Summertime is here. Sun’s out, kids are done with school, and temperatures are on the rise. According to forecasters, Americans are headed for a record-breaking scorcher of a summer. Going to the beach, lake, or pool is one way to beat the heat; the other is to shut the doors and crank the A/C. But how do you lower temps without pushing your utility bill to an all-time high? For a lot of us, turning on the air conditioning feels like the equivalent of burning money. But when you get home from work and your place feels like a sauna, you give in and drop that dial down to a frosty 68 degrees. It feels great until the electric bill comes at the end of the month. Is there a better method that won’t get you cooked by your energy costs?  The magic number your wallet will love According to experts at the U.S. Department of Energy, setting your thermostat to 78 degrees Fahrenheit is the golden number. That’s 25.5°C for our metric-using friends. Now, before you gasp and say, “78°F is the temp I use to get bread to rise,” let’s dig into why. Researchers say it’s the perfect temperature to balance physical comfort and energy conservation. In fact, for every single degree you raise your thermostat in the summer, you can shave up to 3% off your cooling costs. While it may be tempting to put your A/C on arctic mode to feel relief from the heat, a steady 78°F can slash your monthly utility bill by up to 25%. Then, you can fan yourself with all that cash you’re saving. A woman is adjusting a digital thermostat mounted on a wall. She looks focused on setting the temperature. This appears to take place in a home setting. What if you feel like 78°F isn’t working for you? Don’t sweat it. Those same D.O.E. experts suggest aiming for a “sweet spot zone” between 75°F and 78°F. The goal here is to find your personal comfort threshold. Remember: cooling off doesn’t equate to living in an igloo.   Easy Hacks to Stay Chill on a Higher Setting Finding ways to beat the heat doesn’t begin and end with your A/C. Let’s explore some simple, low-tech methods anyone can use to make that higher thermostat setting feel delightfully breezy. First, dust off your ceiling fans. Literally. Underused ceiling fans collect dust and the dust mites that nearly 20 million Americans are allergic to. Now that you’re clean, you can get cool! Running a ceiling fan creates a “wind-chill effect” that evaporates moisture from your skin, making a 78°F room feel instantly like 74°F. Just remember that you’re also trying to save energy, so turn them off when you leave.  Spinning ceiling fan. (Photo credit: Wikimedia commons) Next up, let’s talk thermodynamics. Air conditioners cool your home at a constant rate. Cranking it down to 60°F when it’s extra toasty won’t bring relief faster; it just forces the system to run longer. That kind of energy expenditure is burning a hole straight through your wallet. Finally, if no one is going to be home, give your A/C a break. Raising the dial to 85°F puts less stress on your HVAC, and you can adjust it once you’re home. Or, use a Wi-Fi-connected smart thermostat with geo-fencing. You’ll be able to program your system to know when you’re coming home and start the cooling process automatically.  With a few smart adjustments, you can keep your cool, save your cash, and breeze right through what just may be the hottest summer on record.  The post Experts share the thermostat ‘sweet spot’ to stay cool while keeping A/C costs down appeared first on Upworthy.

Katie Slocum grabbed a copy of Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder from a Little Free Library in Northwest Washington, D.C., around 2024, put it on her shelf, and forgot about it. When the 36-year-old finally flipped through the novel earlier this year, something slid out that had been waiting longer than the book had. As The Washington Post reported, it was a handwritten letter dated August 2003, written in cursive on floral stationery and addressed to “My dearest Jackie.” The letter was from a grandmother, name unknown, to a granddaughter she clearly adored. It recalled the girl’s childhood performances for the family and described the teenager she’d become as someone who could “bubble and sparkle like a rare vintage champagne.” “Instantly, I knew it was something special,” Slocum, a program manager at American University, told the Post. With nothing to go on but a first name, she posted the letter’s details to local forums in late February and reached out to Dan Silverman, who runs the neighborhood blog PoPville. “Besides the fact that I wanted to make sure that Jackie got this wonderful letter that her grandmother wrote her, I also just wanted to meet her,” Slocum told CBC Radio. A woman writes a letter at her desk. Photo credit: Igor Vershinksy via Canva It took one day. Jacqueline Roche was scrolling when PoPville’s callout stopped her cold. The cursive was unmistakable. “I knew right away that was my letter,” Roche said. “I was so shocked.” She messaged the blog immediately, and Silverman posted the update: “We Found Jackie!!” The letter, it turned out, was a gift from Roche’s paternal grandmother for her sweet 16, presented at a big party at a catering hall in Bergen County, New Jersey, where Roche grew up. Per tradition, she named 16 important people in her life and lit a candle for each. Her grandmother, Irene Roche, helped light one of the last ones. The letter traveled with Jackie for years afterward until she moved out of the D.C. neighborhood in 2022 and, as she told the CBC, apparently donated the book without realizing the letter was inside. She never even knew it was missing. A woman peruses a used bookstore. Photo credit: M_a_y_a via Canva Irene Roche, who recently turned 90, grew up in the Bronx, raised two children, and worked as a bookkeeper into her 70s. She was the first person to take Jackie across the Hudson to New York City and brought her to her first Broadway show in elementary school. According to the Post, the resurfaced letter has been a hit at Irene’s senior community, where it’s the rare piece of news that isn’t about a friend’s illness. The two women met in Mount Pleasant the following weekend to hand the letter over, and the exchange turned into a long conversation about the neighborhood they’d both called home. The ripples kept going from there. According to Little Free Library’s blog, Jackie and Irene, who used to catch up every few weeks, now talk more often, trading memories like the time they went dancing in Atlantic City for Jackie’s 21st birthday. A Little Free Library filled with books. Photo credit: ImagineGolf via Canva Which is fitting because Irene saw it coming 23 years ago. Whatever life handed her granddaughter, she wrote, Jackie would take it “with both hands and keep on dancing.” The post She was scrolling a D.C. blog and saw her grandma’s handwriting. The lost letter was addressed to her. appeared first on Upworthy.

Flight attendants get handed a lot of things mid-flight, and almost none of them are pleasant. So when a passenger passed Brittney Bluitt (@brittneybluittofficial on TikTok) a sealed airsickness bag during drink service and said, “This is for you,” she made the reasonable assumption. As PEOPLE reported in January, Bluitt figured she was holding garbage. “I honestly thought he was handing me something that needed to be tossed,” she told the outlet. She finished serving the cabin and set the bag down in the galley. Later, while cleaning up, something nudged her to open it. Inside was $208 in cash. The passengers on her holiday flight had quietly pooled a collective tip and sealed it in the one container nobody would ever think to peek into. “That’s when it really hit me,” Bluitt said. @brittneybluittofficial Blessed! That’s all ♬ Won’t He Do It – Koryn Hawthorne The whole-cabin gesture makes more sense given where she works. As the aviation blog View from the Wing noted, Bluitt is a flight attendant with JSX, the semi-private carrier whose Embraer 145 jets seat a maximum of 30 people. In a cabin that small, one determined passenger with an idea can reach everyone before the seatbelt sign comes back on. The timing mattered as much as the money. The holidays had felt heavier than usual, and Bluitt had been worrying about whether she could afford gifts for her parents. “This season didn’t feel how it normally does for me,” she told PEOPLE. “It may not seem like a huge amount to some, but it was an incredible blessing to me,” she said of the cash. “That moment reminded me that even when I don’t know how I’m going to get through something, God is always watching and providing.” A happy flight attendant tends to a passenger. Photo credit: David Stanciu’s Images via Canva Tips do happen in her line of work, but not like this. “When we do receive tips, it’s typically five or twenty dollars,” she explained, adding that she had never seen an entire cabin come together that way. Bluitt shared the moment in a mid-December TikTok, holding up the white bag with a caption that kept it simple: “Blessed! That’s all.” The video drew a modest 9,000 or so views before PEOPLE picked up the story and gave it a much bigger audience, which feels fitting for a gesture that was never designed to go viral in the first place. For Bluitt, the lesson runs in both directions. She makes a point of bringing warmth to every flight she works, and she sees the barf bag as proof the effort circles back. “I truly believe you get back what you give,” she said. “I hope people take away that kindness still exists in the world.” Follow @brittneybluittofficial on TikTok for more entertainment and lifestyle content. The post Flight attendant almost tossed a sealed barf bag. Inside was an ‘incredible blessing’ from the cabin. appeared first on Upworthy.

John Fogerty has been in the music business for a very long time. He’s had success as a solo artist and as the lead singer of Creedence Clearwater Revival. John’s unmistakable voice made songs like Proud Mary, Have You Ever Seen the Rain, Fortunate Son, Centerfield, and Rock and Roll Girls hits. John Fogerty recently told People that Taylor Swift inspired him to make a big step in his music career. He never thought about rerecording his songs until the Love Story singer did. “I was very inspired by her. I was glad for Taylor. I didn’t think that I would be doing something like that,” John said. “But I watched her do her version because she couldn’t purchase her masters even though she had certainly the bank account to be able to do it, and it was sort of evilly taken away from her.” View this post on Instagram A post shared by John Fogerty (@johnfogerty) John Fogerty is Grateful to Taylor Swift for Being a Pioneer “She did a remarkable thing, and the more remarkable thing was that her fans understood that and started buying Taylor’s version and not the evil corporate version, you know?” John Fogerty said Taylor Swift’s fans really impressed him. He watched them fight for her and for what was right, which made him want to do the same. John explained that Taylor Swift and her fans made a statement to the record industry. The fans wanted Taylor to have what she rightfully created, and by purchasing her new records, they helped her get it all back. “And that part really inspired me, and I think that was a big boost in me going ahead and rerecording some of the songs from my past kind of for the same reasons,” John said. This story’s featured image is by  Andrew Savulich/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images

As recently as a few generations ago, parents had pretty clearly defined roles with the dad generally being the breadwinner and the mom being the homemaker and stay-at-home mother in a large majority of families. Then, in 1848, the women’s rights movement in the United States began with a powerful second wave coming in the 1960s and 70s, empowering women in the workplace, ushering in the era of two working parents, and producing an entire generation of “latchkey kids.” Now those Gen X latchkey kids are parenting Gen Z, with the pendulum of working motherhood having swung somewhat to the middle. We were raised to believe we could be anything we dreamed of being and that we didn’t have to choose between being a mom and having a career. Gen X also became mothers during the heyday of parenting self-help books that impressed upon us the importance of attachment and hands-on childrearing, as well as the era of super-scheduled kids, whose activities alone require a full-time manager. As a result, those of us who are now in our 40s and 50s have raised our kids straddling two worlds: one where women can have all of the career success we desire and one where we can choose to be stay-at-home moms who run seemingly effortless households. At first, we were told we could have it all, but when the impossibility of that became clear, we were told, “Well, you can have it all, just not at the same time.” But as many moms are finding as their kids start leaving the nest, even that isn’t the full truth. One mom put it into words for all of us In a Facebook post by Karen Johnson, aka The 21st Century SAHM (short for “stay-at-home mom”) nailed the reality many stay-at-home moms in their 40s are facing as they find themselves floundering with the glaring gap in their resumes. “This is for all the moms in their 40s who put their careers on hold to do the SAHM thing because you knew you couldn’t do both, career you loved and motherhood, and do both WELL, so you picked, saying to yourself, ‘This is just for now and we’ll see,'” Johnson wrote. “But now it’s 15 years later and so much has changed in your career field that you know you can’t go back. So really, when you ‘took a break’ all those years ago, you gave it up.” Johnson explained that yes, moms know they should be grateful for the time they’ve had with their kids. Most are. That’s not the issue. Whether a woman chose to be a stay-at-home mom because she really wanted to or because childcare costs didn’t work in the financial equation of the family, the transition out of it feels like completely uncharted waters. “Okay, so you’re looking for a ‘career’ with part-time hours and a 100% flexible schedule because you’re still Mom-on-duty but you do have *just* enough hours during the day to reflect on the fact that you *do* have a college degree (maybe even 2) and although being a mom is the greatest and most important job in the world, you *might* actually want something more to your life than folding laundry and running hangry children to 900 events and remembering that they’re all due for dental cleanings,” she wrote. Yup. The “default parent” role is real and weighted heavily toward moms as it is. For stay-at-home moms, it’s 100% expected, and that doesn’t suddenly end when it’s time to start thinking about joining the workforce again. And, of course, moms barely have time to try to figure all of this out. So, as Johnson says, “But for now, you cram yourself into the only pair of jeans you have right now that fit and find a t-shirt on the floor that isn’t clean but isn’t dirty and will pass for the 4 hours of mom-taxiing you’re about to do and you tell yourself, ‘I’ll figure it out another day. Right now, I gotta get the kids to practice.'” Oof. The comments hit just as hard as the post Johnson’s entire post is worth a read, as it resonates with so many women at this stage of life. But just as telling are the comments from women who not only see themselves in Johnson’s description but who feel like they were sold a bill of goods early in their motherhood. So many of us were led to believe that the skills and experiences of managing a family would be valued in the workplace simply because they should be and that the gap in their resume wouldn’t matter. “This hits hard. I am right there too. And all those volunteer hours & leadership positions people said would look good on my resume when I once again applied for jobs? Those people all lied. It means squat,” wrote one person. “Thank you! You spoke my heart. 42 this year, resigned from teaching almost 12 years ago, and never been more confused about my personal future, or exhausted in my present,” shared another. “I’ve never related to a post more in my life! THANK YOU. Your words perfectly summarize the loneliest, most important job in the world and how that perspective shifts in your 40s. It is confusingly beautiful,” wrote another. Some women found a way to start over Some moms have chosen to see their post-stay-at-home era as a fresh start to learn something new, which might lend some inspiration to others. For better or worse, sometimes starting over is the only option after a long resume gap. Sometimes, that’s frustrating and demoralizing. Other times, it’s freeing. Here’s a hard topic nobody wants to discuss.The workforce isn’t losing women – it’s driving them out.After a career break, most women aren’t looking for handouts or sympathy. They’re looking for a real chance – a fair shot to pick up where they left off and thrive.Years… pic.twitter.com/n3kCfizJx0— Sumer Datta (@SumerDattaa) May 12, 2025 There is hope in the comments, too. “I went back for my master’s degree at 47 years old. I’m now 50 in a new career I love and my husband is doing just fine pulling his weight with after school/carpool/dinner. Happy for the years I stayed home, happy with this new season too,” shared one person. “Yuuuup. I decided to go back to grad school at 45. It’s insane but every term I complete I’m like – omg I’m doing it! So don’t let sweaty out of shape bodies and carpool fatigue stop you. I take naps and write grad school papers and have meltdowns where I cry from the frustration of it all – but dammit I’m doing it!” wrote another. One mom who is past this stage also offered some words of encouragement: “So incredibly well written. I feel all these things and did throughout my 40s. Now I’m in my early ’50s and I’m so glad I was able to stay home with my kids, but the guilt! The guilt of not using my education, the judgment of people who don’t understand why someone would stay home with their kids, the social engineering… We just eat each other alive sometimes don’t we? I wouldn’t trade it for anything, but it is a very lonely road and one you always question. I can tell you that all three of my kids were so grateful to have a full-time parent. I might not have always been the best, but they were glad to always have someone to talk to if they needed it. It’s hard to fill other people’s buckets when your bucket isn’t full, but the rewards do come back when the kids tell you thank you for everything that you’ve done. “ So what would actually help? Being a mom is hard, period. Working moms have it hard, stay-at-home moms have it hard, moms who have managed to keep one foot in the career door and one foot in the home have it hard. There’s a lot that society could do to support moms more no matter what path they choose (or find themselves on, it’s not always a conscious choice), from providing paid maternity leave to greater flexibility with work schedules to retirement plans that account for time away from the workplace. Perhaps that would at least make the many choices moms have today feel more like freedom and less like choosing between a rock and a hard place. This article originally appeared three years ago. It has been updated. The post Many Gen X women were encouraged to be stay-at-home moms. Now, they say they were lied to. appeared first on Upworthy.