Reaching Financial Freedom

We practice what we preach here and started doing some research on how we can lower our every day bills buy adding solar power.  With the government stimulus money offering great rebates to tax payers that want to go green we decided to check out what was the best options available.  After meeting with two companies we decided on one product that was right for us.  Here is why.

Solar Power for the house was going to cost more than $40,000.  Now after the tax rebates you are looking at about $20,000.  Nice Savings.  The problem is in a standard home of 4 people you will save about $150 a month.  Our electric bill is about $300 a month.  That means it would take about 14 years for us to pay back the solar panels.  Also there wasy another issue, equipment breaks, Batteries die and you have to calculate this into the equation.  It just didn’t seem worth it to us.

Plan B- Solar water heater!  This was a great option!  the water heater cost about $4500 for us to purchase we comes with an New 80 gallon water heater.  After a $2000 tax rebate from the government we were at $2500.  Our water heater was also 9 years old which is about 2 years older than it was suppose to be. So if we were to replace that unit we would be down another $700.  So we figured for $1800 we get hot water for the life of the house plus adding value to the house when and if we decide to sell.  The Solar water heater will knock about $70-$80 a month off of our electricity bill.

With the cost of electricity sure to rise over the next 10 years we will save a nice chunk of change.  The Solar Water heater took about 6 Hours to install and the water is hotter than what we had before.  (I live in Florida)

This might be a great solution for anybody trying to save some money in these tough times.  We will continue this series on other options that can help families in these difficult times.