Frugal

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Discuss how to save money.

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What "frugal" tricks have you found to just not be worth it, either in time or money? (self.frugal)

submitted 1 year ago by IonAddis to c/frugal

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I've noticed sometimes that there's some half-baked videos or blogs or whatever that purport this or that frugal trick, but if you look at the time or math, it's not actually frugal for you.

What are some examples of that you've come across? The things that "aren't worth it"?

For me it's couponing. (Although I haven't heard people talk about it recently--has it fallen out of "style", or have businesses caught up to the loopholes folks used to exploit?)

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Depending on where you live, the feed in tariffs are a scam as well, so you better make sure you use any power you generate instead of feeding it back to the grid (either by shifting use or installing a battery).

[–] IonAddis 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't know much about residential, but I've been watching battery/solar setups for vans and RVs, and the cost of batteries to store power has been going down a lot.

I wonder if there'd be savings if one set up a "house battery" that only charged at night, then you use the stored electricity during the day.

Maybe hiring an electrician to do it would eat any savings, though.

Although, if one is more of a prepper than simply frugal, setting up a big "house battery" to smooth out electric outages due to thunderstorms or whatever might be nice.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Batteries could definitely be used to use cheap night time electricity during the day without solar. I think in some places you could even use it for arbitrage (use the grid market to get power when it's cheap, feed it back when there's more demand, etc).