Give yourself a raise ... Put On a Sweater!

(originally posted somewhere else February 6, 2007)

I reached today's topic in a bit of a roundabout way. This morning a
co-worker came into my office giddy with excitement over her newest
purchase - a Tempurpedic bed. I know you've all seen these - space age
memory foam, blah blah blah. I happen to know a little bit about
mattresses after a brief stint as a furniture salesperson and here's a
little tidbit for you: a Tempurpedic mattress will snap like a dry twig
if it is kept too long on an uninsulated truck or left outside. These
mattresses rely on your body heat to do their miraculous form-fitting
action, which is something to keep in mind if you have one and it's too
firm - you may be negating any benefit from the bed if you have a thick
mattress pad or tend to wear thick jammies.

Anyway, I digress. I told her that my husband and I had thought
about one of those but decided against it because we keep our home
pretty cool in the winter to save on heating. In fact, we keep our
heater at 64. She gasped and told me that there was "no way" she could
stand having the house at 64, they keep theirs at a minimum of 72.

SEVENTY-TWO! Frankly, at 72 I would be downright nauseous from the
heat. The thing is, though, that I think part of that comes from being
used to our chilly home. When I was a kid, there was a period of about
a year when my family lived in an old drafty farmhouse because our
house was being rebuilt after a tornado. That place was so cold that I
would take my clothes for the next day to bed with me at night so that
I didn't have to get out from under the covers to get dressed. We spent
our days and nights in layers of clothes - clothes full of fiberglass
strands from the tornado, which itched like hell - because we couldn't
afford to turn up the heat. My mother would laugh at us if we said we
were cold and didn't have at least a shirt, a sweater, pants, and socks
on. We also had sleeping bags and blankets for when we hung out in the
evenings.

And guess what? We lived.

Much like how I forgot about the public library
as I grew older and left my mother's frugal household, I also forgot
about bundling up. It all came back to me a couple of years ago,
though, when one of my kids came downstairs in the middle of winter and
announced that he was "freezing," could we please turn on the
fireplace? My left eyebrow shot skyward and I told him to dream on.
Before you assume that I am a terribly mean parent, let it be known
that when he said this, his only attire was a pair of Spiderman briefs.
At that moment I realized that I had strayed too far from the path and
that my kids were being raised to be a teensy bit spoiled. Couldn't
have that. The thermostat now rests at a brisk 64 and let me tell you -
nobody's wandering around in their BVDs anymore.

So how much can you save by lowering your thermostat? A general rule
of thumb is about 3% energy savings for every degree that you drop,
over a 24 hour period. So, if you drop your thermostat from 72 to 71
for an entire day, you'll save 3% of that days heating energy. If you
drop it from 72 to 71 for eight hours (while you sleep), you'll save
1%.

My suggestions:

• Start lowering the thermostat one degree at a time until you find a
  comfort zone. We didn't do that - I set it at 64 and told everyone to
  deal with it, but maybe you are a kinder and gentler minder of the
  homestead.


• Lower the thermostat even more when you go to bed at night - at
  least 5 degrees lower than what your daytime setting is. You can raise
  it back up in the morning. There is a common misconception that it
  takes more energy to raise the temperature of your home back up than to
  maintain it - simply not true.



• If you have trouble remembering to turn the thermostat up and down
  every day, consider investing in a programmable thermostat. It will
  definitely pay for itself.


• If you have reversible ceiling fans, set them to turn clockwise and
  turn them on low every so often. This will redistribute hot air that
  has risen back down to the lower levels of the room.


• Turn your thermostat down to 55 if you're leaving home for more than a couple of days.


• After you're done with the oven and have turned it off, leave the
  door open - it's a little thing, but why not disperse that heat to the
  room instead of trapping it inside?


• Use the colder temperature as a great excuse to cuddle up on the sofa with the people you love.

Now, I know this is perhaps in the "duh, everyone knows that"
category but sometimes the simplest solutions are the ones we overlook.
Managing your finances isn't all about the glory moves like saving
hundreds on your car insurance or your mortgage refi, it's about the
dozens of little things we can do to save a bit here and there so that
we can take those savings and put them towards our debt or our
investments.

Now go put on a sweater!