Comments on: Budget billing worth it?

By: LAL

LAL — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 16:53:37 +0000

65 is 10 degrees higher than where we set it. I can’t imagine what our bills would be like.

By: Jen

Jen — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:28:29 +0000

My heat is set at 65 in the winter. It still costs a lot.

By: LAL

LAL — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:46:39 +0000

I heat with natural gas $400-600/month. Then our electric is $200-400/month for heat pumps in the winter which we rarely use.

And we keep our house at 55! Everyone says 60s, 60s is BALMY for us. It’s the age of the house.

By: Stacey

Stacey — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:39:15 +0000

I’ll admit that we’re a bit obsessive about oil prices – I call once per week and when the price starts inching up, I order.

With all due respect, oil isn’t that much more expensive. You’re paying $600 for one month’s worth of electricity, or about $200 per month. We’re paying $80 for electricity and $100 for oil – not much difference! We keep the house at 6o-ish.

I’d love to get away from a non-renewable resource like oil, but electricity is mainly produced by coal-fired generators around here. It’s all bad for the earth in my mind…

By: LAL

LAL — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:41:16 +0000

Gotcha. Here average runs $400-$600 for us at 55. I know our neighbors they told us leave it at 68 and pay $600-800/month in the winter. Ugh.

By: savvy

savvy — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 13:54:03 +0000

@ LAL – The upper limits of my bills are generally $200 (for AC in the hot summer months or heat in the winter). However, I use the numbers for the last year to predict the cost for the upcoming year. So if last December’s gas bill was $175, I budget $175 for this December. I generally leave ’slush’ in the checking account so I’m prepared if a bill is much higher than usual (somewhat unlikely).

We’ve only been in our house three years so over time, we’ve been making small improvements to improve energy efficiency. We use programmable thermostats and installed an attic fan to help with the heat in the summer. We’ll be installing insulation on the garage door soon (our bedroom is above the garage and is colder than the rest of the house). I also use a space heater in our bedroom (because that’s the only room we use upstairs) vs heating the whole floor.

By: LAL

LAL — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 00:52:17 +0000

How do you manage if it’s really cold or hot savvy?

Jen, that’s exactly why we do it too.

Tiz, for some reason I’m just not as hot in the summer.

Sara1, what happens if it’s a record cold winter? Last year was record snows topping 100 inches and 4-5 dumps of 20 inches, so it was really cold.

Rachel, sounds good, but painful. I don’t think I could stand to set aside $600/month every month, even the summer.

JoeP, we leave the house at 55 home or gone. We bundle up, and sit upstairs. Our house is poorly designed, furnance in the attic because it’s a townhouse. Lack of insulation because it’s 1880s, remedied this year. Also because of age there are tons of leaks from settling. We sealed and replaced windows, but did a floor at a time.

It’s not like we’re living large at 68 or even 65! That sounds tropical! Most of our neighbors pay more than us to keep their homes at 55 to boot! And our furnace is relatively new!

Stacey the other problem with oil is if you lock in too early you could get a bad price! Ugh, oil is painfully expensive!

Meg, I think this year with the insulation blown in we should be saving a lot. I can already feel the difference in the drafts.

By: Meg from FruWiki

Meg from FruWiki — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:21:23 +0000

I’m like Rachel; I budget for the upper limit I’d ever expect. Then I put the difference towards debt, savings or unexpected expenses.

We don’t have such high bills, though. Here in Florida, summer is the worst but our entire utility bill has stayed well under $200 a month this year. It had been double that a few times in years past, but we’ve been working hard to cut our bill and we also insulated the den finally (though the rest of the house could use some insulation as well as double-paned windows, but that’s just not in the budget yet).

By: Stacey

Stacey — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:11:55 +0000

We use oil to heat our home, and have enough tanks to get us through the entire winter. I have an “oil” line in our budget and we set aside $100 per month to pay the bill. Then we call for oil in summer/fall when the prices are low and write one check for over $1,000.

It hurts to write that check, but we don’t really have an option. Too many oil companies have gone bankrupt in our area – and everyone who “prepaid” was out of luck. Only use a reputable company! This is obviously less of a problem with electric heat…

By: JoeP

JoeP — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:30:03 +0000

Without budget on utilities, we simply keep the heat low and bundle up a little more. The highest bill we ever saw for gas and electric (combined) was $400. We usually keep the house at 65 when we’re in it, and 60 at night and when we’re away. We hardly ever use the AC.

I can see how the predictability of a bill can be a nice thing, though.