Happy new year!

It's the last day of 2012. What a year! It's been difficult for me, and many others around the world. As I reflect on 2012, I have to admit that, through all the hardships that this year dished out, it was frugality that helped in a big way. I don't pretend to be perfect; my path is guided with frugality, but I know I'm not frugally perfect, so I'm going to make some frugal resolutions for 2013 to help guide me closer to frugal nirvana.

The first resolution I'll make is to commit to weekly updates of this blog for the entire year. Every Friday, expect to see fresh, new content, with original photographs.

My second resolution is to commit to a 2:1 ratio when it comes to acquiring stuff. What this means is that, for each new thing that comes into my house, two things must go. This is part of my on-going efforts to de-clutter, as well as to provide me with a moment to consider if I really need that new thing. Whether it's selling through eBay, donating to Goodwill, or just gifting to someone, two things must go for every thing that comes in.

Finally, I'm going to resolve to spend more time enjoying life. 2012 was all about my new career, house, and adapting to the changes that occur as a result of a career and house change. I'm finally feeling settled in both, so I'm going to commit to at least a couple of weeks of "Down" time, to travel and enjoy life. This part is all about giving myself back some time.

All the best to you and yours in the upcoming new year, and if you have any resolutions you'd like to share, feel free to share them here.

Inkjet printers: A second look

I've used many different types of printers over the years. My first printer was a Commodore dot matrix printer, which used a relatively expensive carbon ribbon. I later opted for an Epson 9 pin dot matrix, which utilized the more economical fabric ribbon. Inkjet and bubble jet printers introduced in the mid 1980's became affordable in the early 1990's, and promised laser-like quality, but I was rightly skeptical of the cost of ink as the cost of the printers was deferred by greater profits made from ink sales, and so I stuck with my trusty dot matrix. Eventually, I did buy an Epson inkjet printer, and suffered the shock of ink prices costing more than my printer. I discovered the Canon S300 was a reasonable and affordable alternative that paid for itself after replacing the ink on the Epson twice, but decided to defer that expense further with a Konica Minolta Pagepro 1400 monochrome laser printer for non-colour printing.

My first printer: Commodore MPS 802

The time has come for me to re-evaluate my printing needs. The cost of toner for my laser printer has gone up over the years and, given that the printer has been discontinued, has become increasingly difficult to find. I just discovered that this is the last time I can refill the toner cartridges I bought with the printer. A new toner cartridge costs around $70, and yields 2000 pages, for a cost of 3.5 cents per page. I can get a black ink cartridge for my Canon inkjet for around $10, but with a yield of 150 pages, it's costing me 6.7 cents per page. The colour ink, at around $25, yields 160 pages, for an expense of 15.6 cents per page. I could try my luck with refills, but considering the age of my printers, I reasoned it was time to start shopping for a new one to see if the market had improved.

The case for the all-in-one

My trusty, crusty Canon S300

For years, I avoided the all-in-one printers. I was concerned that, if one device broke, I could still use the other devices. Nothing ever broke. Businesses from small to large, presumably ran by very frugal individuals sitting in front of spreadsheets, tended to favour the all-in-one solutions. After careful consideration, I understood why: The all-in-ones offer time-saving conveniences that stand-alone units don't, in addition to cost savings. For example, the scanners will usually have a feeder allowing one to scan in multiple pages at a time, without requiring one to manually change the pages and hit the "Scan" button again and again - a big time-saver. It's often the case that scanned documents need to be faxed, and the all-in-one provides a one-stop time-saving solution for this without needing computer use. With wireless capability, the fax, printer, and scanning features can be shared with everyone in my household with a minimal amount of effort. Buying a scanner and printer separately generally costs more. Finally, going back to my original reasoning, if my computer broke, I could still send and receive faxes as well as make copies. There is also the fact that those models oriented towards businesses typically have automatic duplex capability - the ability to print on two sides of a page at a time - saving on paper and resulting in a more professional-looking result. All-in-one's really do provide an economical solution with significantly greater convenience. What's good for business is good for me.

The modern cost of laser

A reliable, reasonably cost-efficient, personal laser printer

The Samsung CLX-3305FW colour multifunction seems a remarkable deal, currently on sale for around $180. A black toner cartridge for this printer costs $75, and yields 1,500 pages, for a cost of 5 cents per page! Each colour toner cartridge costs $75 each, and yields 1,000 pages, for a cost of 22.5 cents per page. This is heading into inkjet territory. The HP LaserJet Pro M1212nf, a monochrome laser all-in-one priced at around $130, has toner cartridges that cost around $95 each and yield 1200 pages each, for a cost of 7.9 cents per page. What's happening here? It appears as though the laser manufacturers have borrowed a page from the low-cost ink jet printer makers: Sell the laser printers at extremely low prices, and make huge profits from the consumables (toner).

The case for ink jets

All-in-one inkjets are delivering competitive products to the business market, with business-oriented names like Epson Workforce and HP OfficeJet. Priced competitively but not ridiculously cheap, the consumables for these printers are on par with, or sometimes better than, competing laser printers. They also add the convenience of being able to produce colour photographs.

The all-in-one inkjet I opted for was the HP 6500a plus. A high yield black ink cartridge costs around $40 and yields up to 1200 pages, for a cost of 3.3 cents per page, squeezing out my laser printer. Each of the three high yield colour ink cartridges costs $20 and yield up to 700 pages, for a cost of 8.6 cents per page.

My new all-in-one HP OfficeJet

That's just the tip of the cost-saving iceberg. Just like I did with my laser printer, I can obtain "Refilled" ink cartridges for my HP printer. The objective for moving towards an office all-in-one was to gain access to the low cost-per-page ink costs promised and delivered by HP, but I've seen the high yield black for $15 (1.25 cents per page), and high yield colour for $10 each (4.3 cents per page) which drives the cost per page down even lower. That beats a refilled toner cartridge for my laser printer by approximately 75 cents per page. Whether or not these re-manufactured ink cartridges work well is often a topic for debate, but of the people I know who have used re-manufactured ink cartridges, I haven't heard any complaints.

Conclusion

It's no surprise to me that an ink jet can be cheaper to buy and own than a laser printer. In fact, the only thing that made laser printers seem so lucrative was the fact that ink jet manufacturers charged excessively high amounts for proprietary ink cartridges, and went to great lengths to prevent the use of refilled ink cartridges. By all rights, ink jet printers should cost less than laser printers; the amount and type of materials used for the build of each printer type calls for it. Also, besides the artificial profit margins generated by certain printer models and vendors, there's nothing to justify ink costing more than toner. In fact, it should, and generally does, cost less. The newspaper industry knows this full well, which is why, even today, newspapers come from a machine that uses ink, not toner, to produce their mass quantities.

It's nice to see the cost of inkjet printing technology finally coming down to reality. My advice would be to stick with products marketed towards business, and do the math on the price of replacement ink. Most of all, avoid the cheap printers that have overpriced ink or toner cartridges. It looks like inkjet technology has a future for the frugal minded.

Happy holidays!

'Tis the season for overspending and overeating as we scramble at the last minute to get everything done. Perhaps it's time to reflect on how we spend the holidays and learn to do more with less. Many of my blog posts to date have lead up to this, and I hope you've found them helpful. I'm in a time crunch this week, so I didn't have time to finish a proper blog post. I did want to take the time to wish my readers all the best this holiday season.

Christmas 1978 in the Quirk house

Fixing the School Budget Crisis

I can't help but notice the current crisis in our public education system here in Ontario. Our government needs a balanced budget, and is looking at ways of cutting costs. The current strategy is to save money at the expense of the teachers union's ability to negotiate a contract. I believe there are greater savings to be had, and it has nothing to do with cutting teacher's rights. It has everything to do with pulling the school boards out of the dark ages and embracing technology at a time when technology has made things extremely cost-efficient. Specifically, I'm talking about text books.

Flashback to the 80's

The future from the Commodore 128 manual

When I was a student in the 1980's, I had a Commodore 64 system. Computer technology was moving at a fast and furious pace, and I witnessed its introduction into the classroom. Companies like Commodore would offer deep discounts to school boards, sometimes at a loss, just to get their computers in front of students knowing full well that students learning on their technology would later become customers. Word processors and dot matrix printers made it much easier to write essays. I watched as a light pen was demonstrated in our drafting class. We learned the fundamentals of computer programming. I carried at least one 5 1/4" floppy disk in my binder at all times, often imagining what life would be like for students beyond the year 2000. Why would we bother with textbooks and notebooks, when that content could be easily stored and accessed on very small, lightweight floppy disks? There would be no risk of damaging an expensive textbook; if a disk got damaged, the school could simply create a new copy. This notion excited me so much, I demanded this sort of change back then. I came to understand that the technology wasn't quite yet mature, and that many students could not afford a home computer, nor could the school board afford a computer at every desk, but I took my own step into the future by ensuring all of my homework assignments and essays were done on my Commodore 64.

It's 2012, not 1912

Welcome to 2012. The technology has matured. These days, it's expected for assignments and essays from students to be completed on a computer system. Many text books can fit on an SD card much smaller and much more durable than a 5 1/4" floppy disk. The power of an entire computer system dedicated for reading these textbooks has been reduced to the modern eReader; a device which can cost less than a high school text book. These devices can establish a wireless connection to a global network of information. Textbooks can be stored efficiently in digital format, and can be updated at any time with minimal effort.

Weighing an average textbook

When we look at school boards in 2012, we discover that they are still stuck in the 1900's when it comes to textbook material. These textbooks represent a significant expense. Textbook publishers don't give schools the discounts that companies like Commodore did. It's not uncommon for a single textbook to cost an average of $75. Multiply this in a class of 25 students, and each textbook represents an expense of $1875. Now, multiply this by the number of subjects taught: Math, physics, chemistry, biology, history, geography, English, French; seven right off the top of my head, and we're at $13,125. The semester school system cuts this to four textbooks per student per semester, reducing this expense to $7500. Add in the cost of shipping, which is significant because these textbooks aren't light. If we assume an average textbook weight of 884 grams, multiplied by 25 students across four subjects, we're at 88.4 kilograms. At Canada Post's current most economical shipping rates, this could cost anywhere between $75 and $110, depending on how far these texts need to be shipped. Taking an average for shipping costs, a class of 25 students being taught with seven textbooks would cost $7592.50, or $303.70 per student.

Let's look at the way it ought to work in the modern age. Consider that the current eBook manufacturers would likely be willing to give school boards discounts to get their readers in front of students, for the same reason Commodore did in the 80's. Recently, Kobo discounted their Kobo mini from a retail price of $80 to $50 for Cyber Monday. For this exercise, I'm going to assume that Kobo might prefer to get the larger Touch in front of students, which normally retails at $100, so I'll set a target cost at about that of an average textbook: $75. For 25 students, this represents a cost of $1875. The textbook manufacturers typically offer a 60% discount for eBook versions of their texts, but I think we can do better. Now that the door is open to digital publishing, I believe the school board should be able to negotiate and acquire textbooks for an average cost of $20 each, representing a cost of $2000 for 4 e-texts per student per class of 25. The Kobo Touch weighs 185 grams, so 25 of them would weigh a mere 4.625 kilograms, putting the cost of shipping of 25 of them at between $9.24 and $14.12, depending on where they're going in the country. Using the average of $11.68, we arrive at a total cost of  $3,886.68, or $155.47 per student. That's nearly half the expense of traditional textbooks.

Adding up the savings

The Kobo Touch

According to the Ontario Ministry of Education, there were 711,345 secondary school students in Ontario secondary schools in 2010-2011. If my estimations are reasonably accurate (and I believe they are), and assuming a 5 year cycle for text books, the text book portion of the annual budget would be around $43.2 million for secondary school students, assuming that each high school student will require 4 textbooks per semester for their studies.

Assuming that each of the 711,345 students will require an e-reader that will be replaced after 5 years, the cost of the e-reader at $75 each plus shipping would represent a $10.74 million dollar annual expense. Assuming that half of the e-textbooks would never need to be replaced because the content would not change for that subject, a one-time investment of $28.5 million would pay for sufficient quantities of these, which could be reasonably budgeted over a 20 year cycle (to allow for updates to accommodate modern language use), representing an expense of $1.42 million per year. If the other two books per semester are updated in 5 year cycles, they would represent an expense of $5.7 million. This would put a projected budget for e-reader based textbooks at a total of $17.86 million per year. The savings represented in this scenario would be $25.34 million per year.

There are a number of other benefits to switching to e-readers in our schools. Number one, our kids won't need to lug spine-twisting heavy backpacks back and forth to school any more. These e-readers could easily be integrated into the school library, vastly expanding the selection a school would normally offer. This would also translate to significant savings in the school library side of the budget. Since there would not need to be as much room required to store books, more space would be made available to provide students with places to study and do work. E-books have been proven to encourage people to read more. Then there is the expense of storing and managing traditional textbook material; a single device like an e-reader would make this process much easier. E-books have been proven to be much better for the environment when compared to paper based books. The use of this technology would better prepare our children for the modern world. I cannot think of a single disadvantage that isn't outweighed by any of these advantages.

Conclusion

Clearly, having our school boards switch to e-books represents significant savings and advantages that cannot be ignored. We taxpayers need to demand that our school boards catch up to the modern age and provide our kids with the best education for our dollar, and a big part of that strategy is through the adoption of e-books and e-book readers.

Appreciating the value of space

Being frugal means living a certain lifestyle that involves seeking out good values and not wasting anything. This can lead to me buying things in bulk, and buying things on sale or on clearance simply because they are a good value. I was frugal with my money and time, but it wasn’t until recently did I truly appreciate being frugal with my space.

The true value of space

More space usually costs more in terms of money or time. If I want a bigger house, I’ll pay more. I can trade off some of my time; the further away I live from a big city, the bigger house I can buy with a given amount of money. The result is a longer daily commute. If time was a premium in my life, I’d live right in the downtown core. If money was a premium, I’d live far up north. Given the more time made available by living downtown, I could invest more time into earning more money to buy a bigger house. At the other extreme, I might not need to invest as much time to earn money. I live somewhere between these two extremes; this allows me to pick and choose what I feel are the best aspects of both worlds for my own tastes and desires.

The perils of filling up space

Are they really worth it?

I’ve come to value space as I do time and money. Consider, for example, if I filled up every moment of my time with something. I could be very efficient, utilizing each and every hour to maximum benefit. I could take on extra jobs, take extra courses, but I would be sacrificing leisure time. Eventually, I would burn out. I need periods of “Do nothing” time to unwind, reflect, and think about my future. Imagine if I budgeted every penny earned for something productive. If I didn’t ever allow some money to be spent on toys and fun stuff, I wouldn’t feel as though my life was really mine. I’d wonder, what am I doing this for?

Filling up my space with things has the same effect as filling up my schedule with only productive things or budgeting every penny for productive expenditures. Eventually, my life at home would make me a slave to those things, with no free space to just play, unwind, and relax.

The creep

Our first house, at 995 square feet

At first, I didn’t recognize the impact of losing space in my home, because I didn’t lose it all at once. The first house I bought with Sally measured 995 square feet. It had two bedrooms, an unfinished basement, and a one car garage. We didn’t have much furniture between us, but we had enough, and living in this house after coming from a bachelor apartment felt huge, even though this house was the smallest model on the street. Over time, well-meaning people would give us stuff. I’d find things at flea markets and garage sales. It wasn’t long until we started looking at wall units, built-in shelving and bookcases to keep everything organized.

Eventually, we did what many homeowners do, and bought a bigger house. That, too, eventually filled up, and so we repeated the cycle again. With each move came the realization that there was more stuff to move. When we started out, everything fit in a standard U-Haul truck. By the time we got to the house we’re in now, we were overlapping closing dates so we’d have a week to truck things from the old house to the new.

We didn’t just buy a new house for more space; it made economic sense as the value of our house went up, interest rates on mortgages went down, and our equity grew. Our mortgage payments remained the same as they were in that first townhouse, but the equity we realized with each sale kept growing. So was the amount of stuff we were accumulating.

Doing the purge

A library of wasted space left unbought

At least once a year, I do a purge. I go through my wardrobe and boxes to get rid of stuff I won’t wear or use anymore. I usually donate these to the local Value Village or Goodwill. The benefit of this is twofold: One, I liberate valuable space in my home. It’s like going through my budget and eliminating unnecessary expenses, or going through my schedule and eliminating those things I don’t really need to do. The other benefit is that I discover things that are actually useful, but got lost in the clutter. This can be really fun and exciting, and also illustrates another problem of having too much stuff.

We are now starting to look at purging as something we do as a family ritual. By making it an annual event in our household, it becomes something to celebrate and look forward to. Like many others, we tend to do this in the spring.

The joy of more space

A new show on HGTV called “Consumed” really helped to illustrate the intangible benefit of exchanging stuff for more free space. This show became a favourite in our household, as it demonstrated to us that most people prefer more free space over more stuff to fill that space, and has helped to increase our consciousness to this effect. It’s also helped us to be conscious of what we buy and how we buy it. We now recognize the true value of digital content and streaming video services. The value of the bargain bin DVD or blu-ray diminishes greatly once it’s viewed as another piece of clutter to manage after we watch it one or two times, when compared to a service like Netflix where we might find the same movie available for streaming for less than three bargain bin DVD's. No more compact discs to add to my clutter with online music services. E-readers allow us to buy a huge library of books with which to read, some of them free, and there’s no box of books to get rid of.

I’ve concluded that it’s the content that enriches our lives, not the stuff; and seize every opportunity to extract the content and eliminate the stuff. It’s an ongoing process, and one I’m glad to have added to my frugal lifestyle.