Episode Details

With record-setting temperatures across the United States, home energy bills are skyrocketing. 

On the latest episode of PennyWise, host Nat Cardona talks with Elizabeth Ayoola of NerdWallet about changes people can make to reduce their energy bills.

Read the NerdWallet article here!

About this program

Nat Cardona is host of PennyWise as well as Lee Enterprise's true-crime podcast Late Edition: Crime Beat Chronicles. Lee Enterprises produces many national, regional and sports podcasts. Learn more here.

Episode transcript

Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:

Welcome to Pennywise Lee Enterprises podcast. I'm your host, Nat Cardona

It's summer, and pretty much anywhere you go in the US it is hot, just like with anything at this time in the economy. Energy costs are way up, but fear not. We have some steps to share with you to check that your house is working efficiently and ways to take control of your energy bill. Personal finance expert Elizabeth Ayoola joins us today with more on that.

Today we're talking about energy costs and cutting them during the summer. That dreaded bill comes every month. I literally hate seeing the number that pops up. I am very pro air conditioning and I think a lot of Americans feel the same way, especially in these summer months. So we've got about five tips to help us cut our energy costs this summer.

The first one, based off this article was really interesting to me, the idea of your electronics leaking because you obviously wouldn't think of that naturally, you think of pipes bursting and leaking and then that's a real problem. So let's let's jump into that. Taking a baseline of the electronics in your home.

So it is possible for your electronics to leak, Of course. And I am definitely a culprit of leaving everything plugged in and not unplugging things or turning switches off. So it just sometimes requires a change in your daily routine. So if you're used to, again, leaving things plugged in overnight, then you can maybe try before bed, unplugging things and taking things out, turning off all the switches.

And if you have kids at home, of course they could be culprits for that as well, with kids using so much technology. So just have them add that to their nighttime routine in terms of unplugging things and taking them out of the walls as well.

All right. And that just is a perfect segue right into establishing efficient habits. So let's talk about that, especially with your thermostat.

Again, you may want to during the winter months, obviously, you may be using air conditioning as an example. You may tend to use less air conditioning during the winter months. So maybe just consider adjusting for the temperature or the climates that you're in for whatever season you're in so that you can cut costs that way. You can also try to measure how long you have your air conditioning on and compare your bills or whether that be heating in the winter months to see basically how much you can cost by maybe reducing it by 2 hours or, you know, switching between the fan and the air conditioning or the heating at night just to kind of
see what works so well and save dimension to going right off of that is maybe upgrading to a safe thermostats. I still have an old school one in my house so it's it seems to be that's the better way to go though, to save some money.

Yes. So people might be scared by the upfront cost of that at