Am I loading a class twice?

[eluser]nuwanda[/eluser]
I have a user class that I load in the constructor for every controller.

I use it like this in controllers and views:

Code:

if($this->user->is_logged_in()){
  do this
}

Works fine.

But I have a helper where I need to check logged in to output a link. I can't use the above user->method because it's not available to the helper.

So I call it statically, like:

Code:

if(user::is_logged_in()){
  do this
}

Works fine as well.

Now I know that calling the method statically doesn't instantiate the class, but is it wasteful to load the class in the constructor and then call it statically in the helper?