Making A Difference

September Electric Bill

October Electric Bill

Wow. My kids saved nearly $60 in our electric bill in one month. If you remember, I told ‘em I’d split a percentage with them of the $34 difference between the September Average Home and our bill if our bill in October was less than that $34 difference. If they made it less than the Average Home in October then they’d get the entire $34. Well they did it. So they’re getting $12 apiece for a great job.

The exercise was a ton of fun, and I’m truly surprised they almost halved our electric bill. How they did it? That’s part of the fun. Here are a couple of stories.

My wife was putting on makeup in the bathroom on a sunny day. The bathroom lights were on. One of my daughters walked in and said, “Mommy, it’s sunny out. Do you need the lights on?” They decided, “no,” and turned out the lights.

One of my daughters needed a sharper pencil. She searched around for an already sharp pencil rather than use the electric pencil sharpener.

So next month will be harder. I still want to reinforce energy savings, not because I’m particularly green, but because I can use lower energy bills. We may start focusing on the gas portion of the bill, too, which could generate some significant savings. But I don’t want to complicate my kids’ focus, so with them we’ll continue with just the electric portion. Knowing they won’t be earning as much going forward, we decided that we’ll reward them each with half the difference between the Average bill and our bill for the next three months. In October this difference was $7. Under the new plan they would each earn $3.50. Yes, the payout with three daughters will be more than the difference, but my overall bill will continue to be significantly lower than previous months. We’ll do this through January to continue building new behavior into habits.

Behavior changes over the next three months will have to be radical to maximize their earnings. I’m looking forward to seeing their creativity. They’re already starting to think about ways to save.

This entry was posted Sunday, November 8th, 2009 at 9:17 pm and is filed under Creativity, Economics, Family. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.