How do I know how much I am saving using small appliances as compared to the oven?
How much does it cost to run the appliances in our household?
Are we really saving money if we used them less frequently?

Many of us are concern about budget and frugal living wonder about these types of questions. At the end of the day, our goal is to save some money to make our lifestyle more worthwhile and to have a good order of our financial management.

We have plenty of choices available for cooking. It is very easy to find a kitchen equipped with a convection oven, microwave and a regular oven. The question is which one we should be using if we would like to save energy and money.

To get to the bottom of it, we have to explore some basics or elementary foundation how electric consumption works in the kitchen. How do our appliances consume energy? Basically, they use up energy in one simple way by producing heat.

When you're cooking in the kitchen you are automatically producing heat. This is the most common usage of electricity in the kitchen. To compare cooking appliances, look at the amount of electricity power (or wattage rating) required to operate an electrical device. You are able to find the wattage label on the appliance where it tells you the model number. However, if you have difficulty in finding the label you can look at the user manual. Please take note that the amount of electricity written on the label is the maximum amount that the appliance will be able to use.

For example, a slow cooker can be between 200 to 400 watts (W) while a majority of microwave ovens can range from 500 to 1200 W. Toaster ovens are in the same range as microwave ovens. The device that require the most electricity is the conventional oven that typically use 3000 W or more. In addition, a convection oven can use approximately 50 percent less power as compared to your standard ovens.

You can see that the standard oven needs up to three times as opposed to the microwave. You will also need to consider the period of time the oven is operating. Microwave cooking can take less time than the conventional oven of course this depends on what you're preparing.

Let's go back to our conventional oven vs. microwave example. If we assume that food is cooked in an hour's time in the standard oven compared with 15 minutes in the microwave, you can clearly see that the amount of electricity used to power the microwave is lesser. Therefore, in this case having a microwave is the better option.

In reality most of us use the oven four to five times a week let's say for an average of two hours at a time. In a month that can take up quite a lot of hours. To decide which type of oven to use you will have to ask yourself if it is able to meet your time and cooking needs, not at the amount of money it can save.