The Gadget Buy-or-Skip Planner

Decide on a kitchen gadget before the money goes: the meals it would really cook, its price per use, its electricity and standby draw at your rate, what each use replaces, and the weeks to pay it back

GadgetCook's Meal Cost Calculator prices a dish from the ingredients you use and stops there: the gadget the dish is cooked in costs nothing in it, its electricity costs nothing, and the hours it sits plugged in cost nothing. Most gadget decisions run on the same arithmetic: a deal price, a picture, and a hope of using it five times a week. The Gadget Buy-or-Skip Planner does the arithmetic a buyer needs. In its worked example, a $119 countertop cooker hoped for 5 uses a week is tallied for two weeks of real cooking and comes to 2.5, so 520 uses over 4 years, not 1,040: $0.23 a use, 37.4 cents a use all in with its energy and standby draw. Against the oven and a stove burner it would replace, it pays back in 425 weeks on electricity alone, past the 208 it is planned to last; one takeout night in the tally would pay it back in 9 weeks, so the plan's verdict is to wait and tally two more weeks. Each use is credited only with what it actually replaced, and the outlet it would share is checked against NFPA's one heat-producing appliance per outlet. Every figure is computed by code, and the gadget, prices, ratings, tally and electricity rate are examples, tagged as such. The plan names no brand and gives no cooking times or temperatures. Inside: seven steps, four working pages (two-week tally sheet, cost per use sheet, energy and standby sheet, buy-or-skip card), reference tables for energy a run, standby a year and uses to pay back, and a quickstart, plus a personalised sheet worked from the dish you entered in the calculator.

Look inside

Two full pages from the plan, exactly as printed. Click either to read it at full size before you decide.

What is in it

• Step 1: a two-week tally of the meals the gadget would really have cooked, and what cooked them instead
• Step 2: the price per use over the uses you counted, against the uses you hoped for, and a deal against a habit
• Step 3: energy a run from the rated watts, your recipe's run and your own rate, for the gadget and what it replaces
• Step 4: the always-on standby draw priced over the years you plan, and the full cost of one use
• Step 5: each use credited only with what it replaced: the oven, a burner, or a takeout night priced with the Meal Cost Calculator
• Step 6: the weekly saving and the weeks to pay back, on energy alone and with the swaps your tally saw twice
• Step 7: the outlet check in amps with NFPA's and USFA's own words, then the verdict: buy, wait or skip
• Four working pages: a two-week tally sheet, a cost per use sheet, an energy and standby sheet and a buy-or-skip card
• Reference tables for the energy a run, the standby a year and the uses to pay back, and a quickstart that closes the score loop
• A personalised sheet: your dish's cost, what a takeout swap saves on it, the swaps to pay back a gadget, and the energy a run

The plan picks up where the free Meal Cost Calculator leaves off. The calculator prices a dish from the ingredients you use; the gadget it is cooked in, its electricity and the hours it sits plugged in cost nothing there. The plan adds them, at your own electricity rate and the rated watts on the plate, after two weeks of counting the meals the gadget would really cook. Each use is credited only with what it actually replaces (the oven, a burner, or a takeout night you would really have ordered), the weeks to pay it back are set against the years you plan to keep it, and the outlet it would share is checked before you buy. It names no brand, gives no cooking times or temperatures, and every figure in it is an example for you to replace.