I started my serious push for financial freedom about six months ago. Prior to that I had made only feeble, ineffectual stabs at it. Even though part of it was paying a lot of back taxes, I’ve had some pretty good success with building my savings and paying down my debt during that time and am happy with the results. If you are on this path yourself, you know that sometimes seeing the results can be difficult. For example, when you are spending so much less and still have no money in your pocket, it can be hard to think about your rapidly decreasing debt.
In addition to saving more and spending less I have focused on changing some basic patterns and habits in my behavior. I’ve become much more frugal and much more conscious of where my money goes. Having started six months into this last year I was looking forward to getting my January bills and comparing them to last January’s bills and seeing the sweet decreases that would represent part of the reward for all my hard work.
At least that’s what was supposed to happen. I just got my natural gas bill and it is exactly $2 lower than last January’s gas bill! I’m a real wheenie about being cold and it was very difficult for me to start lowering my thermostat and wearing a sweater in the house. I did it though and I expected a huge decrease in my gas bill. I was very excited to pull up my 2008 expense spreadsheet and compare. What a disappointment. Then I had an idea. What if I was paying more for the gas I was using? Ah ha. Perhaps this was the high cost of heating our homes that I’ve been reading so much about lately. I went into my files and found my January 2008 payment stub so I could compare the actual cost of the gas. I was on to something! In fact I am using less, I’m just paying more for it. Last year I was paying $14.11 per mcf (whatever that is) and used 11.3 of them. This year I’m paying $19.29 per mcf and used 7.6 of them. If my usage were the same as last year’s but at this year’s prices, instead of being $2 less, my bill would be $56 more. I feel a lot better now. Update – I called the gas company and the very nice woman with whom I spoke said that an mcf represents 1,000 turns of the little wheel on my meter. She thought it was 1,000 cubic feet. That means I used 3,700 less cubic feet of natural gas in December of 2008 than I did in December of 2007. Yeah for me! It also means I’m paying approximately 27% more for natural gas this year. Yikes! I’m happy to say my water bill dropped almost $20, no sleuthing necessary!
This has been a good reminder that you can’t always compare things dollar-to-dollar. Sometimes you have to dig a little deeper and take a look at the big picture.
If you started your journey during 2008, are you looking forward to comparing this year to last? If you started in 2007, did you compare as you went through 2008? How did you do?
In addition to saving more and spending less I have focused on changing some basic patterns and habits in my behavior. I’ve become much more frugal and much more conscious of where my money goes. Having started six months into this last year I was looking forward to getting my January bills and comparing them to last January’s bills and seeing the sweet decreases that would represent part of the reward for all my hard work.
At least that’s what was supposed to happen. I just got my natural gas bill and it is exactly $2 lower than last January’s gas bill! I’m a real wheenie about being cold and it was very difficult for me to start lowering my thermostat and wearing a sweater in the house. I did it though and I expected a huge decrease in my gas bill. I was very excited to pull up my 2008 expense spreadsheet and compare. What a disappointment. Then I had an idea. What if I was paying more for the gas I was using? Ah ha. Perhaps this was the high cost of heating our homes that I’ve been reading so much about lately. I went into my files and found my January 2008 payment stub so I could compare the actual cost of the gas. I was on to something! In fact I am using less, I’m just paying more for it. Last year I was paying $14.11 per mcf (whatever that is) and used 11.3 of them. This year I’m paying $19.29 per mcf and used 7.6 of them. If my usage were the same as last year’s but at this year’s prices, instead of being $2 less, my bill would be $56 more. I feel a lot better now. Update – I called the gas company and the very nice woman with whom I spoke said that an mcf represents 1,000 turns of the little wheel on my meter. She thought it was 1,000 cubic feet. That means I used 3,700 less cubic feet of natural gas in December of 2008 than I did in December of 2007. Yeah for me! It also means I’m paying approximately 27% more for natural gas this year. Yikes! I’m happy to say my water bill dropped almost $20, no sleuthing necessary!
This has been a good reminder that you can’t always compare things dollar-to-dollar. Sometimes you have to dig a little deeper and take a look at the big picture.
If you started your journey during 2008, are you looking forward to comparing this year to last? If you started in 2007, did you compare as you went through 2008? How did you do?
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3 comments:
Oh, my goodness. TWENTY-SEVEN PERCENT MORE for natural gas! {gasp wheeze}
They raised our electric bill (the house is heated by electricity) but I managed to drop the bill significantly from last year, but using a space heater and keeping the central heating off except to take the chill off when "chill" was an understatement.
Gas bill is about the same. I deep-sixed the propane grill (which I used almost every day) and so am cooking more on the gas stovetop. Otherwise, I wash clothes mostly in cold water, the dishwasher heats its own water electrically, and there's not much I can do about the need to bathe every day or two.
I turned off the automatic watering system and saved all of about two bucks. I think this was dumb tax, though, on the late great pool backwashing screw-up. I ended up draining the pool until the pump was sucking air; took a good hour with the hose on full bore to refill the thing. The main part of the bill, though, is the sewer and trash pick-up; sewer rate is based on water consumption (and rainfall) in January, February, and March.
I'm totally jealous of your success with your bills! I'm not sure I'm willing to be miserable all winter but I really expected some big decreases and was disappointed when I didn't see them.
@ Mary,
For curiosity, I checked our natural gas cost versus last year. Gas prices only rose about 6% in our area. Lucky us :-)
However, we did use more mcf because I think December in our location was colder in 2008 than in 2007. The degree heating days for December 2008 haven't been published yet so I don't know for sure.
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