Is the cost of a new refridgerator worth it?
admin on Aug 24th 2008
Lately I’ve been thinking alot about how much and what my family eats. This has mostly been a direct result of my devastating lack of funds. You see eating things like macaroni and cheeze from the box, hot dogs, and ramen noodles isn’t really good for our health. Sure it keeps us moving and out of a pine box, but you can see around our bellies that something is wrong.
I’ve also been thinking about all the soda I drink. I know its bad for me, but I’m actually addicted. I’ve been drinking coke since I was old enough to say the word. Now I can’t get the headache to go away in the morning until I’ve had my first glass. (where are the people who sued the cigarette companies when I need them) The worst part about bieng addicted to something is that deep down you really don’t want to quit. I’ve stopped drinking coke for about a month at one point in my life. I learned quickly that drinking soda for so long has damaged my ability to be normal. I don’t feel the urge to drink anything but soda. In fact I became severly dehydrated at the time. The will or instinctive need to drink water just isn’t there. 
Between these two factors I’ve been thinking about all the commercials you see telling us to buy new refridgerators and save energy. I’m all for the environment and I was almost convinced for that reason alone. You see how buying a new fridge can save you lots of mony in energy costs and you think is it worth buying that new fridge. After adding in that I really want an Icemaker and water dispenser in the door makes it even more worthwhile. I think if Ice cold water was screaming at me every time I walk in the kitchen, I might just be able to ween off the coke habit.
Here’s where the story goes bad though. About 10 years ago I bought a brand spankin new shiny fridge with all the bells and whistles. Way over a thousand dollars it set me back. It was at the time my family bought this house, and we needed a fridge to go in it. I still bieng young went ahead and bought the extended warrenty. Inside of the first year the fridge quit working and I needed it repaired. Under warrenty it got a new compressor. As it was stumbling across its first months from when the extended warrenty had expired, again it was dead. This time the new compressor was going to cost me a whopping $400. Doing the sensible thing I scrapped the fridge and got another one.
I learn my lessons though, and I learned the hard way not to spend thousands on a piece of shit fancy fridge. So when it was a pinch and I needed that second refridgerator I looked in the want ads and found a dinousar of a beast that is probably from the seventies that made its way into my home for 50 bucks.
My dillemma, I’ve got a fridge that runs well and obviously will keep running until a meteor hits it. It costs me only the electricity cost to keep it. Its ugly, its old, Its kind of like me. I really want that new refridgerator and there are lots of benefits to buying it, all except the one benefit I really need. The one where it saves me money.
My point is that after watching those recycle your fridge commercials you start thinking its cheaper to get a new fridge. Its not true. I looked up the statistics and here’s what I found: The average refrigerator upgrade from a model ten years old to todays technology saves the owner about six dollars a month. With a fancy new refridgerator coming in at over a thousand dollars, the interest on the new fridge will cost more than the savings you get from buying it. Even if I payed cash, (which btw is out of the question) It would take fourteen years to pay for itself. My last fancy new fridge only lasted four years before it was time to scrap it. There is no way a fridge I buy today is lasting 14. Even if the hardware is designed to last that long, which we all know it isn’t (manufacturers are making things cheaper and less durable all the time), the chances that the fridge will be as energy efficient or worth keeping after 10 years are zero.
The fact that I want a new fridge would justify some of the cost, and the health benefits of having the icemaker and water in the door would justify some more. Bottom line is that the cost is just too much. Looks like we won’t be getting a new fridge this year. The finances just don’t make sense.
Filed in Finance |