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Better Than Last Year
By Tom | September 26, 2006
I don’t know exactly how we get ourselves into this spot, but we’ve done it for the past three years. In the Springtime, we let our natural gas bill get behind, and they end up turning it off. At that time of year, it’s not something that we really “need” any more, so it’s not a big deal. The only thing that runs on natural gas is our furnace.
The problem comes when it starts to get cold and we realize that we hadn’t paid any of the past due bill off. For the past two years, this has been the case. We have to come up with a huge chunk of money to pay the past due amount and pay the deposit again. Last year, we couldn’t come up with the money until January. Somehow, we managed by using a combination of the oven, the dryer, and space heaters, closing off the door to the upstairs part of our house. Amazing, since the temperature gets down to 0 to 20 below, here, since we’re about 150 miles from the Canadian border.
This year, thankfully, we had a small enough balance to pay that the deposit covered most of it, and they actually sent us a refund. The only thing we needed to come up with was the $185 deposit, plus a $12.50 re-connect fee. It’s paid and our gas just got turned back on.
I want to stay on top of it, this year, conserving as much as possible and not getting behind on the bill. Hopefully, next year, we won’t have to scrape to come up with a bunch of money to get reconnected.
Life is good! We’re broke, again, but we’re warm! If things work out right, the money that I make from this site could pay for our gas bill. Wouldn’t that be nice?
September 27th, 2006 at 10:26 am
Have you ever tried doing the even billing? My wife and I use it and it’s a godsend. Especially in Jan or Feb when it gets really really cold and my gas bill ramps up to $200. Of course, I pay them about 50-60 a month even in the summer, but it certainly helps to budget for it.
September 27th, 2006 at 3:40 pm
This is why we sold the house and moved back to the woods. We live in an area where wood heat makes sense. We couldn’t use it in town due to the insurance requirements on our mortgage. We were both working as hard as we could to pay primarily utilities. We sold out, are buying 2.5 acres in the woods and live in a paid for 1962 Silver Streak. We’ll eventually build. And we can have wood heat and no longer pay any utilities at all, except for XM satellite radio. It’s still tough but at least I don’t have to pay out all that money to the utilities. All I have to do is find a way to pay off the closing bills.
September 28th, 2006 at 4:24 pm
Another tip is when you have extra money…pay the bill over by $10-30 dollars. Then, when you get in a slump, you have that extra coushin there to help out. Most companies don’t care if you overpay them to build a credit.
September 29th, 2006 at 1:29 pm
What about going to the laudry mat? My girl-friend’s dryer broke and she’s drying 4-5 loads at a time which also is a big time saver. Plus, you’re not running up your electric or gas bill.
September 29th, 2006 at 2:49 pm
Well, our dryer is electric, so it wouldn’t effect or gas bill. The laundrymat is about two miles away, and with a family of five, we’d have to go there, every day, to stay on top of it.
Figuring a rough estimate of $1.00 a day in gasoline (to get to the laundrymat and back) and another $1.00 in quarters (to put in the dryer), it’s already about $60 a month, if we were to do it, that way.
It’s also a lot easier to have them, right here, and not have to take special time just to do the laundry.
thatedeguy: We had the balanced billing for natural gas, in the past. Our monthly bills averaged out to around $85 a month, year-round. I forget exactly what happened, but a few years ago, we missed a payment and got consistantly behind. After a while, they (for lack of a better term) kicked us off of balanced billing.
I heard the news, this morning, that natural gas wholesale costs are about half of what they were, last January. Of course, consumers will probably only see about an 8% decrease on their bills. Still good news, though.
October 1st, 2006 at 4:48 pm
We had a problem with our washer recently. When it messed up, we called Best Buy to have it repaired, but it took them a month to get it fixed. We spent a fortune at the laundrymat washing clothes. Be sure if you buy a warrenty plan from a retailer ask them to provide you with the names of the service companies that they subcontract for service work.
October 1st, 2006 at 11:34 pm
hi, i’m rich. none of this stuff is relevant to me…. muhahaha
i have four tivos, $2K worth of wahser / dryer and I still take everything to dry clean, i have a porsche but drive a 95 ford b/c it’s fun to be ‘poor’, and i have two 30 in monitors so i can read lots of poor people posts.
take care,
richguy
October 6th, 2006 at 2:43 pm
Rich guy is a jerk…Probably drives a Pinto, not that it matters what you drive anyway…
…Wondering when you are going to post again…Hope your electricity didn’t get cut off…
October 6th, 2006 at 3:09 pm
Hey! I drive a Pinto! j/k
Electricity’s still on and I was actually able to open a savings account, today, so I’ll be posting something on that, soon.
May 13th, 2007 at 10:11 am
[…] (28) Use your oven regularly.Since you’re using the oven for pizza anyway, you could bake other stuff in the oven afterwards, while it’s stil hot, to save electricity. Just spend a little time before hand to plan out your ingredients and recipes, and make sure you have counter space for lots of hot items. And storage containers (and freezer space, if necessary). At the same time, you could heat your house [Living Poor]. […]