Last year taught me a lot.
It taught me that we are much more vulnerable as a country to something like a mass virus.
But I think our vulnerability was exponentially increased because we couldn’t act together to fight it. That was incredibly disappointing to witness as I hunkered down in the air conditioning of my home. I also learned that my job was a lot less secure than I thought. Taking a pay cut and working from the air conditioning of my home are the only things that kept me employed at all. And that’s after 20 plus years of service to the same company. So there were a lot of tough lessons to be learned over the past year. But there were some welcome lessons to be learned as well. For one, I figured out how to reduce our spending a great deal. And I have kept that going. This summer, I really got proactive about saving all I could on HVAC cooling. Last year, I saved some but this year I went all in and have saved a bundle. I sealed up the house in every conceivable way that I could to ensure the cool air stays in while the heat stays out. I invested in solar shades and a smart thermostat. They work in tandem to negate the effects of direct sunlight heating. And the smart thermostat is doing a wonderful job making sure that we aren’t over cooling during the peak heating hours of the day. I can’t believe how much money there was to save on HVAC cooling.