10/16/2025... Heat Would Be Good Here?

I have been keeping my house heat at 56 - 65 degrees.

(That’s 13 - 18 degrees Celsius.) If that’s all you knew about me, you’d have a very skewed picture of my live. You’d think I am for-real-frugal, when in fact that’s not really the case.

Several years ago I had issues with the furnace in my house with 4 repair visits and $400 later plus no actual fix of my problem, I started to use my auxiliary heat sparingly.

After 7 years later I moved back into my Lake Home full time and the heat was still not fixed until a friend convinced their friend who happened to be a HVAC man to come and take a look at it even though he was 60 miles away. It was just 4 relays that had probably burnt one by one as each one failed putting more pressure on the remaining ones.

I found heat has become my real and true frugal habit.

What’s super interesting to me about the thermostat to me is how it has this strange power that nothing else in my life has.

If I was out of coffee, I would say: “Let’s go buy more coffee” “If I really need it, then it’s okay to buy it.”

But for some reason I don’t apply this same logic to the thermostat.

If I'm feeling cold, I should say, “Let’s turn the thermostat up.” But I rarely do. Even though turning it up for a day would only cost a few extra dollars. I’ll put on our fleece socks and fleece robes and have my hoods on my jacket up in the house before I’ll turn up the temperature.

I’d shivered at my desk, blowing on my fingers to keep them nimble enough to type, before I turn up the thermostat.

I wonder what the neighbors would think, if they saw me bundled up and huddled under blankets, like paupers, while watching Amazon on my decidedly non frugal smart TV?

They wouldn’t be unreasonable to question my priorities.

What Keeping My House Cold Has Taught Me

First, I’ve learned that even smart people can behave irrationally, which is the only way to describe applying one set of logic to certain things and a completely contradictory set to other things. Especially when the bizarre-logic attached to the thermostat sometimes means sacrificing my comfort and maybe even my safety. But that’s just an academic finding, not anything meaningful for our lives.

Second, and more meaningfully, I’ve learned that I in fact can be frugal when I decide to be, which shocks no one more than it shocks me. If you’d asked me, before I received that first electric bill, if I’d be willing to keep my house at such a low temp, I would have responded with some variation on “Absolutely not!” I probably would have even said that it was worth a few hundred extra dollars a month not to be cold.

Well, I would have been wrong. It isn’t worth it (to me), and my ability to stick to my guns on this taught me that I can stick to my guns on other frugal habits in retirement.

Third, I’ve learned that I'm more adaptable than I think.

I always used to be cold, and what’s fantastic about living in a cold house is your internal thermostat is forced to adapt. Now, I’m usually cold at home, but I’m rarely cold elsewhere. It’s like magic.

But The Question Still Remains…

Why does this one thing in our life have such power over me? Why does it warrant its own set of logic?

Is it because of anchoring, because I think that more than $300 a month is too much to pay for heat in the winter?

Is it because I like the challenge of having to adapt to something different?

Is it because the cost of all the other things I'm comfortable buying is relatively low (even for a pound of coffee), compared to the extra $100 or more I’d be looking at for more heat? In truth, it’s probably a little bit from each one.

What’s an even more interesting question to me is: What will this habit lead to? I’ve now learned in an irrefutable way in my own life that something society claims with near certainty (the temperate range in which humans are comfortable) is relative, not absolute.

I’ve learned that I can live perfectly well without a lot of heat, so of course I wonder what I’ll eventually give up, realizing that my perceived need of it was an illusion all along.

Actually the furnace repairman showed me the trick with his fix of the relays.

They are usually the first thing to look for & easy to replace. So extras on hand is a good idea. They are just plug & play sort of thing.

I got it covered now with all 4 ordered & waiting for just in case situation.

Nana