What I Spent Part of My Revolution Money Exchange Bonus On

By Mrs. Accountability on May 10th, 2008

I’ve been wanting one of these for a long time. Literally years. But it was one of these things that we never got around to buying. Well, I finally decided it was time, and I was going to get one. I decided to apply part of our Revolution Money Exchange bonus to this:

Robertshaw 9610 Programmable Thermostat

It was $47.99 plus $5.25 shipping. I don’t know how Drillspot managed it, but I ordered on Thursday morning, and the thermostat arrived Friday afternoon. My youngest son and I were out riding our bikes around our property when he spotted a box out near the gate. We went out to see what it was, and I was amazed that the thermostat had already arrived.

We came inside and my son (who works with Mr. A regularly and is quite the budding handyman) read the instructions, programmed the unit, gathered some tools, turned off the power to the air conditioner and installed it for us.

The unit I chose can be programmed each day of the week, up to four different times each day. Because there are people in our home 24 hours a day, we cannot turn the unit off totally during the on-peak hours which is 9am to 9pm. Weekends are all off-peak hours. For the weekdays, we are going to try putting the temperature down low during the off-peak hours, and keep the temperature pretty high during the day.

We started out by programming the unit to cool the house down to 74°F during the off peak hours, and 85°F during the day. Mr. A woke up early this morning, as he typically does (I always say it’s more like middle of the night, since he gets up at 2:30am!), and was freezing. We both agree it’s ridiculous to spend money making the house freezing cold, so we will adjust that for during the night. I am thinking we’ll have a setting from between 6am and 9am to bring the temperature down for the day. Also, 85°F was just about unbearable, so we are going to see how we can do at 82°F. It will still be quite warm, but we’ll see if it is tolerable. One issue we have to allow for is our oldest son who has Down Syndrome. He has never been able to sweat properly and instead of getting hot and sweating and feeling uncomfortable, he can actually experience heat exhaustion, which can turn into heat stroke which can become life threatening. He cannot travel anywhere in the summer by car that does not have air conditioning, without taking a risk of becoming overheated. Because he has Down Syndrome, he doesn’t understand what is happening to him. When he has started to become overheated when he was younger, I would get all of his clothing wet, to help him to cool down and it would just make him angry with me. He just couldn’t understand why I was making his clothes wet.

So, we have to keep that in mind. Also, for the sheer discomfort of being in those high temperatures. The first year we lived here, it felt like an oven door blasting heat when we’d walk outside. We invested in window tinting and applied it to all our windows, and it definitely made a difference. We put up a carport on the west side of the house, which gets all the afternoon heat. That really helped with the temperature in the master bedroom. We live in a manufactured home, the name brand is Cavco. It is very well insulated against cold as we have never had to turn on the heat during the winter.

But the summer heat is another story altogether, and traditionally this is the time of year when our electrical bill skyrockets. So that we can maintain our budget, we signed up for the year round payment plan. The company figures out what we use in a year, based on the previous year, and they bill us for that amount. If we can manage to lower our electrical usage, we can drive the monthly amount down.

What did you spend your Revolution Money Exchange bonus on? Did you leave it in the account, apply it toward your debt, or have you not signed up yet? Use my link below if you haven’t signed up yet, and you can make $25! If you are part of a couple, sign up make $25, refer your honey to make $10 and when your honey signs up, he or she will make $25. So there’s a possible $60 just waiting for you to sign up for it.