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"400 watts an hour to run it." As an old electronics tech. and certified pc technician, I can assure you that your pc doesn't draw 400 watts at anytime. Most pc's have a 150 to 250 watt power supply. Measurments I have taken generally show below 100 watts average draw during normal operation. Of course this doesn't include the monitor. I usually recommend leaving the pc on all the time during the day and turning it off at night, and the main reason I like to see it off at night,is a shutdown and reboot at least once a day will keep your operating system up to snuff and take care of some little problems that develope when using the pc such as ram not being released by programs that were using it, other resourses that get bottled up and slow the pc during normal use. Any modern pc should last many years even if it is left on all the time. Most business users I deal with never turn the computers or the monitors off, I don't see any great decrease in lifespan of the system. Just my humble 2 cents worth.

take care of some little problems that develope when using the pc such as ram not being released.

I developed some software that will free up ram after you shut down any application.

...not really, but if I did, I bet I'd soon be a millionaire.