Cash In The Attic: How loft insulation could be your best investment yet.

At HappyLoft, while we do some pretty grubby work in some dark and often damp conditions, we don’t particularly envy investment bankers. All that pressure to seek out Alpha and time spent pouring over complex charts to try to find a way to scrape a return from an increasingly volatile financial market.

Sure, the good ones are sure paid well, but we know a little something about making good investments ourselves.

What if we told you that we deal with an investment everyday that costs around £630 on average, and should pay back 37x that over the next 40 years?

And yes, you guessed it, we’re talking about Loft Insulation.

Loft insulation viewed as an investment

Most people make their investment decisions based on a risk vs reward formula, with ROI (Return On Investment) being central to those decisions: how much money do I have to part with and put at risk, and how much money am I projected to make.

Usually, the larger the risk, the bigger the prize. Usually, government bonds are regarded to be at the lower-end of the risk scale, and usually offer a rate of around 2-3%.

At the risker end of the scale, some high-risk investments that could be based abroad, in volatile markets that are unregulated by the FCA may offer 8%, 10%, 12% or even 15% and higher for those willing and able to take on the risk.

But if you’re looking for somewhere to put your money and don’t yet have loft insulation, how does this simple yet effective insulation technique stack up against classic investing?

Check on this comparison below against projections from on a 40 year investment of £630 compared to spending that money on Loft Insulation instead.

5% Investment Fund

Total Return:

£4,635.80

(7.35 X the initial investment)

Loft Insulation

Total Savings:

£23,600

(37.46 X the initial investment)

*£630 represents the average cost of insulated the loft in a detatched home according to the Energy Saving Trust 2022.

**£590 represents the average annual savings

We used a popular investment calculator to see what a lump-sum investment of £630 (the same cost of the average detached loft insulation installation) would return over 40 years (the average lifespan of loft insulation) if it received 5% returns compounding monthly.

This came to £4635 after 40 years, with the initial investment “making” the £630 initially spent in 14 years.

Compared to how much is SAVED by using that same £630 to add adequate loft insulation, the results were startling.

The average detached home will save around £590 per year (Energy Saving Trust) on their energy bills by installing loft insulation if energy prices stay as they currently are (Oct 2022).

Over 40 years, that’s £23,600 worth of savings – 37 times the initial investment!

That’s a figure and rate of return that outperforms not only pretty much every managed fund going (including things like many Cryptocoins), but that’s without paying in anything else, too! Due to this rate of savings, the loft insulation would be likely to pay for itself within 2 years – WOW.

Still want to invest?

Once you’ve got your loft insulated and you’re on your way to saving as much as £23k over the next 40 years on your energy bills, you could still invest… what about using the money that you’ve saved on your energy bills?