Budget Mondays 7/22/2013

Monday – 7/22/2013

It’s Monday – a painful day for most people, yours truly included. Sometimes it is made even more painful as we remember just how much money we ended up spending over the weekend.

Budget

It’s one word that can make people cringe, angry and sad all at the same time; a rare occurrence indeed. There are plenty of reasons for this – people are told at work that their budgets are being cut, their ideas cannot be funded because they are not in the budget, and in our personal life, our budgets don’t usually quite match up to our desires.

This installment of budget Mondays will focus on an issue that I am sure is on everyone’s mind right now – trying to stay cool and comfortable during the summer. Even though it is forecasted to be cooler this week, in the mid to high 80’s, and while that is cooler than the high 90’s/triple digits that blanketed the area last week, it is not necessarily all that cool. It is still warm and extremely humid (typical Jersey summer), and people still need ways to keep cool.

Air conditioning is a common solution, but the power costs associated with running the A/C nonstop can be jaw dropping, so here are some of the more common low-cost tips for staying cool that I discovered in my research.

1) Drink plenty of water

2) Use cross ventilation (aka open windows on both sides of a room for a nice cross breeze)

3) Use fans, either in place of air conditioning when possible, or use them as a complement to blow the cooler air around

4) Barbeque! No seriously, the less you use your oven and stove top, the cooler your place will be

Below are a few links I found that might be of some additional help

Stay Cool!

http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/my-money/2013/05/28/low-cost-ways-to-stay-cool-this-summer

http://realestate.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=13107992

http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2012/07/11/10-cheap-ways-to-stay-cool-this-summer/

http://www.wikihow.com/Cool-Yourself-Without-Air-Conditioning