This may come as a surprise to international Shufflers, but things can get quite cold down under. Not proper cold, like it gets in Russia or Canada, but pretty cold for our weak ass bodies that have become accustomed to the beautiful, hot Australian summer days. Just the other weekend it got down to 6ºC (43ºF) in Sydney and actually much lower than that in other parts of the country. This caused a wave of headlines announcing record breaking cold temperatures. We really are a precious bunch, but nonetheless this got me thinking about staying warm.

The normal course of action to take in these situations seems to be pumping every heater within eye shot to max. In true Aussie style, our heaters churn while we adopt our best shorts and singlet outfit, walking around the house as though it is still summer. So as to not raise a single goosebump, we plan our journey straight from our overheated home, into a cosy car where the heaters are quickly ramped up to max, to the heat-pumped office. All outdoor time is carefully minimised to the extent possible.

This of course may sound completely and utterly absurd to a resident of Canada, but it is the truth. Our bodies just can’t handle the cold like yours can. If it is any consolation, this also sounds completely absurd to me, Pat the Shuffler. Doing some cursory internet searching on saving money to keep warm actually brings up some sensible advice about insulation, using efficient heating devices etc. But this misses a key point – WE LIVE IN AUSTRALIA. The temperature very rarely ever drops below 0ºC here, and even more rarely so in our capital cities. During our typical dead of winter, the vast majority of us can get by with completely passive techniques to keep warm.*

Habitual use of active heating is very foreign to me. As a child, we used no form of active heating whatsoever in my household. To this day I have maintained that habit because where I, and the majority of Australians live it is simply unnecessary.

As intuitive as ever, Old Man Shuffler knew that these things use an absolutely enormous amount of energy and hence cost some serious cash to run. This Victorian Government website has conveniently done all the cost calculations for a few typical-sized houses and for the typical usage pattern. I’ll only add here the typical calculation of your 10 year cost, taking into account investment returns. For a large house using ducted gas heating, the cost runs up to over AUD$27,000! Even for a small house using a very efficient model reverse cycle air conditioner will end up about $8,000 poorer over 10 years!

I could just fool myself into thinking that these are just part of life’s fixed costs, however that would not be a very Shuffler way of doing things. Instead, I keep warm in different ways.

Clothing

There is this great thing called clothing. Despite what seems to be the relentless barrage of marketing that espouses the fashion characterisitcs of garments, those garments actually serve a different more fundamental purpose. That is of course to keep you warm.

You would think that having an average weekly spend of $23 on clothing would land the regular person more than enough of this fabulous and carefully harvested, cleaned, bleached, cut, woven, sewed, transported and stacked fibre to keep them warm. Alas, it seems the average person has forgotten this basic, primary function of clothing. Fear not, for I am here to remind you of this function and free your mind from the shackles of the marketing machine.

There is clothing you can purchase to keep every part of your body warm, from warm wool socks and full length underwear to beanies and scarfs. On really relentlessly cold days (or what I, a weak ass Aussie consider to be relentlessly cold), I love to wear a thermal undergarment that essentially acts as another layer of skin to keep the warmth in.

Acclimatisation

I am sure those real hardcore Canadians reading this are just in a state of disbelief that we would find our relatively mild winters as cold as we do. This my friends is called acclimatisation.

It turns out acclimatising to the cold is a process that should only take a couple of weeks! And in the year round mild temperatures that we are exposed to in Australia, there is only really a danger to the extremely young, old or unwell .

Better yet, if you allow your body to gradually experience the falling temperature as it comes down in March, you will undergo a gradual acclimatisation. I have said for a long time, to the dismay of Steph the Shuffler, “Your body has this amazing ability to adapt to the environment around it, if you would just give it a chance!”

I sometimes take this a step further, outrightly ignoring the temperature in my desire to do what I want to do. Last Saturday when the outside temperature lingered around 15ºC, I decided that I wanted to go running into the ocean with my girlfriend’s Labrador (Jasper), so that is exactly what I did! It was wonderfully refreshing and invigorating and not nearly as cold as you would imagine.

I should probably say here, don’t be stupid, I am not talking about exposing yourself to dangerously low temperature ranges for extended periods of time that can put life or limb in danger. I am just talking about relatively young and fit people not pumping the active heating and avoiding the outdoors every time we experience a very mild winter day in Australia.

Good old fashioned Hard Work

Brought to you by my brother, Jere’ the Shuffler, who was a member of the Australian Army Reserve (as I was).

I want you to imagine 5 days in remote bushland. Digging trenches out in the open of the cold night. No tents. No blankets. Persistent rain and a high wind chill factor.

No heaters and once your clothes are wet, there is no real way to make them dry again. Additionally, you would rather save your dry clothes until (if) the rain subsides in a few days, lest they get wet too and you have a pack filled with nothing but wet clothes. If I have ever been truly cold to my bones, this was it.

The whole experience made for some very cold nights. I remember looking around and not seeing a smile in sight, my fellow reservists all had their souls sucked straight from their bodies when the rain began.

This is when my my brother would quip “if you are cold, just do some push ups”, and you know what, it actually worked. So now when it is cold back home, I will pump out a few push ups to get the blood pumping and the energy burning inside my body.

Keep it cold to get some free hugs

There is also a great advantage to keeping the temperature down a little. That is the multiple and prolonged free hugs I get from Steph as she tries to stay warm! She forgot to mention this when she wrote about how she felt about this Financial Independence journey! I’ll often say that this is what I love about winter the most, because it has the added benefit of warming me up as well. Now isn’t that the only reason you ever need to keep the temperature down a bit?

Staying warm shuffling

Pat the Shuffler

*The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has climate statistics available by clicking locations on the map linked at http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/data/index.shtml?bookmark=200

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