As a teen, I irritated Mom by turning off lights around the house. She’d chide me – usually in mock frustration – for darkening rooms she intended to re-enter soon.
My goal wasn’t to save money. After all, I didn’t pay the household bills.
I wanted to save energy, even then when climate change seemed far off. Irritating Mom probably appealed, too, given a teen’s disposition.
It’s dorky, switching off lights. And I still do it.
Just last week, I calculated my savings from age 15, prompted by an online article detailing how.
My math rests on assumptions about extra lights-off time daily (I guessed 30 minutes), the electricity rates in communities where I’ve lived (I settled on 11 cents per kilowatt hour, my current rate), and light-bulb wattage (I used 20 watts because lights are increasingly efficient).
The result is certainly imprecise – and close enough to accurate to fairly represent the correct order of magnitude. Even if the actual figure is half or four times what I calculated, it’s close enough. It’s an upside down and backwards measure of dorkiness.
$37.74.
