This is the second year in a row that I actually feel good about myself when it comes to getting it done with less. We are still trying to get back to even after the pandemic put a hammer on our finances. Now, I’m not complaining because there are plenty of people who had it so much worse than we did. We both kept our jobs and were able to work from home in the air conditioning. However, we both had to take some sharp pay cuts just to hold on to our jobs. That meant that we were all over cutting expenses last year. We targeted things like the HVAC utility costs that we had never truly committed to in the past. It didn’t take all that much which ended up being a surprise to me. We really tightened up the house to start. I replaced all the weather stripping and sealed any gap that I could find. We also were sure to stop all the direct sunlight heating which kills HVAC efficiency. None of that was hard to do at all and ended up making a huge difference. But the real game changer came with the thermostat setting. This, of course, is the toughest part to stay committed to. However, if you can let the thermostat rise during the peak heating hours, it pays off in many dollar bills. Since we were working at home, I got accustomed to maintaining a thermostat setting that was no more than 15 degrees cooler than outside. We saved 20 percent on HVAC cooling last year and are on track to do the same this year!

heating technician