Tuesday, October 9, 2018

How to calculate economic return on loft insulation? Projected vs. Actual.


      At the time I spent about 750 GBP and 5 days to put the insulation up in the loft (including cleaning it and teak oil application to the beams and joists to protect them). I also estimated that 20% of the heat loses were going through the roof.
     The actual natural gas consumption in 2016-2017 was 24,500 kWh (at 4.28p per kWh + 14.80p standing charge a day) or 1,104 GBP a year. 
Since I installed the loft insulation 2017-2018 consumption was 16,400 kWh (at 4,46p per kWh + 19.18p per day) or 8,100 kWh less (30% reduction) at the cost of 760 GBP.  This is a saving of 344 GBP a year.
    This means that I will get my money back in just over 2 years.  I overpaid my  utility company by 500 GBP so far. Only after I contacted them, they bothered to cancel couple of the monthly payments to reduce their debt to me.
    The natural gas prices went by 5% up in the UK last year, making them among the most expensive in western europe. No wonder that the propaganda encourages people do not heat their homes, including leaving some of the rooms unheated and keeping others at 61F (16C) in the winter.  

Friday, October 5, 2018

September 2018 update ($496,946 -$4,717 or -0.9%)


↑ US 500 Stock Index Fund is up by $626 or 0.5%%
↑ Vanguard FTSE U.K. All Share Index is up by $70 or 0.5%
Grand total additions: $696

↓ Emerging Markets Stock Index Fund is down by $1,052 or 0.9%
↓ Eurozone Stock Index Fund is down by $509 or 0.4%
↓ Global Small Cap Index is up by $1,752 or 1.5%
↓ EUR is down to USD by 1.0% or $2,086
Grand total losses: $5,399

Tuesday, October 2, 2018

Family budget 2018 – Family budget over last 10 years

This is 10th year we are keeping our family budget formally, recording every expense and trying to make sense of it all at the end of the year. I am glad that we started running the budget and has kept it for 10 years. This provides a lot of wonderful insights and I wish there would be more sharing on the web, information like this.
My open wallet - family budget - expenses. Honest view.