I never thought I would see my economic viability take such a beating. Doing the right thing to be as professional as possible was always my guiding principle. I figured that as long as I kept to that, my fortunes would only rise. The air conditioned offices would just get better and better. Well, I could not have been more wrong. While doing the right thing is normally the only thing to do. In corporate America, that can also end a career. That was what certainly happened to me. I was in that HVAC perfect office with wood panels and the big windows. The next day, I was pondering my future over a cup of coffee. Turns out, I should have been a lot more unethical in order to advance and stay with that company. So, after I processed losing my career, I got to some brass tacks. The first step was to save some money until I could begin providing another pay check for the family. I started cutting back on everything. My wife and kids were totally on board which made it that much easier. One of the biggest household budget targets was the utility bill. Our energy usage had just gotten way out of hand. The HVAC system was a big part of that. It took me all of about a half hour online to come up with a game plan to reduce the kilowatt hours used by the HVAC system. Just applying some simple tips that are so readily available, I was able to cut our HVAC energy use by more than 15 percent.