Worried about the cost to run your air conditioner this summer? Don't. Just make sure you follow a few wise tips, and you'll be able to keep your bill low and keep reasonably cool, too.

Using ceiling fans can help lower your cooling bills. In the summer, moving air gives a "wind chill" effect. This means you can set the thermostat at a higher temperature yet still have a cool feeling. For example, you can set the thermostat at 80 degrees with a fan running, and it will feel like 72 degrees in the room.

The direction your ceiling fan should spin in the summer depends on the type of fan you have and at which angle the fan blades have been set by the manufacturer (or you, if you altered them).

First look for a switch marked "Forward" and "Reverse." If the blades are angled properly, you want the fan to spin forward during the summer and in reverse during the winter. When it's set to go forward, the fan blows air downward, directly on you.

During the winter, you want to set the fan to "Reverse" so that it blows air upward to the ceiling, forcing the hot air down to warm the occupants of the room. Set it on a slow speed to make sure you are not creating a draft.

Another way to keep your home cool inside is to make use of your draperies. Open them at night, but as soon as day breaks or it begins to heat up outdoors, close the drapes or other window coverings to reflect heat from the sun.

And finally, the old question about whether to leave the air conditioning on when you are not home. There is a school of thought that says it's cheaper to keep your home cool than to cool it down from, say, 80 F or warmer. Is it true? Michael Bluejay, "Mr. Electricity," says it's a myth. Here's why:

Heat goes to where it's not. With the AC off, your house will absorb heat from outside, but at some point, it will be so hot it can't absorb any more heat. When you come home and turn the AC on, the AC needs to remove the accumulated heat only once. But if the air conditioning is on when you're gone, your house is absorbing heat constantly because your AC constantly is cooling down the house. The AC basically turns your house into a heat magnet.

Let's say you leave the AC off, and your house absorbs 20,000 British thermal units and then stops because that's all it can absorb.

Now let's say that you have the AC running instead. The house absorbs 5,000 Btu, so the AC kicks in and removes it. Then it absorbs another 5,000 Btu, and your AC kicks in and removes that. Repeat that process several times during the day.

Bluejay says this is not a gray area, and there's no question about it. Running the AC when you're not home wastes energy, period.

Mary Hunt is the founder of DebtProofLiving.com and author of 17 books, including "Debt-Proof Living." You can e-mail her at [email protected], or write to Everyday Cheapskate, P.O. Box 2135, Paramount, CA 90723. To find out more about Mary Hunt and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.