What will you be buying with your stimulus check?

@Stereoguy The lights didn’t cost much and we’ll see how durable they are in Oklahomas thunderstorms. Solar panels though likely to cost a small fortune to set up for temporary use in power outages or to save money on electricity. I don’t know yet if it’s feasible but if energy prices increase it probably will be. Wish I knew how to make my own solar panels have read it’s possible to recycle aluminum cans and make them.

@Stereoguy in an emergency it might save a lot of food for example and allow communications.

@Stereoguy geo thermal energy systems would be beneficial here, they can keep the house the same temperature year round, cool in summer, warm in winter, having multiple alternative energy sources such as passive, solar, solar and maybe a small wind generator on top of the house would aid in the savings. Would have to install geo thermal before landscaping the yard, a lot of planning and work goes into developing it.

@Stereoguy there was a house given away in a drawing after making sizable donations and it was chocked full of alternative energies like this. They said that even for the size the highest electric bill would be no more than $100, probably much less than that if a person tried to conserve a bit.

@Stereoguy yes in the summer though some people have had hundreds in electric bills plus natural gas for water heating and cooking. I think around $200 is the highest my electric bill has ever been but I’ve heard people complain about having bills up to $400 a month some summers. The house they gave away was probably about 1000 square feet larger than my house, which is on the small side.

@Stereoguy yeah some of the newer things are energy efficient. I think anyone who can run the electric bill up to $100 with all those energy systems probably runs their dishwasher at least once a day, cooks and uses their oven whenever they want to despite how hot it is outdoors and washes a lot of towels after one single use & changes their sheets a few times a week laundering them in hot water, that kind of thing can run a bill way up and very long showers too.

@Stereoguy I take a quick hot shower in the summer not a 20-minute leisurely one. I use my convection bowl cooker to cook meat or baked potatoes, run the dishwasher 3 times a week at most,, turned the water heater down to tolerable level, let jeans dry out in the sun room over chairs when it’s hot enough, just tumble them maybe 3-5 minutes to get the wrinkles out instead of drying for 30-40 minutes. I’ve known families to do 15 loads a week of laundry with small families and not try to cut back.

@Stereoguy I use a bath towel for my hair and reuse it several times and a very small hand towel to dry off with, the hand towel is fraction of weight of the large towel. That saves a load a week right there. Imagine having 3 girls and a wife that all waste towel use with several towels each.

@Stereoguy the lady in the laundromat doing 15 loads was complaining, and she wasn’t rich. 😂 Figure out how to cut down on laundry loads, lady, it’s not brain surgery.

@Stereoguy I learned to make my own pizzas for about 1/3 of the cost of a restaurant’s and get movies from the local library. All kinds of ways to save if you really need to.

@Stereoguy It’s easy to fritter away money on such things if you have no self control with $ and want instant gratification. I used to buy iced drinks at convenience stores when it was summer I would be out and about running errands and started bringing a jar of ice water with me and stopped doing that. It’s rare for me to go to convenience stores at all now. That adds up to quite a bit over the course of a month. When I was working at the car lot my boss would send me there to one down the street for cigarettes and I would look around and wonder how much stuff they sold in the stores was really necessary for living, most of it is junky food etc. I also used to buy stuff from vending machines at work and it added up...stopped that habit and saved a lot of $.

@Stereoguy Oklahoma is number one in the nation for convenience stores and right up there close for bad health...think there’s any coincidence?