Frugality is a core part of my life, my budget and my identity. I take pride in not spending money frivolously. Although I have loosened up my discretionary spending in recent years, it doesn’t come naturally to me. My initial instinct before making most purchases is to consider the cost and assess whether the purchase is necessary and desirable.
Sometimes, I take frugality a bit too far. If you’ve read more than one of posts, you can probably find many examples where I think I’m being frugal and my friends think I’m being a cheapskate. I’m OK being that. I’ve been called worse.
This past month, I’ve spent what to me is a lot of money on my new computer setup. For me, it’s worth i to have a system that works flawlessly, is easily updated and fits my needs. I have no regrets with this purchase.
Something I hadn’t anticipated is that I now leave my computer, display and printer on 24x7x365. Prior to this setup, I always shut down my devices when I was finished using them. My thoughts were that this saved me money for “phantom electricity usage“, extended their lifespans and minimized my risk of fire if a device overheated.
My Mac Mini though presented me with a conundrum. Apple designed it with a tiny recessed power button located underneath the device in the least convenient spot. It makes no sense to me from a functionality standpoint. But because Apple always designs its products with the user interface and experience in mind, it warranted further research.
I learned that Apple actually designed the Mac Mini to never be shut off manually. The power button is for special use cases like booting it for the first or a system crash. Otherwise, Apple’s intention was that users would let it go to sleep vs. power down.
The same goes for my Dell display and my brother printer.
So I asked Perplexity run some calculations on the power consumption and cost to let these devices “run” in sleep mode for a year.
I won’t keep you on the edge of your seat waiting in anticipation….. $0.70 to $1.40. A year!
I’ve been shutting off my printer for 7 years and then having to wait minutes for it to restart, connect to WiFi and then reestablish a connection with my computer so I could print. I did the same with my laptop which took even longer to boot up the older it got.
And by doing this, I might have saved up to $10 in 7 years.
It’s a good thing my time is worth nothing.
So obviously, I decided to run these in sleep mode. And you know what? I find I pop down at my desk multiple times a day now when I want to look something up, print something or do some kind of work that before I would let stack up or I’d d**k around on my iPad or phone to get done.
I’d estimate that this saves me hours each week in wasted time while making exponentially more proficient.
A win-win.
For 70¢.