Finding cheap heats

Job hunting – and blogging – tend to leave you with lots of little chunks of spare time around the house.

I used some of mine a few weeks ago to tape insulation around the furnace ducts in my basement. That is every bit as interesting as it sounds and I hadn’t planned to write about it until I woke up this morning and discovered the Baja Minnesota wind chills of my boyhood had reached Kansas City. Duct tape works.

So how do you stay warm in weather like this? Bloggers on the My Two Dollars and Get Rich Slowly personal finance websites tell what works for them in even colder parts of the country than Kansas City.

Think sweaters, plugging drafts and space heaters in the short term. Hard-core upper Midwesterners at midwestweekends.com suggest thinking Fargo chic in your clothing selections. The U.S. Energy Dept., among others, offers longer range stuff you can do to save money or stay warmer for less if you are looking for longer-lasting answers. Energy even offers a handy online calculator to project your potential savings, right down to your own zip code.

And if nothing else works, volunteer to help out at a homeless shelter. Depending on how the bailout goes, it may be handy to know how to keep warm if you are sleeping in your car too.