We have invested some of our hard earned money in a couple of things that will hopefully, in true homesteading fashion, save us money in the future.

Timers = automatic savings

We always have a timer on our Christmas tree while it's up and as I'm slowly preparing for Christmas I started to think of other things we could put a timer on.
I've been trying to convince my husband to let me turn off the internet at night, with no luck. To him, it was too much work and not worth it. However, when I suggested putting a timer on it he was completely on board since it took the hassle factor out of it. We've set the timer for 30 min after we're usually in bed (10 pm) and for the time we usually get up (5 am). So we should have our internet on while we are awake, but have it turned off for 7 hours per 24 hours. It might not sound like much but over the course of a week, that's 2 full days of not having the internet on.
We also added a timer to our TV with the same settings, although I would like to change those, we have to ease into things around here as I'm always more extreme in such things than my husband. In many ways, that's a wonderful thing as we even each other out.

Rechargeable batteries

I grew up with rechargeable batteries, but back then the technology was not as good as now and they lost their charge fairly quickly plus they cost a small fortune. We've just purchased 4 AA and 4 AAA batteries and a charger to give it a go again.
On the advice of a fellow homesteader in the discord channel for Homesteaders Online (please come join us!), we opted for the Eneloop technology and we have high hopes for these batteries.

It might seem counter-intuitive to buy rechargeable batteries as we are trying to lower our electricity bill. We are not, however, solely trying to lower that bill, but our overall expenses and these batteries will hopefully go a long way towards eliminating the need for new batteries. That said, if the batteries turn out as good as they sound, we will get a few more to keep us well stocked.

What's the ROI?

It can feel like these expenses are just added cost. What's the point, we won't save that much anyway...
Being frugal, I like looking at the Return On Investments. I tell myself it's one of the differences between being cheap and being frugal. I don't mind spending the money on something if its ROI is better than a cheaper version.
The timers were each 40 DKK. So if we were to recoup our cost in one year, we would have to save 80 DKK on our electricity bill. But here's the thing, you don't need to recoup the cost in a year. If the timers save us 20 DKK a year it will take us 4 years to recoup the cost, but after that our ROI will be 20 DKK per year. Our goal is to save 200 DKK per year based on last year's numbers, so this change would then account for 10% of that.

The batteries and charger were 280 DKK, we were spending about 40 DKK in batteries per month, so that will be recouped in 7 months, not factoring in the electricity used to charge the batteries. Since we don't know how much they will use and how often they will have to be charged, it's currently a guessing game, but I think it's safe to say that after 10 months we'll have recouped the cost and significantly lowered our expenses on batteries for the future.

Keeping tabs

To figure out what kind of impact these changes have, I'm keeping close tabs this year on our electricity usage. I will try to remember to note in my spreadsheet when we recharge the batteries, which will not only account for the electricity usage but also give us an idea of how long a charge lasts. I'm actually excited to see over the coming weeks what kind of impact we'll experience. Hopefully, we'll be able to get a glimpse of it before we put up our Christmas lights.

How important is the ROI to you? Is it something you consider in your homesteading efforts?

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