Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Ouch!


This is our gas bill. The bad part to admit is that we only have gas heat downstairs. All of our appliances are electric and the upstairs heat is electric. I don't know what to say. It has been a cold month. Ok, for you people where 32 is not cold just laugh right now. We don't keep our heat down to 65 like some of you - what is wrong with you?! We are sissies and have kept it at 72. And we were still cold. We have a two story family room and foyer so I guess the heat is rising. We currently don't have baseboards anywhere in the lower level. We took them off to install the wood floors and have not replaced them yet. When you get up next to the walls there is a lot of cold air that is coming in. Hopefully that has something to do with it. But, wow, we can't continue to pay bills like this. We have turned the heat down to 70.
This brings up a question: do you have a budget amount that you stick to for stuff like electric bill and you make sure to stay within that amount or do you have an average amount and some months it is more and some less so it averages to that amount? I have an average. So, some months you go over in that amount and then in the summer we won't have heat and it will average out. I account for all of our things that we pay for each year and set aside monthly the average amount for each item. It was harder to do this when we did not have an emergency fund or any wiggle room but it works for us now.

4 comments:

Kim said...

You could caulk the floor seam all the way around until the baseboards go up. I bet you are loosing a lot of heat that way.

I use budget billing for my power bill. Last year it was $68 a month and I didn't have to pay anything in Jan or Feb because of overage. This next year is $57 a month. I contribute the difference to a case of caulk!

Marva said...

Ouch!!! We are total electric with propane back up for gas logs. Our house is a single level, about 2200 sq. ft. Our bill is running around $200 and this is the high side. We keep our heat on 72 or 73 during the colder days and 74-74 at night. Remember we have 2 littles that were premmies and stay sick. Yes, I know I'm using my babies for my excuse to stay warm.LOL!

We do not have budget billing or anything. We do the Dave Ramsey thing and when I do the budget for each month I set out $200 for the power bill. If it goes over and under it usually equals out somewhere in the year's budget. I figure up at the end of the year and we're usually a little under. So it all works out in the end.

A.P. has budget billing, I do not know about TVA though. I'm not sure who your gas supplier is, check with them and they might could do a budget billing for you.

Blessings!!!!

Marva said...

Our house is a little over 2200 sq. ft. Duh!!! I still feel yucky and we'll just say my head was not attached correctly this am. Blessings!!!!

Southerner said...

Marva and I are both from Alabama- I guess all of us are cold wimps! You can keep on blaming the babies I won't tell. Our visitor told me this morning that it was cold in his room so maybe it isn't just us. I had it on 68 last night and woke up and heard it run for an hour during the night. Upstairs is electric though.