This Week in Your Wallet: July 10, 2012
Not to state the obvious, but has it been hot out or what? The official start of summer was barely three weeks ago, and yet it already feels like the hazy days of August. I’ve been staying cool by eating as much ice cream as possible (doesn’t really work, but who’s complaining), drinking more water (which does) and running a little earlier in the day.
The changes I’ve made in my daily schedule to stay cool are small, but according to a new article inTime magazine, heat waves affect more than the way we structure our days — they affect our economies, our crops, our roads and, of course, our wallets. Time notes that droughts last summer cost the state of Texas $5.2 billion in agriculture losses; this year, three quarters of the entire country is insome form of a drought. Corn and soybean crops are at a particular risk of having a low yield, which translates to higher prices for you.
However, minimizing the heat’s effect on your wallet by skipping the corn and soybean sections at the grocery store isn’t the absolute worst thing in the world. What’s much, much harder is to go without air conditioning and fans — i.e, things that require electricity. And that, according to Time, is where our wallets are really taking a hit. Consumers have already started breaking records for electricity consumption this summer, and we are well on our way to matching (if not surpassing) last year’s electricity spending sum of $52.7 billion.
Short of suffering in the heat (which is neither healthy nor safe), it may feel like you’re a prisoner to yourpower company, doomed to pay a very high price just for trying to stay cool. The good news is that there is a way to keep your bill in check: a smart thermostat. Smart thermostats are like programmable thermostats, except they’re just a little bit smarter. Some, you can program over wifi or your iPhone, so you can turn the temperature way up if you’re planning to be gone awhile and then slowly lower it, five degrees at a time, as you get closer to returning home. (This strategy uses much less energy than if you were to turn the AC on and off.) Other smart thermostats — like The Nest — actually learn your habits. After a week of seeing when you turn it to 70 degrees versus when you turn it to 78 degrees, it creates an energy-efficient plan for maintaining those temperatures. Neat, right?
Smart thermostats can run on the pricier side, but should save you money over time. You can find agood rundown in this USA Today story. And now, here are the other headlines for the week:
Jobs in June…
The latest jobs’ report was released on Friday, and the numbers for June were just as discouraging as the numbers from May. The U.S added just 80,000 jobs last month, and the unemployment rate held steady at 8.2 percent. Bloomberg Businessweek made a list of the five specific things you should know about this particular report, and it does a good job of breaking down the most important takeaways from the report. Among the five factoids: the average length of unemployment is 39.9 weeks, compared to 17 weeks before the recession.
There was one silver lining amidst Friday’s report: wages are rising. They’re up two percent from a year ago, which is more than the rate of inflation.
Are you “hopeless” with math? You’re not alone.
The Atlantic just published a great article on the 11 ways consumers are bad at math. We’re not talking about trigonometry and pre-calculus, though — these are all the ways consumers are hopeless when it comes to numbers they encounter while shopping. For example: we’re heavily influenced by the first number we see. The Atlantic writes that if we walk into a high-end store and see, say, a $6,000 bag (for the record, I think it would be easier for me to eat bugs than spend that much money on a bag. $6,000 is a car!) and then see a $350 watch, we’re inclined to get that watch, even though $350 is a very expensive price for a watch. Why? Because compared to $6,000 for a bag, $350 is a good deal.
Another example: we’re obsessed with the number 9. We know the $20 and $19.99 are the same thing, and yet we view the number 9 as a sort of signal: “this is cheap! This is discounted! Buy me!” Do you fall prey to tricks like these? Tweet me @jeanchatzky and let me know!
Have a great week!
Jean
