted an article talking about how we bought a 2004 Honda Pilot off of Craigslist, saving us quite a bit of coinage. Beyond that, we’ve also *almost* picked up three or four additional items off of Craigslist over the last few months but, as users know, stuff can sometimes go very fast on there. I usually just look for stuff that’s outrageously undervalued (a la yard sales on occasion) or free.

PaperBackSwap
http://www.paperbackswap.com
This has been my primary source of books for years. It’s simply online book swapping – mail out a book you’ve already read to someone who wants it and get a credit, then spend that credit to get a book from someone else. I get books in the mail for about $2 (the cost of sending out one of my old ones). Recent books to arrive in the mail include Foucault’s Pendulum by Unberto Eco, The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, The Accidental by Ali Smith, and Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.

Skype
http://www.skype.com
Skype allows you to use the internet as your telephone service, allowing you to call any number in the U.S., Canada, and a few other countries as well as have your own phone number for about $3 a month. I’ve been using Skype as my business number since last year and it’s worked like a charm. The best part? When I don’t want to deal with business calls, I just close the program. Problem solved.

FeedSifter
http://feedsifter.com
My biggest problem with online coupon sites is that they often convince me to go ahead and buy stuff I don’t actually need or really even want if I thought about it rationally. Feedsifter allows me to set up automated searches of coupon sites for the things I actually want, then pumps the results to me. I’ve saved $10 on Magna-Tiles and about $30 on some All-Clad pans to replace our peeling Teflon-covered pans.

RetailMeNot
http://www.retailmenot.com
Of course, sometimes – in a short-term pinch when you have an urgent need for something – such coupon sites can actually come in handy. You’re going there with a purpose and you just find what you need. In one case – when we ordered pizza from Papa John’s online – Retail Me Not came in handy. It showed us a pile of coupon codes, including one that fit what we intended to order quite well, shaving some cash right off of our total bill.

DealCatcher
http://www.dealcatcher.com/
Another time when a coupon site can be useful is when you go there for a specific purpose. Earlier this year, my wireless mouse failed and, after looking at a bunch of replacement options, I settled on several different models. One of them – the Microsoft Wireless Mouse 5000 – had a very nice price listed on DealCatcher, so I went for it, saving myself about $15 off of Amazon’s price and about $25 off of just running to Best Buy to get it.

Kayak
http://www.kayak.com
As I’ve mentioned before, we’ve been planning a summer trip up to the northern reaches of Minnesota. Over the years, I’ve used lots of travel sites for planning, but this time I’m using Kayak to help us figure out exactly where we’re going to camp and what services are nearby – with a four year old, a two year old, and a baby, something will come up, I’m quite sure.

Travel Iowa
http://www.traveliowa.com
Thanks to this website, we’ve hit several community events over the past few months, including Toddlerfest (which our children loved) and a few events at Iowa State University. It lists all kinds of events taking place all over Iowa during the entire year, allowing you to narrow it down as much as you’d like. Many other states have similar services.

Healthy Grocery List
http://www.healthygrocerylist.com
Hand in hand with a grocery store flyer, I used this site to come up with a set of healthy recipes and a grocery list for those items a few different times. I’d take the flyer, find some recipes using a few of the fresh ingredients on sale, then generate a grocery list. I’d then cross a few items off the list (because they were already on hand) and add a few staples, then head out to the store. A day is coming when this type of interface is available for a home recipe collection and when that happens, I’ll be a happy man.

Gas Buddy
http://gasbuddy.com/
I’ve used this site several times while out and about, usually with my wife. We notice we need gas, so I fire up Gas Buddy on either her Kindle or my cell phone and we find the cheapest price on gas near us. More than once, we’ve driven right by a gas station to one a half mile further down the road with prices ten cents a gallon cheaper.

YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/
I use YouTube all the time for do-it-yourself projects. Two recent examples include a toilet repair (here) where I replaced the flapper and some other parts, and a video on replacing a shower head (here), which went incredibly smoothly after watching the video. In both cases, watching the video saved me from hiring a repairman or botching something badly myself.

BillShrink
http://www.billshrink.com
We’re currently shopping for a new cell phone provider as my wife’s contract just ended. We identified at least three providers that will save us significant money (according to BillShrink) – we haven’t quite pulled the trigger because we’ve asked people we know about service issues with the various companies and are still deciding which one to take. So, this is more in the form of savings in the bush, not quite in the hand yet.

Yard Sale Treasure Map
http://www.yardsaletreasuremap.com
I love going to yard sales. It’s a fun Saturday activity and every once in a while, you find a stupendous deal – I once found some trading cards worth hundreds of dollars in a box marked $1 and, several years ago, I found some rare Atari cartridges for $0.50 a piece. We’ve also picked up strollers and tricycles at yard sales. If nothing else, they’re quite entertaining and this site makes it easy to find ones near you.

Hulu
http://www.hulu.com
We’re about to disconnect our cable entirely, saving us about $40 a month. Although we don’t watch much television, some of the series we do watch can be found on Hulu for free.

Netflix
http://www.netflix.com
At the same time, we now subscribe to Netflix (a downgrade from $50 a month cable to $9 a month Netflix!). We watch streaming stuff on our Wii, including some children’s programming (like Follow That Bird and our son’s favorite show, Caillou) on rainy days. In fact, we’re likely going to shrink our DVD collection yet again because some of the disks are redundant with what’s available on Netflix.

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The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. To add or view a comment on a guest blog, please go to the blogger's own site by clicking on the link above.

Clark and White sales consultant, James Goldberg, answers questions for Megan Hazelwood as she prepares to take a Jeep Grand Cherokee for a test drive at the dealership in Newton, Mass., in this 2009 file photo. If you don't like to haggle to buy a car, find a friend to do it for you. ( Ann Hermes / The Christian Science Monitor / File)

Don't like to haggle to buy a car? Hire a friend.

By Trent Hamm, Guest blogger / 04.28.10

Annie writes in with an interesting story worth talking about a bit:

I don’t like shopping for cars at all. I always get overly nervous and want to run away and feel like I’m just getting manipulated by the dealership. I knew I needed a replacement car soon and, like you and your Pilot, I knew what I wanted. I wanted a Toyota Corolla made between 2004 and 2006. I did my research and found out what I would expect to pay for this car. What I figured would happen is that I would go to the dealerships in my area, feel really uncomfortable and get pushed into paying at least that much, if not more, and then hate myself about it for a long time.

So I came up with a different plan.

I have two friends (a couple) who are very outgoing and are quite willing to negotiate and play hardball. So I called them up and made them an offer. I told them what I wanted to pay for the car and I said I would pay them the difference if they came up with a car like I wanted that had been checked out by a mechanic and had a good Carfax report. They ended up getting exactly what I wanted for about $1,200 less than what I asked, so they got to keep the $1,200 instead of the dealer. All I did was show up at the dealership, sign a paper, write a check, and walk out with the keys. Even better, they took me out to dinner at a nice restaurant to celebrate the new car.

I might not have gotten the best deal, but it wasn’t anything worse than I would have negotiated for myself. I didn’t feel awful about the purchase and the extra money went to my friends instead of to the dealership and I didn’t have to spend weeks hunting for the right model and I got a nice meal with friends out of it, too. Perhaps some of your more timid readers might find the idea useful.

I don’t see a thing wrong with this and, in fact, I applaud Annie for doing it.

Essentially, what she did was pay her friends for an incredibly useful service. She did not pay her friends $1,200 for the service, either, as she would have likely paid most of that to the dealership. She also has an experience that built a deeper bond with her friends.

Is this a good angle for many people? No. Is it a good angle for some people? Absolutely yes.

The real key to this entire story is that Annie knew herself. She knew what her strengths were (being good with money, since she saved up enough cash to buy the car she wanted, and having good friendships). She also knew what her weaknesses were (negotiating with dealers). She simply took her strengths and used them to overcome her weaknesses.

What are you good at?

Are you good at negotiating? Why not offer to accompany your more timid friends to dealerships when they go to buy a car?

Are you good at carpentry or plumbing? Are you good at preparing documents? Do you have a great deal of patience with children?

We all have virtues that make us stand out, at least a little bit. These virtues have value, whether you directly turn them into cash or not. They can be used to build up or cement close relationships with others. They can be used to barter. They can sometimes be used to earn a bit of extra money.

Here’s what it comes down to. If you have a special virtue, share it. If you’re good at negotiating, offer to negotiate for those you care about. If you’re good at carpentry, offer to help people you care about with their carpentry needs. Sometimes, as in the story above, it can even be lucrative, but usually it’s just a good step for cementing relationships.

Then, when you need something, don’t be afraid to ask for their help in return. Seek the skills of your closest friends and family members when you need them.

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The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. To add or view a comment on a guest blog, please go to the blogger's own site by clicking on the link above.

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Motion-activated light switches can save homeowners money if installed in medium-to-low traffic rooms like closets, guest rooms, storage rooms, utility closets, and bathrooms. In other cases, it may not be worth the investment so homeowners should stick with traditional switches, like the one shown here. (Newscom)

Do motion-activated light switches save money?

By Trent Hamm, Guest blogger / 04.26.10

Paul writes in:

I’ve really been enjoying your recent cost breakdown posts. I’m thinking about installing a few motion-activated light switches in my home and I’m wondering if they will actually save me money. Which switches do you like? Will it actually save money in the long run?

Paul is referring to a motion-sensing light switch that will turn the lights on in a room when it detects any motion and will automatically turn the lights off after a certain period of time if there is no motion detected.

First of all, motion sensing switches do have some “phantom” energy use. According to this study, motion sensor switches use about a watt of energy on standby mode (23 hours a day) and 5 watts on active mode (about an hour a day). This trims a bit off of your overall savings. Over the course of a month, assuming your electricity costs the nationwide average of $0.11 per kilowatt hour, the switch itself will devour 0.84 kilowatt hours, or about $0.09 of energy. Month in, month out.

The model I’ve been recommended a few times is the Zenith SL-6107-WH, which sells for $22.90 at Amazon.com. You would want to prorate this over the lifetime of the switch – say, fifteen years. You’d effectively add a cost of another $0.13 a month for the switch. The switch thus has a cost of about $0.22 a month over the lifetime of the switch beyond what you currently have installed.

So, will you make that $0.22 a month back – and more? That cost is equivalent to the energy cost of leaving a single 60 watt light bulb on for 33 hours.

I wouldn’t install one in a heavy-traffic room, particularly one that has only one or two main lights (like our kitchen). In such a room, the switch would rarely flip off when there are people active in the house, because you would normally have it set to only turn off the lights after a lengthy period of no motion (say, 20 minutes or half an hour). The little bit you might save in having it flip off for ten minutes here and ten minutes there would not be a net savings over a month.

Where I would consider one is in a medium-traffic or low-traffic room, one in which you might accidentally leave the lights on for long periods without noticing. Closets. Guest rooms. Storage rooms. Utility closets. Bathrooms. This is particularly true if there are multiple lights on that switch.

In these rooms, traffic is very irregular and there can easily be periods of time where days go by without the lights being turned off. For example, the light fixture in our guest bedroom has four lights in it. If these all contained sixty watt bulbs and we left it on for a day, the energy use alone would have made the automatic light switch worth it in this case.

The room that I think would be the most effective for such a switch would be the bathroom. I can speak from experience that restroom lights are often left on, particularly in the evening hours. While these are usually “caught” before I go to bed, there’s often an hour or two of several bulbs burning, eating up the energy.

But there’s another factor at work here.

If you want to save money on energy costs in such low-traffic places, energy-efficient lighting is probably the smarter choice. Instead of investing $25 in a motion-sensing light switch to cut down on energy costs, install CFL or LED bulbs in such low-traffic rooms. Not only will the energy costs be lower while the room is actually in use, the penalty won’t be nearly as severe if you forget to turn off the light switch. For example, one CFL that produces light equivalent to a 60 watt bulb uses only 13 watts; an LED bulb (while more expensive up front) uses only 5 watts. This drastically cuts into the savings you would get from a motion-sensing switch, to the point that I wouldn’t find it worthwhile to ever install one to manage a single bulb.

In my own home, I would consider installing such switches is in the bathrooms and possibly in the utility room, the garage, and the guest bedroom – in other words, rooms with multiple lights on one switch that are used only in brief bursts with long periods of inactivity. Aside from that, I’m not convinced that such a switch would be a net savings.

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The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. To add or view a comment on a guest blog, please go to the blogger's own site by clicking on the link above.

Wealth isn't necessarily measured in net value, says blogger Trent Hamm. For him, wealth is peace of mind and quality time with family. That, he says, is achieved through frugality. (Newscom)

Wealth, frugality, and fulfillment

By Trent Hamm, Guest blogger / 04.26.10

Adam writes in:

I’m not feeling the vibe from your recent posts about how to save a few pennies washing Ziploc bags. This won’t get me rich.

Getting rich isn’t the point.

One of my favorite people in the world, Rachel, currently works for a non-profit organization in the Seattle area. She works there because the work she does deeply fulfills her and matches what she views as her purpose in life. To put it simply, she values greatly the work she does with developmentally disabled people. She has a set of natural gifts (patience, communication skills, energy) that suit her very well and it’s a type of work that not only allows her to feel like she’s gaining something of very personal value from the work, but that she’s actually having a transformative effect on the lives of the people she works with and their families.

That’s an absolutely fulfilling job, one with personal meaning and value for Rachel as well as providing value to the world.

The only problem? It pays peanuts.

My position is a similar one in some ways. I had a good, secure job with a very nice salary. I walked away from that job – giving up quite a bit of salary – to pursue writing. Writing is an often thankless job with extremely uneven pay, but it’s fulfilling work – for me, at least. I deeply enjoy the time I spend writing and I deeply value how the things I write have positive effects on other people. I also have an insanely flexible schedule, one that allows me all the time I want to spend with my children.

In both of our cases, we walked away from career paths that offered excellent pay for careers that offered much less pay. We did this because the lower-paying jobs reflected our personal values well, matched our skill sets well, offered deep personal fulfillment, and allowed us a sense of professional freedom and enjoyment that we couldn’t find elsewhere.

In exchange for that, we had to give up some material trappings and make some hard choices along the way.

This means not buying every electronic gadget that comes along or every hot newly released book that appears in the bookstore.

It means figuring out how to replace the shower head yourself when it stops working and shopping at thrift stores.

It also means doing things like washing Ziploc freezer bags for reuse or hanging up laundry instead of using the dryer.

To me, that’s a trade I’m happy to make. My life is not defined by owning an iPad or the type of laundry detergent I use. My life is defined by the fact that almost all of the time, I’m engaged in activities that personally fulfill me, whether it be writing or reading a book or holding my wife’s hand or rolling around in the grass with my children.

I don’t have a pile of new releases on my bookshelf or DVD shelf. But I also don’t have a bunch of job stress and I don’t have a sense of being out of touch with my children and I don’t have the worry of a pile of debt or other bills that I have no idea how I’ll pay.

Every time I discover some little, simple new thing to do that saves me a few bucks, I don’t just see some lame frugality tip. I see another brick in that beautiful yellow road leading to an Emerald City where I don’t have to worry about income at all. I see another avenue that keeps me securely in a life that I’m happy with and that fulfills me deeply.

That’s what frugality means to me.

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The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. To add or view a comment on a guest blog, please go to the blogger's own site by clicking on the link above.

Underwear and shirts dry on a clothesline outside a home in Casco Antiguo, the historic district of Panama City, Panama, as seen in a photo taken earlier this year. Air-drying instead of machine-drying clothes can be good for the environment and your wallet, but it consumes valuable time. (Mary Knox Merrill/The Christian Science Monitor)

How much do you really save by air-drying your clothes?

By Trent Hamm, Guest blogger / 04.23.10

When I was growing up, my mother always hung clothes out to dry, sometimes even in the winter. Where I currently live, there’s not really a place to install a clothesline that would catch any wind at all (I could put one at the edge of our property where it would catch a little wind, but this would really disrupt the open area our children use to play). A clothesline is one thing I definitely wish to have when we eventually move to the country.

So I sometimes use an alternative solution. I simply hang up a clothesline from our laundry room over to the guest bedroom, taking up part of the hallway in our basement. On that line, I can hang quite a few clothes without a problem. It takes most of a day to air dry them – this is aided on windy days when I can open all of the windows and doors in the basement to help the process.

Given the time that this takes compared to just tossing the clothes into the dryer, is it really worth my time? Let’s run the numbers a bit to find out.

The “Saving Electricity” website reports that the average dryer uses 3.3 kilowatt hours of energy and estimates an average of 11 cents per kilowatt hour. A small load of clothes takes about 45 minutes in the dryer, so the cost of that load is $0.36.

When I hang up my own line, I can hang up about three small loads of clothes at once on it. This is on average – I can do a bit more if it’s mostly my clothes and a bit less if it’s mostly kid’s clothes, but the three loads per line is a good calculation. That means that filling up the line and letting it air dry saves about $1.08.

Is it worth it? The real question comes from how long it takes me to do it. I can string up the line in about fifteen seconds, and I can hang a load’s worth of clothes in about two minutes or so – it’s really not that hard. I probably spend another fifteen seconds opening up doors and windows to maximize air drying, so the total extra time investment for that $1.08 is about six and a half minutes.

This means that if I repeated this exercise about nine times, I’d end up devoting about an hour to hanging up laundry and I’d save $9.96. As always, that’s $10 an hour after taxes – you don’t have to take income tax out of those “earnings.”

There are a couple other factors worth considering here.

Dryer sheets

If you’re hanging up the clothes, you’re not using dryer sheets. I usually use a quarter cup of vinegar in the rinse cycle as our laundry softener, so this isn’t really a concern for us, but if you use dryer sheets, you’ll either be abandoning them (a savings) or switching to something else. I encourage you to try vinegar – it seems to soften really well and doesn’t add any smell to the clothes.

The environment

Anything that cuts down on home energy use is a good thing and dryers certainly suck down the juice. Of course, if you’re opening windows for the purpose of air flow, you might also be doing this to help you keep the air conditioning off, which is another big environmental (and financial) boon. We try to resist using our air conditioner except during the day on particularly hot days, so opening the windows here is a natural thing to encourage air flow.

To put it simply, hanging up laundry is a decent but not world-beating saver. It’s worth doing particularly if you have environmental concerns for doing so, but other factors can easily trump it (like air conditioning, for instance). I, for one, like the smell of air-dried clothes quite a lot and it’s a good, repetitive activity that lets my mind wander in creative directions while doing it, so I think I’ll continue to hang laundry on a fairly regular basis.

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The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. To add or view a comment on a guest blog, please go to the blogger's own site by clicking on the link above.