I’ve noticed sometimes that there’s some half-baked videos or blogs or whatever that purport this or that frugal trick, but if you look at the time or math, it’s not actually frugal for you.
What are some examples of that you’ve come across? The things that “aren’t worth it”?
For me it’s couponing. (Although I haven’t heard people talk about it recently–has it fallen out of “style”, or have businesses caught up to the loopholes folks used to exploit?)
Are you in the US? Are you factoring in the federal rebate? Are there any other state or local rebates you might also qualify for?
It's still a terrible investment in the US if you are looking at it purely from a monetary perspective.
When I was looking at it, break even is usually just shy of 10 years, so let's call it that for easy math. You install a $20k solar system, and you end up making about $30k over a 25 year life span, assuming you never have any major issues and never move out of your house.
In contrast, you could dump that 20k into the stock market. With an average return of about 7-8% (the historical rate of the s&p500) you'd walk away with about $110-140k.
There's noble environmental reasons to do it, but financially it's just not a great return right now.
Edited to clarify: You'd also need to be paying for electric in the second example, so minus 50k over these 25 years. You're still up about double to triple over the solar panels.
The rebate is only as good as my taxes… so it helps, but not enough to make it a financially wise decision at this time. Similar story with the state incentives.