For a while, my wife and I had troubles about our utility bills. The two of us had gone from having two salaries to one after the birth of our son. I opted to stay at home and take care of myself instead of paying for daycare. My wife was supportive of the idea and continued to work. But, it got harder to cover all the bills each week since there wasn’t extra income coming in. Though she never said it, I knew she wished we had some extra money coming in or a way to cut back. The best I could do was find out how to make our house more energy-efficient. The first area I looked into was the central heating and cooling unit. We needed lots of heat to warm the home since we lived in a cold area, so that meant the AC was on all day, every day, which consumed lots of energy, after speaking to an AC expert, I found out some things we could do to make the Heating and Air Conditioning energy-efficient, we changed the old thermostat with a new a one that could regulate the temperature in the room. The quality AC had sensors that could detect when the home was warm enough and reduce its output. That made a big difference and helped keep the home at a good humidity level in winter. Another step I took was to ask an Heating and Air Conditioning expert to come and perform some maintenance on the heating unit. It had been a while since the last servicing, and I suspected that was why the a/c was consuming lots of energy. I was right. When the AC professional opened it up, the air filter was clogged with dust and debris. As a result, it needed lots of extra energy to heat the home each day. But, after cleaning and fixing some parts, it made less noise which was a big bonus for us.