We’ve all been there: the fridge or dryer just broke, the repair person can’t even look at it for two weeks, and you need a new one, pronto. You head to the store, pick out the cheapest solution you can find, and just live with the consequences to check this annoyance off your list.
While taking the easy route is, well, easy, it may also cost you hundreds of dollars over the life of an appliance through higher electricity and water usage, not to mention time and effort.
Even in 2026—when nearly every appliance in the store is Energy Star certified—millions of Americans still choose less efficient models. So, why do people knowingly pick appliances that cost more to run and emit more carbon?
Here are the most common reasons people tend to live with inefficient appliances, and how much it can cost you.
Growing up in the suburbs, almost everyone I knew had some kind of garage fridge to store extra soda and adult beverages. Those leftover, functional fridges were a huge luxury—but they come at a hidden cost.
While it’s admirable that an appliance made in the late 1980s was still going strong 20 years later (and, in some cases, may still be humming right along in the garage), those fridges were incredibly inefficient, especially compared to today's models.
One made in the 1980s (or 1990s) might use upwards of 150kWh of energy per month, brand new. At today’s energy prices, this amounts to about $27 per month, or more than $300 per year in electricity costs. And we’re not even counting that its seals are probably not as good after 40 years of use, and the garage may not be climate-controlled.
Generally, we don’t advise upgrading an appliance until you need to, but if you’ve got one of these old units still kicking, it’s worth picking up a cheap power meter and checking how much energy it’s using so you know if it might actually save you money to ditch it and buy a new one.
Those little blue-and-white stickers on appliances? They actually mean something. It’s an Energy Star badge, and it can tell you, on average, how much energy you can expect the appliance to use under typical conditions. Energy Star-certified appliances are tested to ensure they meet efficiency standards based on the type of fridge and capacity, and use nearly 10% less energy than non-certified models.
But while the certification is nice, it’s worth checking the actual numbers to price out what the difference will cost you. And size isn’t everything either: While a smaller fridge generally uses less energy to operate than a larger one, some inefficient compact models out there may use as much as $60-$70 per year in electricity, the same as a model with nearly double the capacity. Regardless, energy-efficient appliances matter, and they can save you lots of dough.