How much did the entire system COST you installed?
Meaning IF it cost $25K-35K you could have invested that money in stocks, Money markets, etc. Making 7%, your money doubles every seven years.
You are 100% correct. And I have enough invested to retire soon (maybe in a couple of years at the age of 57, with my wife having already retired at the age of 55). I’m currently in a quasi-retired phase.
Part of my retirement financial planning is to also control my expenses. Unfortunately the Democrats push their Warmageddon doomsday cult stuff to justify raising energy costs beyond our control. At least, that is, we can’t control the cost of energy we have to buy from their over regulated energy market. So the solar/EV/extra insulation in the house/efficient appliances project is all about keeping part of our retirement expenses in check by keeping the costs away from bureaucrats.
As far as how much it’s costing me out of pocket, see the details in post #22 how I used the loan to pay for it all and I’m making a loan payment plus small power bill instead of paying a large power bill plus large natural gas bill plus lots of gasoline cost. I guess I could have used the loan money to instead add to our investments. But I’ve never been a fan of investing on margin (meaning investing with a loan in investing-speak, but I’ve invested with margin in my budget a lot).
I respectfully disagree. I believe the math works out to having to earn 10% annually to double every 7.5 years. But your point is valid that investing is better in a diversified portfolio (I’m in 3 dozen growth mutual funds, plus a dozen “safer” bond/treasury/money market funds) gives a higher return than in investing in a solar system.