The Hidden EV Charging Tax: Is Level 2 Worth It?

If you own an electric vehicle and rely on a standard wall outlet to charge (Level 1), you might be paying a hidden tax without even knowing it. It’s not a government tax—it’s an efficiency tax. And depending on how much you drive and how expensive your electricity is, it could be costing you more than you think.

What Is the EV Efficiency Tax?

When you charge an EV, not all the electricity you pull from your wall actually makes it into your car's battery. Some of it gets lost as heat and resistance in the charging process. And the efficiency of this process depends on whether you’re charging at Level 1 or Level 2.

A study from 2014 looked at the charging efficiency of Nissan Leafs and Chevy Volts and found:

• Level 2 charging: ~89% efficient
• Level 1 charging: ~84% efficient

For shorter charging sessions, the gap widened even more:

• Level 2: ~87%
• Level 1: ~74%

And before you dismiss that as outdated info, newer cars show...

🚗 Why I Went Plug-In Hybrid Instead of Full EV

Let’s start with the obvious question:

Why not just get a full electric vehicle?

I’ve driven Teslas, and honestly—I don’t like them. I don’t enjoy the one-pedal driving, and more importantly, road trips in non-Tesla EVs are still kind of a mess.

Electrify America? Spotty.

ChargePoint? Almost always slow.

It’s just not reliable enough.

With the RAV4 Prime, I avoid all that. I get to drive electric most of the time, and when I hit the road, I’ve got gas backup. No stress.

⚡ Real World Efficiency: EV Range + Gas Mileage

• EV-only range: ~33–44 miles (depends on driving style)

• Gas mileage on road trips: ~40 MPG

• Last time I bought gas? 1,500 miles ago… and it was just a half tank.

We use the car like an EV 90% of the time—school runs, errands, local drives. No need to touch gas.

🏎️ Smooth Ride, Quick Acceleration

This thing moves.

• 0–60 in 5.5 seconds

• Smooth acceleration—whether

  ...

Maximize Freedom, Not Just Income 

A key principle of personal finance that many of us were never taught is that success isn’t about maximizing the number of dollars in our bank accounts—it’s about maximizing our freedom. This principle can help you cultivate contentment, maintain your health, protect your sanity, and strengthen your relationships.

The Trade-Off Between Money and Freedom

To earn money, you have to sacrifice time, effort, and energy. If you’re constantly chasing a higher income, you inevitably make trade-offs—often at the expense of your physical and mental health. Many high earners work extreme hours, neglect their personal lives, and wake up years later to find their relationships and health in ruins.

Take, for example, an attorney I once worked with. His job was essentially to push papers for credit card companies, sending out threatening letters to customers with outstanding debts. He looked years older than he actually was, limping through the office like...

A little over a year ago, my mom passed away. Since then, I’ve been reflecting on life, on the things she tried to teach me, and on one of the biggest questions I never really considered when I was younger: Is having kids worth it?

My mom used to tell me that having children was one of the happiest, most powerful, and most meaningful things she ever did. She said she was grateful to have had my brother and me. And at one point, she said something that, at the time, I thought was absolutely ridiculous:

She told me that before she had kids, she thought she understood what love was. But after having us, she realized she hadn’t truly understood love at all.

I was probably in my late teens or early twenties when she said this, and I remember thinking, Come on. That sounds like a Hallmark card. What does that even mean?

But now, years later, and as a parent myself, I finally understand what she meant. And it’s made me think a lot about whether having kids is really worth it.

The R...

When you're starting an online coaching business or looking to sell online courses, you quickly run into a major decision. 

Should I use a Wordpress LMS (learner management system) or Kajabi (an all-in-one system that claims to do all the heavy-lifting for you). 

As a die-hard Wordpress user for 13 years, I used Wordpress LMS systems like Sensei and Thrive University. 

Eventually, I got tired of the headaches of Wordpress and moved from Wordpress to Kajabi. In this video, I'm going to show you how a Wordpress LMS compares with Kajabi. By the end, you'll understand EXACTLY why I think Kajabi is better than Wordpress. 

You can also watch directly on YouTube here.

After over a year running my business exclusively on Kajabi, I'm VERY happy to have made the move. If you're ready to try out the simple solution to your Wordpress headaches, please use my affiliate link for a free trial!

Looking into Kajabi pricing? Want to compare Kajabi's prices to a suite of membership tools on Wordpress? You're in the right place. 

I used Wordpress and Woocommerce for 5 years before finally giving up on it and moving to Kajabi. 

In this post, I'm going to explain why I made the decision to transition from Wordpress to Kajabi, how much Kajabi costs (and whether Kajabi's prices are justified), and why I think moving to Kajabi was one of the best decisions I ever made. 

If you prefer a video version of this article, check out this video. If not, keep scrolling down!

Some background on my Wordpress site 

I was running a pretty complex Wordpress site.

It had Wordpress, Woocommerce, a learner management system (LMS) called Sensei / Woocommerce Paid Courses, multiple Woocommerce extensions (like Woomembership, Woocommerce Subscriptions, AffiliateWP, Gravity Forms, Smart Offers, AutomateWoo, etc. etc.). 

And I had a premium WYSIWYG drag and drop editor that I really like...

I used Wordpress and Woocommerce for many years before finally giving up on Wordpress and moving to Kajabi.

In another Kajabi review, I talked about all the Wordpress plugins I had to run my site AND the actual costs of doing that. In this post, I'm going to talk about the true costs of Wordpress hosting when you’re running a membership site.

If part of your business plan is to have online courses and/or paid membership offerings, you need to understand the real costs of trying to do that on Wordpress now.

This article will save you at least several thousand dollars in the long run and an incredible number of headaches. I promise.

_{More savings = more better} 

Wordpress hosting is way cheaper than Kajabi pricing - when you first start

When you first get started with Wordpress, you can start off cheap. Wordpress is free. You can use a free or paid template that won’t cost you that much.

And you can use “shared hosting” which costs you between $5-$10 a month depending on the ho...

In this Kajabi review, I'm going to focus on Kajabi's performance in email deliverability based on my own real-world tests. If you're thinking about putting your business in the hands of Kajabi, read the rest of this review so you know what you're getting into! 

Is switching to Kajabi from Wordpress + MailChimp a good idea?

When I was thinking about making the switch to Kajabi, I had a list of 20,000 contacts in Mailchimp. That was costing about $200/month.

I had a Mailchimp plugin for my Wordpress membership site that cost $39/year.

So my costs were already $2449 every year for email marketing to work with my website. That’s about $205/month.

Kajabi promised to eliminate the need for these extra email services but I was worried that Kajabi’s email deliverability wouldn’t be up to the task. I worried that poor email deliverability would cost me money in the long run if I left Mailchimp.

I decided to transition from Wordpress to Kajabi and see how email deliverability went. ...