Hey Long Beach here are two ways I'm saving money this hot ass summer
I signed up for community solar last year through PowerMarket. I could not myself put solar panels on my place because I lived in an apartment. PowerMarket gave me a way to "buy into" a solar farm. The electricity produced by the solar farm was attributed as a credit on my Southern California Edison bill. PowerMarket then sent me a separate bill where they billed me for the credit on my SCE bill but at a lower rate. In that small apartment my bill was between $60 and $80 per month. I got a breeze during the summer and used the most electricity during the cold months. I am no longer with PowerMarket because I moved to a place where electricity is included in my rent. So now that I no longer live in that apartment I'm willing to share a screenshot from my PowerMarket account. The credit I was getting was about 10% of my bill. Had I been using more watts per month or more watts during peak hours the credit probably would have made even more of an impact.
The other way am saving money this summer is on gasoline. For the longest I've been purchasing my gas at Costco because they are consistently the lowest price gasoline and because it's so convenient for me to buy gas just while I'm there shopping. Recently I downloaded the Exxon Mobile app from the Google Play Store. I did this for car washes. The Exxon Mobile on Bellflower and Stearns is my goto drive through car wash. For years you could save your car wash receipts and when you had five receipts you could turn them in and get a free car wash. Well that's changed. So I downloaded the app in order to track my car washes.
In downloading the app I see Exxon Mobile is currently running a promotion. If the user attaches a payment method to the app (my attached payment method is Google Pay so I did not actually give Exxon Mobile any of my credit card information) and then makes purchases THROUGH the app, the user gets credits. The credits are pretty generous. I filled up my gas tank (purchase one) and added a car wash (purchase 2) and paid for both THROUGH the app. I got $5 in credit to use at the pump or in the store. So my next $12 car wash will be only $7 due to my $5 credit. And this does not appear to be a one-and-done promotion. If I keep buying stuff through the app at Exxon Mobile I can keep earning points. If I had an AARP card the points earned per purchase would increase.
So those are just two ways I'm saving dough in Long Beach this hot ass summer. Hope this helps somebody. I am not an employee, contractor or affiliate of PowerMarket or Exxon Mobile by the way.
Posted Aug 13, 2026, 4:55 PM UTC