When thinking about the family budget, I often struggle with frugal living and feeling safe. For example, when my family moved into a new home a few years ago, we were met with a tough challenge. We needed to make a decision on leaving our front porch lights on at night and feeling safe or keeping them off and saving money.
Since our home was new construction when we moved in, there was very little outdoor light at night in the subdivision. At the time we moved in, the subdivision was in a rural area outside of town and didn’t have any street lights. While the home was in a fairly safe neighborhood, the thought of complete darkness around our home at night gave us an eery feeling.
Since our subdivision is about 3 miles out from the local town in a rural area, it felt like you are out in the woods when driving around at night. My wife and I feel safer keeping our front porch lights on at night as the rest of the street is dark. There are only two other homes in the entire neighborhood that keep any outside lights on at night.
While my wife and I like to keep the lights on at night, I also cringe every time I flip the switch before going to bed. I can just see our meter spinning out of control while I am asleep. We are also making an effort to be more “green” and keeping the lights off at night sure would put us on the right track. At the same time, if I didn’t flip that switch, then I would stay awake thinking about how safe is my home? Don’t get me wrong, we live in a nice neighborhood where there is no crime (that I know of), but it give us piece of mind. Ultimately, keeping the lights on a night wins out about 95% of the time. I guess we will just wait for the developer to install the street lights and then we won’t have to worry about it any longer!
How do you handle situations like this? Do you opt for feeling safe or for your bottom line?
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If you use a CFL or LED bulb, the usage would be so low it wouldn’t be a large cost.
I have to admit that I would probably turn off my lights. I don’t think a 10% full subdivision would make me feel any safer with every light in the house on.
SavingDiva – Yeah, we plan on replacing outdoor bulbs with the energy efficient ones. We are trying to become “green”, but it has been a slow process.
I can relate to how you feel, but fortunately our neighbor has too huge flood lights on each side of their house that they leave on all night. The one on “our side” points at an angle that casts light on our driveway and front porch.
If we didn’t have that neighbor amenity, I would assume that my wife would probably want to leave our outside light on. (fingers crossed that our neighbors don’t move)
Unfortunately we only have neighbors on one side of us right now. There is a dirt lot on the other side that they are just clearing the land off right now to build on. The other thing is that it is very dark in our back yard as they have not started the road behind us. I just want the developer to hurry up and install the street lights!
Why not install motion sensors lights? We have them on our lights and it goes on every time something crosses the sensor’s range so we can see if there’s something out there. 90 percent of the time, there’s nothing out there.
Security is an issue, but if you can combine energy and security to your financial benefit, why not?
Mark – I am planning on installing a motion sensor in the backyard for sure. I put in the CFL bulbs about two weeks ago so I will see how much of a difference it makes.