Reducing our Heating as well as Air Conditioning budget is taxing
When the household budget gets tight, I have to make strenuous choices.
It was nice being able to go out for a meal once in a while, but restaurants are so overpriced these afternoons that was the first thing to be eliminated.
I haven’t gone out to eat in more than five months, which is a bummer until I realized that option saved me multiple hundred dollars. Since I am not going out, it means I am driving our car less often. This saves a lot of money on gas as well as upkeep. I’m considering selling the car, to save money on insurance payments. The hardest option to make was reducing our dependence on air conditioner, so that I could save money on energy bills. The weather has been so hot, I loathe the system of shutting off the central air conditioner even for a few hours, but it seems I have no choice. One change I made was to cover all the windows in our bedroom as well as kitchen with heavy blankets to reduce the heating exchange through the windows. As the A/C runs, much of that cooling is lost because of the heat exchange in the glass. When I cover up the windows tightly it reduces that exchange, as well as traps the cooling air inside. I also shut off the air vents into the bathroom as well as bedroom, to reduce the floor space being cooled by the system. Of course, the means that when the air conditioner is running I have to stay inside those more than one rooms, because the rest of the house is no longer being air conditioned, let’s hope it helps.