Saving money

I mentioned in an earlier post that I would like to start saving more money and becoming more financial secure. One of the simple little ways I'm trying to save money is by running our thermostat a little lower this winter. The last couple years our gas bill has been outrageous in the winter, and my hope this year was to be able to use that money in other better needed places. It helped that we had a very mild fall, and that I didn't even need to turn on the heat until the first week in November. I pretty much just didn't turn up the heat right from the start, so that we could hopefully just be accustomed to the cooler temperature. Right now we have the house set at 64 or 65 when we're at home, and 61 when we're away. I'm sure my mom is partially glad that she's not watching Raegan at our house this year! :) I'll probably continue to do it for the rest of the winter however, because our gas bill came last week and it was about half of what it was this time last year. Pass the blankets, I say!

I found a couple different websites here, here and here that have good information about how to turn down your thermostat, if you're interested. I liked that many websites said that it's a myth that your furnace will have to work extra hard to get back up to a higher heat if you turn it down during the day while you're gone. I'm not so sure about turning it down to 55 while we're gone, but I also don't turn it up to 68 when we get home, so there's that. I hope that someday we'll be able to get one of those really nice space heaterslike my parents and grandma and grandpa have, but in the mean time, blankets and sweatshirts are our friends in the Jones house!