When you’re a child who doesn’t pay the bills, it can be easy to forget how expensive electricity truly is at the end of the day.
I remember leaving lights on in unattended rooms and how angry my father would get when he’d find out. He told me it was like walking out back and burning dollar bills in the fire pit. Needless to say, my father’s insistence had an effect on me, but it was probably over the top because I find myself being just as cheap as my dad some days. It’s one thing to expect your kids to abide by your rules regarding the thermostat and it’s another thing to constantly tell them “no” whenever they ask for something minimal from the store. My mom tells me to be more compassionate like she was when I was growing up. However, it gets stressful with inflation levels and energy itself costing so much more now than it did just a year ago. We utilize a gas powered furnace to keep the house warm in the winter and the cost of gas has naturally gone up with everything else. It’s painful when I think about the money that we’re literally burning every minute the furnace cycles during the winter season. I think by next winter we will have an electric heat pump as a secondary heat source to run whenever temperatures are high enough where it will work efficiently. That way we can keep the gas furnace for temperatures lower than 20 degrees, or whenever the winter cold snaps are at their worst. A lot of people are switching to heat pumps for heating their homes because of their sheer energy efficiency compared to other residential indoor heating systems.