This device can help you save on your winter energy costs.

Space heaters are very easy to use.

---

Key points

• Electric space heaters are inexpensive and can come with useful features like remote controls, timers, and oscillation.
• Natural gas is more expensive this winter due to inflation and the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
• You can also save by budget billing and sealing drafts that let cold air in and warm air out.

---

Winter is a difficult time of year for me, but I chose to live in a part of the country that has extremely harsh snowy winters. It’s really the only thing I don’t like about living here, but after several years, I’ve settled in and can get through the winter while staying warm and without exhausting my Bank account to pay my heating bills. What is my secret? I have a few space heaters and use them strategically throughout the winter.

Electric heaters can be your best friend in winter if you’re trying to save money. They’re inexpensive to buy – I bought mine for under $100 each, and you can buy smaller units for even less. The small ones intended for use in individual rooms are also not very energy intensive. Sometimes they have clean features; mine came with remote controls, timers, and a oscillation feature. Space heaters make it incredibly easy to heat one room at a time for added comfort, which can save you money during the cold winter months. That’s how.

Heating your entire home can be expensive.

As WGRZ reported in September 2022, winter heating costs are projected to increase 50% by 2022-2023 due to a few different factors. Inflation, of course, has served to make almost everything more expensive, and the conflict between Russia and Ukraine also has an impact. Russia is a major producer of natural gas for Europe, but since they have been prevented from selling it to the rest of Europe, the United States is exporting more of its supply abroad. So if you have natural gas heat (and you probably do, if you live somewhere cold like me), keeping your heat lower will save you money.

How to easily achieve and maintain lower overall temperatures in the home? A great way is to install a programmable thermostat so you can set the temperature in your home and trust technology to adjust it as needed. Also, you can set different temperatures for different times of the day; There’s no point in heating your house to a comfortable temperature for hanging out if you’re at work all day, so you may choose to turn the heat down on weekdays while you’re away.

But if you’re a renter like me, you may not have the option of installing a new thermostat, and your landlord may not want to either. But a heater can help you more closely regulate the temperature in the room you’re in. The two rooms I spend most of my time in are my home office (I work from home) and my bedroom. I keep my central heating turned off and rely on a space heater in each of these rooms to keep them comfortable.

Space Heater Safety Tips

It would be remiss of me not to quickly give you some tips for running a space heater more safely. If you are going to leave the room, definitely turn it off and consider unplugging it as well. Supervise children and curious pets. Make sure your heater is installed at least a few feet away from flammable objects and avoid plugging it into an extension cord. Don’t run a heater overnight (it’s worth buying one with a built-in timer). Finally, look for space heaters that come with safety features. The two I have shut themselves off if pushed or knocked over.

Other ways to save

There are other moves you can do to save on heating costs — I trust these as much as my space heaters. Please note that you may qualify for government assistance with your heating billstoo.

turn down the heat

I keep my central heating system at 64 degrees, but I know people who keep theirs even lower than this. However, you want to make sure your pipes don’t freeze; Jerry’s Insurance Agency recommends consumers keep their homes no higher than 55 degrees in winter.

Seal cracks and openings where heat can escape

If you have a large gap under your door and you can feel cold air coming in, you know warm air is coming out too. Now is the time to remove the weather stripping and draft guards. Many of my apartment windows are in disrepair, and as such, I hang clear plastic sheeting over them in the fall and leave them there until spring. In my father’s immortal words, “We’re not paying to heat the outside!”

Sign up for budget billing

Once I lived at my current rental for a year, I was eligible to get a budget billing plan through my utility company. The company averaged my year’s costs and now I pay the same amount every month. Since I also took steps to keep my costs down last winter, the amount I pay per month is quite reasonable. If budget billing is available to you, I recommend it. it’s wonderful power create a monthly budget based on predictable costs.

By choosing a space heater and applying the other tips above, you can save money on your heating costs this winter and stay warmer at the same time. What’s not to like about that?