🍽️ Home solar panels are not free

Hey Future Funders Family,

Happy Monday!

For those of you who haven't heard from us in the last few weeks, we switched to a new platform that just so happened to begin having deliverability issues with emails going right to spam (real life growing pains). But luckily, we think the issue has been fixed (fingers crossed).

Lastly, for all of our supermom readers, we hope you had an amazing day yesterday!

Ok, let's get to it!

💬 Quote Of The Week

📰 Headlines That Matter

Economy

Some Good News (And Some Caution)

🚀 The quick version: We finally got some good news on inflation this past week with the Consumer Price Index (what most people use for inflation) coming down to 4.9% in April over the last 12 months. This is the first time the CPI has seen a "4" number since April of 2021.

Maybe nicest to see for families everywhere was a small drop in everyday expenses. Milk, for instance, fell 2%, the biggest monthly drop since February 2015. Egg prices, one of the biggest gainers in the food index over the past year, fell 1.5%, taking the annual gain down to 21.4%.

👪 How it affects you:  Focusing on the positive here, it's nice to see inflation back under 5%; we think this could continue to fall further in the months ahead. While overall this number still remains high, we are coming down off the 9% high we saw last year.

With inflation coming down, there are actually now some safe places you can invest and keep up with it (without having to play the stock market). Here are five ideas:

• High Yield Savings Account. High-yield savings accounts are typically FDIC insured (make sure you ask before you open one) and current rates of return run in the 4-5% range.

• Certificate of Deposit. A CD can have higher rates than regular savings accounts and are typically FDIC insured (but make sure you ask). Many currently offer a +5% return beating inflation.

• Short-Term Treasury Bills. These are effectively IOU's offered by the US Government and can be purchased at rates ranging from 4-5% depending on time length. You can also build a Treasury Ladder to stagger how long you have to lock up your cash.

• Series I Bonds. These are other types of IOU's offered by the US Government that attempt to keep up with inflation. They currently offer a 4.3% rate through October.

• Money Market Funds. Several right now offer returns of +5% and typically you can withdraw your money at any time although they are not FDIC insured.

Housing

Solar Panels Are Not Free

The short version after looking into it is that these ads are... dun dun dun... a lie.... and there is no such thing as free solar panels. Most of these ads we see try to trick you into free installation, but then lock you into a monthly contract (that's false advertising). 

However, while these ads may be fake, this doesn't mean that solar panels are necessarily a bad investment for your home.

The average cost to install solar panels is about $16,000 (ranges generally from $3,500 to $35,000 but there are a growing list of federal credits and state rebates available). This can be measured against what the average family spending about $120 per month on their electricity bill (varies by state) which presumably would go away (or be dramatically reduced).

Using this illustrative example then for the average family installing solar panels in their home could take about 11 years to break even ($16,000 cost divided by $1,440 in savings per year) with your annual return on investment being about 9% ($120 per month = $1,440 per year, divided by $16,000 of costs).

👪 How it affects you: When it comes to your family, if you were ever curious whether solar panels actually would make sense, we put together a quick analysis for you to calculate your own return on investment (and teach the kids):

1. Step One: Figure out the cost for you to install solar panels and ongoing costs. As noted above, the cost varies widely by state (some cost breakdowns by state).

2. Step Two: Grab your latest monthly electric bill. You may still have some ongoing solar costs per year (ex. maintenance) but your electric bill should go dramatically down (if not to zero).

3. Step Three: Determine your ROI and payback period or break even point. Your return on investment will be what you would save every year in your electricity bill (step two) divided by your total cost to install the panels (step one). Your payback period or break even point would be the number of years it takes for your savings (step two) to be equal or greater to your cost (step one).

Dinner Table ❓ For The Kids

💡 Few People Know...

🏋️ Free workouts. Planet Fitness is offering free workouts during the summer for your kids.

⚾ Take me out to the ballgame. But first, find out which stadiums have the cheapest food and drinks.  

💵 This kid wanted answers. We salute this 13 year old who tried to stump Warren Buffett at the annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting by asking him this question.

🧽 What to do when the kids won't clean their room? Some may disagree with this mom's methods, but we salute her creativity in teaching her kids the value of a dollar. 

💸 If you used Turbo Tax, look out for a check. The company just settled a $144 million lawsuit around their tax service and will have to pay customers who are paying attention. 

📺 MTV is gone. For all the parents out there who want to offer a moment of silence and reflection, this station's nearly four decade run came to an end this past week.   

🗓️ The Week Ahead

May 15th

Today is International Day of Families! Family issues are top of mind today and this day is used around the world to spread awareness of topics that matter to families.

May 19th

Today is the G7 Summit where leaders from 7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, and the US) are kicking off a three day annual meeting. Separately the Fed Chairman Jerome Powell will also be speaking and people will be parsing his words for any indication if they are done raising interest rates (we think they are).

May 20th

Today is National Be a Millionaire Day. While we believe that it's not the amount of money you have (it's learning how to use it to live the life you want!), today can be a good day to teach the kids about money: what would they do if they had a million dollars?

🔍 Topic of Focus

Learning To Stay Objective With Financial Media

Teaching our kids to think independently and learn how to be objective when it comes to financial news (and any news) today is vitally important. We lay out strategies and tactics to give them a healthy dose of skepticism and humility when forming ideas about the world.

Dinner Table ❓ For The Kids