I never thought I would be one of those “snowbirds” that flies down south every year to ride out the mellow winter, but here I am! My wife’s family has a small cottage near the beach down south, so when the temps start to cool off, we pack up and drive down for three or four months. I love it, honestly, and haven’t had to shovel snow in three years now! It doesn’t matter if the driveway has 4 feet of snow on it if we aren’t there, so instead we hang out on the beach and wait for the winter snowfall to melt away before going back up north. Where we live the state makes you buy heating oil from certain vendors, and this oil costs an insane amount of money. Since we are absent during the cold months, we no longer have to purchase this heating oil, which saves us thousands of dollars. Having saved a few thousand extra, we can cover most of our travel expenses with the money would have spent on heating oil. Instead of paying that money to run a furnace, we spend that money buying cocktails with our toes in the sand. You can make fun of us for being snowbirds all you like, this is the life! The winters down here are so mild that our cottage doesn’t have a central heating system at all. We have a nice space heater, but we only have to use that a few times every winter, because the weather is just that warm and delightful.