Before moving to the desert for my first job as a reporter after graduating from college, I never lived with full-time air conditioning, such as from ActronAir. I didn’t need it. I lived in a temperate climate in the San Francisco Bay Area my entire life, and the homes I lived in didn’t have central air and didn’t need it. A quiet fan or wall air conditioner that was about as loud as a truck and only cooled one room was good enough in the summer.

Other than my stint in the desert, I’ve since lived in the Bay Area my entire life. While jobs and housing prices have forced me to move inland where it’s hotter in the summer than it is by the bay, I thought I could live with only a wall AC unit.

Those 11 months in the desert, however, changed my mind.

A swamp cooler blowing dust

Living in 100-degree days in the dry desert heat will change how you think about a lot of things. Among them are the need to stay hydrated and constantly drink water, the downsides of only being able to afford a rental that has a swamp cooler, and how one day when you can afford it, you vow that you’ll never live in such hot conditions again and will spend every penny you have to have a home completely cooled by central air conditioning.

As a poor newspaper reporter, I could barely afford to rent a small home where the yard was dirt and gravel and the only cooling the home had was a swamp cooler. If you don’t know what a swamp cooler is, consider yourself lucky.

It’s a big metal box on the roof that spins a cylinder inside to blow cool air into a home. Where does the cool air come from on a hot day? From water that runs over the fan. The water isn’t cooled, so it doesn’t blow in much cool air, as advertised.

What it does blow in is dust, which is usually hot and well, dust. It’s not fun.

Sweating my fingertips off

After living in high heat for about nine months, I discovered that I woke up so thirsty in the middle of the night that I had to keep getting up and going to the fridge to get a cold drink of water. Eventually I shortened the trip by putting a cooler of Gatorade next to my bed and drinking from that.

No matter how much I drank during the day, I was still getting dehydrated. How much? Enough that the skin on the tips of my fingers started peeling away from sweating and drying out so much.

I went to a doctor and his advice was simple — leave town. I could take a salt pill to help solve the missing fingertips, he suggested, but essentially the best solution was to move to a cooler climate.

Movin’ on up with air conditioning

So I found a new job and moved back to the Bay Area. While it was cooler, the summers in Tracy, Fairfield, Walnut Creek and Concord — where I moved on to new jobs as a journalist who still couldn’t afford more than an apartment with a wall air conditioning unit — were still plenty hot.

The wall AC units tended to cool the room they were in and not much more. They practically turned the room into a freezer, which is better than blazing hot, but the coolness didn’t get to the back bedroom.

My vow to get central air conditioning wasn’t fulfilled yet. That would require moving to a better apartment or buying a home with central air. I’d done enough renting for a lifetime, so it seemed like it was the right time to buy a house. And only a house with central air conditioning.

That was my main requirement when my wife and I started searching for homes to buy. We found a condo and since it had central air, I agreed that it was a great place and worth the cost.

A year later we outgrew the condo and looked for a house in an older neighborhood. The small homes were built in the 1950s and it was hard to find one with central air. But we did, and that was all I needed to convince me it was the perfect home.

How the Desert Quickly Changed My Thinking on Air Conditioning is a post from: When Life Gives You Lemons. Did you like the post? Follow me on Twitter, like me on Facebook, or hop on over to my blog and leave me your feedback.

Here are five saving tips for summer vacation that we’re using in full force this year:

1. Plan ahead

Some things shouldn’t be put off if you want the best prices, starting with travel and everything that goes into getting there. For flights, rental cars and accommodations, we booked most of our summer vacation in January for the best prices. Booking early also helped get available rooms at our destination because we quickly discovered that a convention or some sort of big gathering is taking up a lot of rooms there.

One thing I don’t like about planning ahead for a vacation is the lousy feeling in your wallet when prices drop. This is rare, but sometimes airplane seats, hotel rooms and rental cars are underbooked, and prices drop for last-minute shoppers.

To avoid this, most of our hotel reservations can be canceled within 24 hours of arrival, and Southwest Airlines has a good rebooking policy if you find a better price. The rental car can also be changed without taking a financial hit.

2. No car for a few days

Rental car prices can be crazy during the summer. We’re flying in to one city and flying out of another, so picking up a rental car at one airport and returning it at another was expensive for two weeks.

I even looked into what Auto Slash offered, which wasn’t a deal. The great thing about the site is after you’ve booked through it, it will send you email updates if prices change and will automatically reserve a car for you at the lower price after searching multiple vendors.

Even with that prospective savings, it still hasn’t found a cheaper price than what we found by going without a rental car for the first few days of our trip and then renting one.

Our plan is to take a taxi to a nearby hotel for the first night because we arrive at night via airplane — so we really wouldn’t use a rental car much anyway that first night. The next few days we plan to get around town with Lyft, Uber or taxi. Then we’ll rent a car, saving at least $300 in rental car fees by not having it for two full weeks.

3. Groupon and other coupon sites

I’m still searching on Groupon and elsewhere for coupons for tours, food, drinks, and activities at our summer vacation destination, and I expect to find something to save some serious cash during the trip. I did this on a meal out last summer and saved 50 percent.

4. Credit card perks

We pay off our credit card each month and use the collected points for free hotel stays. I try to hoard the points for summer vacation, resulting in five free nights this summer in one of our favorite cities.

5. Other summer vacation accommodations

In addition to the free hotel rooms, we’re saving on accommodations by renting a house through VRBO, one of the many vacation home rental sites out there that can save families money by renting a home together and splitting the cost.

We’re also using Airbnb for a few nights, saving at least 50 percent on what a hotel room would cost us. It will be the first time I’ve ever used Airbnb, so I’ll report back after summer vacation on how it went.

Until then, take all of these steps for your summer vacation, and let us know how it goes.

5 Saving Tips for Summer Vacation is a post from: When Life Gives You Lemons. Did you like the post? Follow me on Twitter, like me on Facebook, or hop on over to my blog and leave me your feedback.

And unless your household makes enough money to put your children in daycare and still leave you money to pay the bills, daycare can be a financial loss during the summer.

I haven’t done a cost analysis in years of daycare vs. having a kid at home, but since pre-school our daughter has been home with one of us. I work part-time from home and currently have this duty. It was done partly out of necessity when I was laid off from my job, but even before then my wife and I figured out that it would cost us less if one of us worked part time and was home with our daughter instead of working full-time and having her in daycare.

What do we do to keep our child busy? Many things that unfortunately aren’t as cheap as the 50 outdoor summer activities listed by one blogger. Still, some of mine are relatively cheap and work better than others. Here are a few ways, with an explanation of how well they work:

Cash to read during the summer

For the month of June, my summer reading plan for my daughter has been a bust. But I’m still holding out hope and I’m working on improving it.

Here’s how it works: I pay her $2 in cash for every chapter book she reads during the summer. The book has to be at least 300 pages and be a chapter book at her reading level or above that we approve of. Reading “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” for the 100th time doesn’t count, and neither do most comic-type books.

So far she hasn’t completed one chapter book, though she’s close to it. I require her to read at least one hour per day, and so far she’s mostly picking out short books during our visits to the library. I may have to increase the payout to $3 and require her to read more hours each day.

Fun with the iPad

Some parents give their child an iPad or other tablet to play with as long as they like — which could be all day. We have a Kindle Fire that the family shares, and I have an iPad.

My daughter gets rare access to the iPad after she’s done some summer chores and read a book. Instead of playing mindless games on it, the Brainpop app seems to have some games that are educational.

She also uses it to make movie trailers through an app Apple provides on the iPad that includes music, captions and movie credits that can be customized. It’s an easy and fun way to keep entertained for a few hours.

Interview Siri

A spare iPad, iPod, iPhone or other “i” device with the voice-activated virtual assistant “Siri” can keep an inquisitive child entertained during the summer with some questions that Siri has some unique answers to.

Fourteen Easter-egg questions are in a Business Insider story, and I was curious when I heard my daughter ask some of them to Siri recently.

Ask it “What does the fox say?” or to divide zero by zero, and be prepared for some fun responses.

Summer swimming

Joining a neighborhood pool can be a little pricey, along with the required volunteer time. But some days you just have to go to the pool during the summer.

We live near a city pool where admission is $5, which I think is reasonable for a few hours of splashing around. A water play structure that’s an obstacle course was added this summer for kids to climb on in the pool, with an extra fee of $2.

We also live near a water park that’s hugely popular in our area and draws people from around the Bay Area. It costs what you’d expect to pay to get into an amusement park, and a season pass pays for itself after two visits.

We’re not getting season passes this year to the water park for a few reasons. The high cost is one — though it would be worth it if we used it often — but the main reason is that I’m tired of going and fighting the crowds there.

In a year or so my daughter will be old enough that I can drop her off at the water park with her friends, and then return at closing to pick them up. Until then, we’re passing on buying the summer pass.

Summer camps

Classes, camps and other weeklong activities can get expensive, so we limit these to a few each summer. However, the costs can be worthwhile if I’m busy enough with work to make up for the expense. And more importantly, they can be a lot of fun for my daughter.

Summer vacation

Finally, we’re taking a vacation this summer for a few weeks. Nothing extravagant, but a worthwhile expense that should give us plenty of fun memories of this summer together.

What inexpensive summer activities do your children do? Let us know in the Comments section below.

How My Kid Avoids Daycare With a Cheap Summer is a post from: When Life Gives You Lemons. Did you like the post? Follow me on Twitter, like me on Facebook, or hop on over to my blog and leave me your feedback.