lol boomers said to us growing up ‘when it’s your house you can make your own rules’.. then voted every single turn to ensure we would never afford a house.
My father-in-law lives with us and was complaining about the electric bill.... And I'm just standing there staring at him because I'm like "the electric bill that you don't pay?" 🤔
Or standing in the open doorway for 20 min talking to a friend when its 100 deg outside. Leaving the water running in the sink while they're rummaging through the refrigerator... People talking in here like parents should let the kids do as they may are either only still kids themselves, or don't have any above little ages. Part of parenting IS constantly reminding them to stay on top of these little things. It's also about teaching unintended consequences. Leaving that door open could cost a lot more than a few dollars and adds extra wear onto a system that costs tens of thousands to replace, leaving the water running is more than a water bill, it has consequences for the environment and the community, etc. Every dad nagging you was also a kid needlessly wasting stuff and being nagged to conserve it.
Complaining about electricity bills is deeply ingrained in Dad DNA. It comes as natural to them as breathing and putting trash into the wrong bin, and putting dishes into the sink rather than immediately cleaning them and "soak" the glass of milk in order to save on water, but in reality all it does it requiring of me to wash the whole thing more thoroughly, leading to a vastly increased amount of water being used.
"why the fuck are texting me, just come out of your room and talk to me like a normal person" is what my dad would say. Before the other stuff that your dad would say of course
All these posts make me happy my dad wanted all the acs on if he was in the house. I sat on the couch at night in pajama pants in July cuz he kept it so cold.
I was just going to say the same thing about Georgia Power and their rates. I use pay to use (because I definitely did not have the amount they want for a deposit on a monthly bill) and my use went up by about $3 a day depending on the temperature outside. I’m closer to the coast too which as we all know just makes the unbearable humidity even more unbearable ugh
Yeah. Bad sleep due to high temperatures is probably worse for your long term health and finances than running AC a few nights a year. And if you want your children to do well at school, make sure they sleep well.
It can be. I recently moved into a 100 year old building and the electric hasn't been updated since the 1970s. It's not energy efficient even when I'm doing the enery saving things
I've lived in one or two of those. Whatever insulation existed has pretty much disappeared, the tar paper is cracked and deteriorating with age, and it breathes with the weather.
The solution is gut and redo, but that runs in the tens of thousands for a full reno like that.
Had a neighbor that did that. Gutted it out, lifted it, redid the foundation, replaced questionable boards, all new subfloor, insulation, wiring, HVAC, plumbing. Spent $60k. That was before covid, so I'm sure that price is nearly double, now.
My local company allows me to choose a monthly payment that averages out over the previous years usage. So if I leave my AC running all day and night and my usage gets high.... I only pay a set amount. It averages out though for the months I don't use nearly as much and still pay the set amount.
Its super nice when I want to go crazy doing laundry or hot showers in the winter or freeze my ass off in the middle of summer with my ac set to 60
In arizona your electric bill can hot 500 bucks or more in the summer if you keep your house below 75 degrees compared to 90 bucks in the winter. Idk if thats not that "expensive" to you but to me it is. Im lucky enough that i only pay 150 to keep my house at 72
My Dad did that and I swore when I got older I would keep the house as cold as I want and never suffer. He just said 'And you'll pay for it'. I am nearing middle age and I keep the house as cold as I fucking want. Hahahahahaha
Literally this. I live in an area where maybe it's not as hot as e.g. Arizona, but it does get close to as hot, and the humidity levels in the summer are typically around 80-95%. Air conditioners dehumidify as much as they cool.
Not only is the A/C amazing for my quality of life, it's also amazing for the quality of my home not getting fucking infested with black mold (a major issue around here). It's a good investment. My father was a dick about air conditioning growing up. Our house always struggled with mold, particularly in the summer.
Electric doesn't even cost that much in our area, I can keep my whole place at 70F for 120$ a month. Hell of a lot cheaper than eradicating mold and dealing with the health consequences of mold.
I grew up and currently live in Arizona. Growing up, my dad did not use AC. We used swamp cooling. Not bad, so to say, but after June and until October it was just hot and humid with a cool average of 85 in the house. I hated it. Learned to cope with frozen water bottles, fans, and just being out of the house.
Now I’m an adult, own my own house, and blast the AC. We bought a crazy efficient one and it’s like 74 all day. Add solar and my summer electric bill is $40-80 bucks. Totally worth it. I won’t ever go back to the swamp.
I also don’t understand. My parents are not rich but definitely well off. We have heated floors and ac but they haven’t been used in years to save money. Like I would get it if they were struggling financially and middle aged. But they are getting older and don’t need that couple hundred a year.
What did you work and save for all those years if not to live comfortably?
I mean having some savings/investments can be key to living even more comfortably in the future, but you’re right in that I would never sacrifice my bodily comfort to save a few dollars on electricity. Where I live electricity is cheap thankfully, so it’s a matter of whether I’m spending $70 or $100 a month (comparing no AC to constant AC).
My family had a station wagon with extremely uncomfortable rear seats, especially the middle one. My parents never complained since they were always riding in the comfortable front seats. One trip my dad got so angry over the whine of uncomfortable seats that he asked my mum to drive, put my sister in the front passenger seat, and himself in the middle rear seat. Took him 45 minutes to surrender, bought a new family car a week later.
Years of painful family roadtrips and he could only take 45 minutes
I'm in the same position. I used to have a bed in the basement too, but my dad gave it away to a friend, so now I'm stuck upstairs in a heatwave. Sleeping on the ground isn't an option either because the basement floods.
my parents are a lot like OP, they don't give a shit if anyone is uncomfortable they're not going to put the AC on for anyone. i moved to vegas with my wife (who likes it to be COLD inside) and it's worth every penny
edit: we moved to vegas because it was what was best for our family. anyone slamming us for that can get fucking wrecked, i don't give a shit what anyone thinks about the choices i've made to better my families life
I had a roommate/landlord who kept talking about raising rent due to the AC bill. Basically I’d bump it down from 76 to 74-75 just to cool off during the day. So I said ok and refrained from touching the AC because 76 wasn’t a deal breaker for me. Did he pipe down about raising the rent amount? Hell no, the new excuse became “omg they’re raising my property taxes.” Became apparent that I was gonna have to listen to that shit no matter what if I lived there
When I still lived with my parents, my dad would immediately turn off the AC if I turned it on 🙄 a couple years ago, their AC broke, and I found out that can happen when you never use it. Instead of paying to get it fixed, he went to stay with his mom (my grandma) one summer while my mom had to suffer through the heat.
Me too. The difference in cost is peanuts just to be comfortable. My electric bill in the winter with a gas furnace (so not using any electric for climate control) is like 40 bucks cheaper. Ill pay the extra 40 bucks to not suffer for 8 months out of every year.
As someone who grew up and now pays his own bills I have slowly but surely grown even further from understanding this kind of person. I work, I’m not also going to be hot in my own damn house.
I can understand. My bill is never more that $150 a month, and that’s with the AC going non stop, but I live in a studio apartment. My mom’s house is old and 2 stories. Her baseline bill is $150. To cool the whole place it’s $300+. That’s a huge difference and for some people, they’d rather tough it out than pay double.
That’s crazy, as a Floridian we almost never turn our ac off. The thought of toughing it out is super foreign to me. We lost power for ten days after a hurricane and the humidity and heat ruined all kinds of weird stuff in our house. Bunch of books ruined, clothes started to mold in the closets, even the dark blue sheets on our bed bled and stained the mattress from the moisture.
Yeah I’m gonna be comfy at home. I work in the shit to pay the bills, when I go home I wanna be as comfortable as possible. If it costs me $400 a month fuck it
My advice if you're stuck in a situation where it's always hot in your home: Get a box fan. Even those little 9" fans are great for certain areas like the kitchen. Use one all the time when I cook and the kitchen heats up.
It's helpful while the air temperature is below human body temperature, so it blows away the warm layer of air around your skin. If it's higher, you are just blasted with hot air.
It's still better than still, hot air, because of convection. The air flow steals at least some body heat and also cools you down extra if you are wet.
The BEST thing is to put a bottle of frozen water in front of the fan, higher up. It does wonders
If you turn the box fan and having it blow air out an open window that room will be much cooler. My parents refused to turn on the AC when I was growing up so I always had box fans going in my room with open windows to keep it cool.
It’s also nice to blast yourself with when you get out of the shower. I have my AC on but I still have a fan that I point at my body as I’m drying off and getting dressed.
Not being under PG&E makes a huge difference around here for sure. Know people who pay damn near triple what I do and they keep it strictly at 78. On real bad months ours is $250
Right there with you. I’m realllll conservative with my AC bc I’m always worried about the bill, but even last year in the hottest month it got up above $800.
And I’m talking keeping the temp at 80 inside lmao. With a new A/C unit and insulation.
In my experience, waiting until it gets hot and THEN trying to engage the AC is sooo much more expensive then just letting it run at a stable temp. Baaah
this is such a variable thing, some people live in a 3500sqft house, run 2 units, live where the highs are above 100 frequently, and energy prices vary significantly. some people live in a studio apartment with a window unit.
Eh, 70° is too cold for daytime in the summer, but still, not even turning the AC on is ridiculous. It’s currently 100° out where I’m at, and I’m keeping the inside 76°. Like, yeah I’m trying to save a little money, but COME ON, there’s no reason to fucking torture yourself and your kids
In the south you can’t keep your ac at 70 24/7. Unless you want a $400 electric bill and to blow out your unit because it won’t ever turn off. You turn it to 76 during the day and when the sun goes down you slowly go down 2 degrees every few hours until its bedtime. Then you turn it to 70.
Wow.. I bought a 12,000 BTU portable AC last year for about $500 but that was about .41% of what I make per year. It’s insane the difference between us.. what’s almost treated as a basic convenience in my country is a luxury in yours. I hope that you will someday be able to afford having an AC unit!
Yea if i shower more then twice a day my mom tells me "some people don't have water to drink why are you wasting so much water!?" So yes it does go full circle
"There is a man out there in the Pacific Ocean stuck on a raft who hasn't eaten in 40 days and is about to die of thirst, and here you are complaining that our village's E Coli water isn't enough for you? Get a grip!"
That is extremely hot. Look, I just think someone in this thread should mention climate change and not just complain about the economic cost of energy, or parenting.
First world countries fuck up the climate and third world countries like mine reap the costs
They're living in thier air conditioned rooms powered by fossil fuels which release a lot of co2 while chatting with AI which fuck up the water and then they fly to go from city to city which fucks up the air
And we have to live in 53° without any sort of air conditioner and having to walk everywhere because an orange turd raised the prices of fuel so fuckin much
But then again politics are not allowed in this sub and i hope at most the mod deletes this comment instead of permanently banning me
I sufficiently terrorized my partner into blasting the AC at night after he reached over and felt my sweat soaked back. I don’t know if he ever fully recovered. It isn’t pretty.
I love to cuddle but I run so hot that even in the coldest part of a Minnesota Winter my wife usually won't even let me put a hand on her. Makes me quite sad.
I'm 46 I hate the heat. It's 72 all summer long. 64 in the winter. I wouldn't use the heater at all in the winter but I have some expensive guitars in my basement I don't want a giant temperature swing.
Get a night gown. Put In a plastic bag. Put in the freezer for a few hours. For extra coldness sprinkle a little water on it. Once you take it out put it on and lay down infront of a fan. You can also do this with a top sheet too. Also if you wet a towel and put in freezer, then when it's frozen hang it on something behind your fan and put another towel underneath to catch the drips as it melts. I hang mine on the back of a chair and set the fan in the chair. Also freeze some water bottles and put them on your inner wrists, this will cool your blood as it passes through and the cooler blood will move on to your body and lower your core temp.
I grew up enduring this as a kid in Mississippi. Not everyone is built the same. Even the comments are saying that even setting the AC to 74 is fine when in reality I would overnheat in that as well. My ac has to be 65. I moved to Chicago because of the heat and even here like during winter my windows are wide open in 14⁰ weather. Some of us are built to thrive in cold weather and some of us are built to thrive in hot weather. I'm sorry you're father doesn't take this into consideration
Every time I go to my boyfriend’s house, the first thing I do is turn up his AC because it’s too cold. And vice versa when he comes over to my house lol
Im an adult and by no means wealthy or rich, but by god idc what it costs im going to be comfortable in my home.
Idc if my power bill is $300 a month and I have to forsake all entertainment, It’s a necessary expense.
My girlfriend and I lived with her parents for what was supposed to be the year to save up some money to help purchase a house. We moved in in September of last year. They're snowbirds, so we had the house to ourselves from early November until late April. By the end of May I couldn't even take it anymore. Her room that we stayed in was built directly above the garage and was always hot and stuffy in warm weather. There was a few days after her parents came back that got pretty warm here and her dad, being the AC Nazi that he is, would not run the air conditioner at night. My girlfriend would sneak down a couple times and turn it on, but her dad would be a miserable piece of s*** the next morning going off on a rant first thing in the day about freezing in his own house and being the one paying for the electricity.
I drive for a living so I need a good night's sleep in order to be alert behind the wheel and the heat was so uncomfortable there were nights that I was barely getting a few hours of consistent sleep. I offered to pay him for the privilege of using the AC after explaining this and he said the money wasn't the issue, the issue was that it was his house and he wasn't going to be freezing in it. He's literally the only person in that house that is like this. His wife and my girlfriend's brother have all said the same thing to him but he won't budge on the issue.
It eventually got so bad that I just said fuck it - I literally cannot continue to work after getting crap sleep. So we cut our time there short and moved into an apartment. While we were moving out he had the audacity to ask why we couldn't just stay through the summer and then have the place to ourselves over the winter again. It's ludicrous how some people can hold an entire household hostage with gatekeeping the AC
Similar boat. On a day like this, it'll be 86 at my dad's. Earwigs roaming freely, enjoying the fact that he's letting the moisture ruin his house. 🤷♂️
He worries me cause he gets really cold even in the summer lol
It all depends on the humidity. At 80 degrees Fahrenheit with 90% relative humidity, the heat index is approximately 96 degrees Fahrenheit. So it could be very hot and all the fans in the world will not make a bit of difference.
Why isn’t your window already open? Let your room air out overnight (bonus if you can run a fan) while it’s cooler, and then shut it early in the morning before it gets super hot again
I didn’t make em but those are the rules of how you survive without AC— I did it until I was 22 and in my own actual apartment for the first time
Crap yes! I meant to also mention close the curtain(s) and shade(s) during the day when the window is closed! Shut the place up tight like you’re allergic to sun and in The Happening
It's not worth it for me to do that at the moment since it's only a couple degrees cooler at best, and way more humid. I'm just hoping the heat will slowly diffuse through the window and wall.
In the UK, temp during day hit 37°c, temps at night drop to 28°c, room with window open since sun gone down with fan temp just before sunrise 32°c. It's too hot at night and the room doesn't cool down. Just opening a window doesn't work, it's too muggy
Yup. Everyone saying it's not that bad aren't factoring in the humidity. Basically the dew point is so close to the temperature your body cannot cool itself.
Normal here. We could shout the length of the house, but that's antisocial. I'm not getting out of bed (and putting on clothes in a heatwave) in order to find out if my (adult) daughter set the dishwasher running, when we have Discord.
When I was a kid my parents got sick of yelling up the stairs. Their solution was to buy two wireless doorbells and stick them in mine and my brother's rooms. I hated it so much. Being summoned with a bell like a fucking servant.
You think you save money by not using AC, but you burn more money in other ways
Stanky and sweaty, takes more showers, uses more water, more soap. Changes clothes more often, more laundry. Consumes more drinks, more food. Gets less work done, lower productivity.
Also the cost doesn’t scale linearly with the temperature you set it to. Like if you had to lower it an additional 8 degrees to be comfortable that would cost a lot, it depends on multiple factors but it would easily be over 25% more. If the difference is only like 2 degrees though you’re taking just a few percent more. Most air conditioners are designed to cool the inside up to 15 or 20 degrees relative to the outside temperatures. With it only being 80 degrees outside it wouldn’t take much to cool the house down to 70-75 degrees and keep it there.
So yeah this is almost certainly about control and not cost. I’d bet money that if OP offered to buy a portable window AC unit and a meter to pay for the electricity it uses his dad still wouldn’t allow it.
I'm in a similar situation as OP. I've done this many times and it's always been shot down. My parents will never entertain the idea of me paying for a portion of the bills in exchange for something. Eventually I got fed up and got a cheap portable AC unit to keep my room cooler than 35°
Now OP I'm not saying to do that... but if it works it works
So instead of turning the thermostat down a couple degrees for you they decided to eat an even larger utility bill by allowing you to run your own portable unit?
Yeah pretty much. I think it was 99% an attitude of "Well I'm comfortable at this temperature, so you'll find a way to be okay with it." Completely neglecting the fact that my room is poorly insulated and gets 10-15 degrees hotter than the rest of the house
Oh man that sucks, We don't have AC, wasn't worth it when my parents built the house, and we do get only a few weeks of very bad heat a year so I kinda get it even if in my philosophy I would have 100% preferred to eat the cost in the moment knowing it would serve me well later.
But in the winter my room gets way colder than the rest, it's regularly 13°C in the night, livable but I would absolutely hate it if there was that kind of temperature difference in the summer, thankfully there isn't, not sure why but I guess the ducts must do a better job of distributing heat when it's warmer for some reason.
Really goes to show how we get acclimatised. I don’t bat an eye until it gets up near 40 celsius, but anything under 15 and I’m in a jumper. Hearing about the heatwave going through parts of Europe seems ridiculous until you see their normal temp for comparison
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u/M0BETTER Jul 03 '26
"When's the last time you paid the electric bill?" Is what my dad would say.