Rounding out the week’s frugal posts, and questions, our old friend Almost Frugal (Y’know, the one in the French Alps) asked on Wednesday Is a Broken Dishwasher an Emergency? It seems that her dishwasher gave up the ghost and instead of spending 400 Euros of her emergency fund, she plans to just do the dishes for her family by hand. At last count there were 31 comments on the post, nearly of all of which patted her on the back for her brilliant money saving decision. But none of them quantified her savings, which I, as a trained professional, am happy to do for you here.

Assuming that the 400 Euros earn 5% interest (a generous assumption, but this is the land of the 35 hour work week, so anything is possible) then the money she is not spending on a dishwasher is earning 20 Euros a year. And that works out to becoming richer by almost 5.5 Eurocents (or 7 of our US cents) every day! 7 cents just to do the dishes for a family of five? Where do I sign up?

I would post my calculations as comment #32, but due to context sensitive advertising, the blog post is accompanied by about a dozen ads for new dishwashers. That’s like a brewer sponsoring an AA meeting, and I will have none of it.