Thrifty Thursday: Turn Up the Heat or Put on a Sweater??

I recently read a post that many people keep their programmable temperature in their house at 62 degrees in order to save money on heat.  My husband and I got into a big discussion about this because he feels that is too cold to keep a house (he would rather have it at 67 minimum).  We were discussing whether it mattered whether you had gas heat or electric heat.  We have gas heat and have since we have been in this house (which has been over 10 years) so I don't know if I remember anything differently.

I like the temperature in the house cooler.  When the gas heat turns on, it blows hot air all over the place and is really hot for anyone standing in its path.  When I was pregnant, just the heat turn on could make me sick so there were many runs to turn up the temperature so that the heat would shut off.  I guess the pregnancy just magnified the fact that I prefer to be cold.  I love to snuggle under my blanket and I love to wear layers but I don't like hot air.  Does anyone else have this problem??

Well, my husband likes the house pretty warm so our temperature is set for higher until he leaves for work and it clicks lower when he leaves.  Isn't that smart?  Then, about an hour before he gets home, it clicks in to start up the heat again until 11:15 pm when we should be in bed it goes to colder because we should be warm under the covers by then.  I am normally pretty comfortable without the added heat especially while we are sleeping because I love to be snuggled under the covers. 

The best way to deal with it is to be out of the house.  I try to plan activities for most of the morning from at least 10 am until at least 2 pm.  When we are out and about, it doesn't matter what the temperature is at home right?  Some people say that changing the temperature in the house isn't good for the system and doesn't save money but I have found that it really does change our bills so I am going to continue to do it while making sure to monitor the costs.

In order to combat the cold, I normally wear socks and sweaters around the house.  Now with winter in full swing here, I wear slippers around to keep off the cold hard wood floors.  I had some Pooh slipper but they were getting really thin so I went back to the closet to see what other slippers were in there and I found these which I got ages ago at a Target clearance.  Aren't they cute?  Even better because they highly entertained my son :) Funny because the reason that I had to stop wearing slippers was when he was little, he used to take them off my feet and try to eat them.  YUCK!!  Now, he puts them on my feet when I don't have them.  How thoughtful!!!

How much savings does it add up to??  The difference for us between 2009 and 2012 gas bills was almost $232 for the year.  Just in the last year, the gas bill went down $115 from 2011 to 2012 when the prices were rising at the same time.  I hope that staying on track saves money over the coming years but I don't know if there is anything else to cut in the heating bill.  Now I have to work on our electric bill which is for almost everything else in the house but one step at at time.

Do you like to crank the heat or put on a sweater???  Happy medium of some heat and some sweater??  Have you changed how you use the heat over the last few years??  Has it made a difference in the cost??  Do you have any ideas for cutting down on electricity costs??