Is it normal to calculate how much money you spent running the AC today?
In case you're wondering, the AC unit in our bedroom costs $0.16/hour. The living room costs $0.50/hour.
My wife is trying to make me stop. She says it's annoying.
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Thanks, this is the answer I was looking for. I'm trying to save money because we don't have a lot. My wife is on board with saving, but she hasn't done the math to see where most of our money is going.
I might need to back off a bit. I like to save, but this might be a bit much.
In your situation I'd probably compile a list of general expenses of the household per month (or week), then for the higher expenses project a few costs contributing with those expenses. It should be more convincing when you show "we're likely spending around $15 per week just on A/C" than "we're spending $0.50 per hour".
And context is key - don't bring this up just because she turned the A/C on, instead bring this up when talking about the overall finances of the household. And it might be useful to ask her for a few other corners that could/should be cut, as she'll likely notice different ones than you do, based on her subjective values.
Excellent point. Thanks.
I also like to obsesively monitor power use of various things in my house just because I like knowing stats. I used to work with inverter setups so I put power monitors on all of my circuits right at the panel just for the hell of it.
Asuming you have central air and not just a window AC or something then turning your AC on and off frequently is not the best way to save money. When you first turn the AC on it needs to work really hard and run continously to lower the temperature in your home and remove a whole bunch of humidity from the air. That process is very energy intensive. If you just leave the AC on then it only needs to actually run ocasionally to maintain a cool temp. Unless you are planning on shutting off your AC for days at a time then the actual cost savings are fairly minimal.
I used to have roomates who would constantly turn off the AC and open the windows whenever the AC "didn't need to be on". The AC would remain off for several hours until things started getting swelteringly hot in the middle of the day then they eventually closed everything back up and turned on the AC. Now that they (thankfully) moved out I just leave my AC running all the time. The power usage from the AC has actually dropped since I started doing that. I'm even way more agressive with the temp setting on the AC now than I was then. My house is rarely above 70F indoors and I'm still using slightly less electricity than when it was being shut off regularly.