Earlier this week I bought this fancy toy called a Kill A Wat. It allows me to measure how much energy various things in my house are using, and do a little spreadsheeting to figure out how much these various things are costing me per month. Hooray! A nice lady at Xcel Energy was kind enough to help me break down my bill and figure out how much I am paying per kilowatt hour. Oddly, she acted as if people don’t regularly ask this question. The answer is 7.322 cents per KwH plus 4% in various taxes. Here are some results of my boring study:  Read more... (372 words, estimated 1:29 mins reading time)

I bought a car last year. Sadly, I did not have a blog then. Alas, all of my mostly useless information never made it to the internet. Thankfully, I now have a diary blog. As you might imagine, I did an unhealthy amount of research before buying. I’ll spare you the spreadsheets; but, in 4-door sedan world, it seems that you get the most most “bang for your buck” (factoring in depreciation, fuel expense, insurance cost, car longevity, upkeep, maintenance, etc.) by buying a 4-6 year old luxury model (Acura, Lexus, Infiniti) with 50,000-100,000 miles. Also, you can get great deals on bank/credit union-repossessions (make sure to make a ridiculously low offer). If you are in the market, here’s a list of a few credit unions I found that take the time to list their repos online:  Read more... (168 words, estimated 40 secs reading time)

I have always been curious as to how good of a “deal” Sam’s Club is. I remember from my marketing classes that Sam’s was a master of making one think that he or she is getting a deal by buying straight from the warehouse. Did you know Sam’s Club stores, when they first opened, hired guys to drive forklifts around the store? These guys didn’t actually do any work; they just drove around the store to give the customer the feeling of bargain shopping in a warehouse. True story. To compare Sam’s and Walmart, I broke down everything into cost per unit or per ounce. I also threw in generic brands out of curiosity. My ridiculously nerdy spreadsheet containing all of the data can be found here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6959229/samsvswalmart.pdf) The comparison:  Read more... (686 words, estimated 2:45 mins reading time)

I, like most of you, sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and ponder the Walmart dilemma. If I factor in my time, is it actually cheaper to shop there? So, I decided to conduct my own little experiment. I bought the same items at each store and timed my trips. I started the timer when I entered each parking lot and stopped it as I exited each parking lot. If you think this is nerdy you should see my spreadsheets comparing the finances of various republican parties (here you go: http://www.tommechler.com/media/party-finances-2007-2009-b.pdf). Anyhoo, here are the results:  Read more... (403 words, estimated 1:37 mins reading time)

So, we ventured into a sad new world yesterday. June 9, 2010 will go down in the history books as the day when “remember that time when we only needed one shopping cart?” entered our vocabulary. As it turns out, kids eat a lot of food…A LOT OF FOOD. Even worse, I fear that our oldest is on the brink of a discovering that we aren’t required to buy Great Value brand everything.  Read more... (251 words, 2 images, estimated 1:00 mins reading time)

So, I spent a good chunk of my day (11am-1:30pm to be exact) hanging out at the IRS. 2 reasons: problem #1 My refund was $2,000 less than it was supposed to be. Problem #2 I received a random refund check for overpayment of business taxes for $27. Two days later I received a bill for underpayment of business taxes for $27 + late fees. Awesome. Here are some observations during my time:  Read more... (599 words, estimated 2:24 mins reading time)