Sometimes government plans are not as good as

they seem.

Right now there is an energy credit tax break that everyone seems all keyed up to take advantage of.

It's a pretty good deal if you truly need some sort of an energy update or were planning on an upgrade, anyway.

Recently it was proposed to me that I replace all of my windows to take advantage of the plan. If I had old fashioned single pane windows or something, this might be a great idea. If my windows were really bad, it might be a good deal, but it really isn't when you put the pencil to it.

We're talking about a 10-15 thousand price tag on windows here, which is a bundle.
In return, the energy savings MIGHT be, say $50 per month, which sounds somewhat overinflated to me, but it's an easy figure to work with. The $50 per month is for five months here that we really use the heat, so we're looking at $250 per year savings.

Now, let's use the low end figure for windows of $10,000.

It would take forty years for the windows to start paying for themselves.

If the window price is $15,000 the figure jumps to sixty years.

Enter the government program of a $1500 tax rebate and the $10,000 window package now starts paying for itself in 34 years, and the payback on the 15k package drops to 54 years.

FTen or fifteen grand left in the bank drawing interest for 54 years will net a lot more money than spending it on unneeded windows.

Right now, that government program doesn't look very useful to me.






my other blog is:

http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/