With winter around the corner, I thought I would cover a few ideas that we have used to reduce our heating bill. One of the easiest changes that we have made is switching from a manual thermastat to an electonic thermastat. My hubby bought one at our old house and was able to easily install it. The electronic thermastat allows you to set the temperature that you want your house to be at during different hours of the day.

For instance, if you like the house warm when you first wake up, you could program it to be at 75 degrees at 6am. When you leave for work at 7, you can program it to reduce the temperature to 65 or whatever temperature you determine. Then have it set back up to 72 (or your choosing) for the time you get home. There is even a setting for weekends on ours.

This actually saved us a significant amount of money at our old house when we were both working. We did not have to heat and cool the house as much during the day. It still saves us money in the summer, because I like having the temperature really high in the summer, and prefer not to have the air run very much. Then, when my hubby gets home it is programmed to go down to a rather frigid temperature in my opinion. Girls vs. boys I guess. I like it about 10 degrees warmer than him. (-: 

I think that the electronic thermastat that we bought was around $60. If I remember correctly, our bill dropped by at least that much the first month and had paid for itself. It is definitely something to consider.

Also, as a side note, remember when you are travelling over the holidays to turn the temperature down. There is no reason to pay for heat when there is no one home to enjoy it. Don’t turn it off, you don’t want any busted pipes, just turn it down.

I am writing up several posts about how to save on your electric bill. If you have any ideas that you have used, I would love to hear about them. You can leave a comment or e-mail me at budgetsavingmom @ gmail dot com (remove the spaces and replace the dot with a “.”)