I’ve been asked by Kicukalah why I don’t use A/C and is it unhealthy? So I thought I’d address that in a post instead of in a comment.

First off let me say that I don’t condemn anyone who uses A/C. That would be indicative of the saying “get the stone out of your own eye before teasing someone else about their stone”. Y’all, I used to have the A/C turned up in my house so high you could literally hang meat up in there and it would not go bad. Yeah, no joke.

Getting to this point of not using A/C has been a long process taking place over several years. About 7 or so as I’m going into the 3rd summer of not using A/C. The initial reason and generally always the first consideration for most choices I make are monetary. Monetary in considering the on going costs vs the value I’m getting. The other is that I hate being dependent on something that I have to earn money for especially when you factor in the income taxes, gas taxes, sales taxes and all the other taxes that have to paid. That’s only the beginning. To have $200 you’ve got to earn $250(an estimate)so that you actually have $200. If anyone doubts that just take a look at the gross amount on your pay stub, then take a look at the net amount. Big difference huh?! Then you gotta to pay your bills and buy all the stuff you need so that you can get to work to earn that x amount of money you need to pay for whatever. ***stepping down of the soapbox**** When I began what was to originally in be a reduction in A/C use that led to no A/C use experiment was that in 2001 when I started getting serious about getting debt free, I began looking for every which way to Sunday, up and down all around in which I could save money to apply toward my debts.

Here’s some background on how I got to no A/C use. This house is in an older neighborhood with many established trees. That helps greatly in reducing how hot the house gets. Also there are lots of windows for such a small house so I can take advantage of cross-ventilation when there is a breeze. After a while, I was finding while sitting down I was getting chilly with the A/C set on 78 degrees so I would turn it up to 79 or 80. Then gradually each summer I would turn the thermostat up till the summer where I was up to 86 degrees. There was a 1.5 year break when my mother was living with us. But when I got to that point I thought to myself, since you got the temp up this high lets try going without for a few days. Well that turned into 90% of the summer of 2007 which ended up being the hottest and driest summer on record for us and all of the summer of 2008.

As far as A/C being unhealthy, my take on it is this. A/C is a relatively recent thing available and affordable to the general public as in 1970s for some late 1980s for others. I fall in the later category. Most people could not afford to have central A/C in their homes. A/C is one of the largest users of electricity. The more watts an appliance uses the more it’s gonna cost you each month. I refuse to have a $300-700 electric bill in the summer. Yeah, there are people here in this area who pay that much on their electric bills in the summer. I ain’t one of ’em. It goes back to what I talked about in the third paragraph. I like being efficient with my time and money with time being much more valuable than money. That saying time is money is BS! You gotta have time in order to make money but time does not need money. Time goes on despite how much you have or don’t have and each person is only given so much of it, regardless of how monetarily wealthy you are or not. I personally don’t know of anyone who was on their death bed saying “I wish I spent more time at the office”. If I’ve got to spend more time at a job or multiple jobs that I hate because my expenses are high, then yes it’s unhealthy for me. I firmly believe stress is the #1 cause of weight gain, and all these dis-eases that are unheard of in cultures that have not been “civilized”. ***Ok, now I’m really stepping off the soapbox***

I’ve also found that my appetite has regulated itself back to where it was when I was younger, before having A/C. Back then in the summer my appetite would slow down because I’m just not as hungry when it’s hot. I’ve been able to maintain a 40 now 50lb weight loss and I know this is one of the contributing factors. And yes I’m in an area of the country where it’s hot and humid in the summer. I’m now much more adaptable to the heat. Being constantly under A/C makes your body much less tolerable of the heat. I only wish I would have done this when I bought the house. Would have saved myself thousands of dollars that I can really use right now.

So those are my reasons for not using A/C anymore. See what get when you ask me a question? lol