If you mean “better at thinking long term rather than short term to prevent you from staying at your current situation”, then yeah 🤷‍♂️

Energy star sticker on mine says $46 a year to run it. $3.84 a month. If you can’t plan for that then you have bigger issues than AC.

Look, I’ve been poor. What do you think happens when something major like your car breaks down? You figure it out. You don’t really have a choice so you do whatever you can to make it happen. You have to take that same determined energy and go “this is what’s important right now, how do I make this a priority?”. Is it easy, no. But it’s not gonna happen if you just throw your hands up and give up. And sure, if you want to get stuck in that boot paradox of constantly replacing lesser solutions and eventually spending more than the right one in the first place, be my guest.

I mean, sure, if you want to look like you live in a meth lab. Or you could spend a little bit and have something 100x better and actually functional and not be miserable. This is like that whole boot problem: you can only afford $20 boots so you buy them and they wear out in 6 months. Over 5 years you spend $200 when a nice pair that would’ve lasted as long or longer would cost you $100.

You can get an ac for like $60 new, like $20 on Facebook. Walmart has Artic Kings on sale every year for that much. But yeah, spend hours of your time Macgyvering a makeshift solution that maybe drops you 10°. You know what “10° degrees cooler” is where I am? 100°. You’d still be plenty miserable.

Yup. A $100-200 window unit(personally I prefer “portable” units with the exhaust hose to the window - keeps the main unit out of the sun that causes it to work harder) will be your best bet every single time. But sure, go ahead and check the price of tinting every window(about $20 per window) or getting blackout curtains(~$20 per panel in my experience) or any of the myriad of lesser solutions. Then, when you’ve spent as much or more with worse results and finally cave on getting a small unit, you’ll wonder why you ever did anything else before. Nevermind the fact that OP basically said “so aside from all the normal passive options, what else is left?” AC. That’s what’s left. Unless you want to advise them to replace all the insulation/windows/seals in their house.

I’ll bring chairs and a blanket

May I join you on this hill?