Lowering the Utilities Bill, Revisited

As you may know, we lowered our utilities bill by $48 a month this year. Based on the bill we got last week, we're on track to see at least another $25 come off our bill next year. Trudi asked how, so I gathered (um, you know, with the help of "Search," I mean, I'm a busy person here, LOL) all my posts on the topic here:

http://glutenfreefrugal.blogspot.com/search?q=utilities

On Tightwaddery

I recently stumbled across this article about the famous Amy Dacyczyn. If you care about frugality and haven't yet read the Tightwad Gazette books, get yourself to a library posthaste!

Anyway, I thought it would be interesting to see how their annual budget stacks up to ours.

Annual Dacyczyn Budget
Vehicle Maintenance/ Gas - $5250
Groceries - $2640
Utilities - $2500
Medical/Vet - $1550
Property Tax - $1400
Auto Insurance - $1100
Home Owners Insurance - $1100
Furniture - $520
Gifts - $500
House repairs - $250
Telephone - $250
Miscellanious - $230
Vacations - $150
Clothing - $115
Entertainment - $100
Hunting/Fishing License - $75
Scout Fees - $70
Books and magazines - $50
Total - $17580

Annual Gluten Free Frugal Budget
Vehicle Maintenance/Gas - $3000
Groceries - $6060 (youch!)
Utilities - $3600
Medical/Vet - $0 (perhaps not realistic?)
Mortgage/Tax/Ins - $8436
Furniture - $0
Gifts - $1224
House repairs - $0 (sure, right)
Phone/Cable/Internet - $1116
Miscellanious - $744
Vacations - $0 (again, not really)
Clothing - $240
Entertainment - $216
Hunt/Fish - $0 (this is realistic)
Kid Activities - $0 (we have asked for and received this expense as gifts from family)
Books - $300
Student Loan Minimum Payments - $2568
Preschool - $630
Total - $28134

Which, actually doesn't sound too bad, really, considering theirs is a debt-free budget. Of course, the problem is that we DO travel, and we DO have home repair expenses, and every time we have a baby there ARE medical expenses not covered by insurance and my FLEX planning. We also go over this budget pretty regularly. Those expenses just come out of that extra we put onto the debt or into savings every month, setting back our goals and plans.

Always, always I'm striving for more discipline with the budget.

Woo to the Hoo!

On Saturday we got two pieces of mail.

A) A letter from the utilities company, saying our bill would be going down another $24 a month. YAY! That $24 will be going in to the baby fund, of course, thankyouverymuch. Learn more about our quest to lower utilities here.

B) A letter from the insurance company saying that, other than the $15 copay I already paid, the ultrasound was completely covered. I'm thinking it wasn't last time (we had a different company then), so I consider that a $300+ savings. New and tiny pink outfits will be bought in celebration. (Also, side note, how much of my health insurance premium do I pay? $0. My company pays the whole thing for me. You want to work where I do, don't you? Yes you do!)

That's some good mail.

Budget History

I've been budgeting for a long time. A loooong time. I have a pretty Excel spreadsheet of our actual spending for November for the last six years, except for 2003, when I was apparently too busy being pregnant and eating ALL THE COOKIES to care. I don't have any idea how to import it here, because below is what happened. Anyway, you can actually see each category, with the corresponding years below, if anyone cares.

For what it's worth, this is a time period that includes going from two incomes in a small house to one income in a big house. Oh how I miss that $380 house payment. Except that we'd probably be living partially in the front yard now, since there's no way we'd still fit in that house.

November
2002
2004
2005
2006
2007
Income

$2,231.38
$2,728.08
$2,380.94
$2,642.12
Mortgage
$379.90
$457.01
$696.49
$690.41
$702.83
Student loan
$236.00
$236.00
$236.00
$189.55
$334.26
Car payment
$420.00
$0.00
$0.00
$0.00
$0.00
Car insurance
$57.60
$97.76
$108.53
$98.83
$92.85
Utilities/car tags/water bill
$196.00
$159.00
$197.00
$270.00
$358.00
Cable/Phone/Internet
$96.74
$85.24
$89.35
$93.36
$92.50
Gifts
$227.05
$137.71
$35.00
$0.00
$105.00
Food/Home/Grooming
$575.98
$467.72
$783.12
$736.89
$559.55
Entertainment
$86.87
$59.34
$17.56
$22.56
$18.01
Books
$46.65
$23.15
$72.07
$8.13
$29.90
Clothes
$20.08
$52.47
$0.00
$15.36
$16.92
Gas
$155.47
$71.95
$136.83
$197.73
$95.39
Preschool
(only 2007) $70.00

You can see how the utilities are really killing us. We're doing what we can to weatherize, and this year we updated our air conditioners and fridge. We're keeping the thermostat at 68 degrees right now. We'll see what happens.

You can also see that having two kids didn't really affect our budget in any predictable way, except the added expense of moving to a bigger house.

Also, it may seem weird that our gas bill has gone down so far. It may have something to do with not buying pop and candy there three times a day. Maybe. People kvetch about gas prices, but, hello, soda per gallon? Ex-pen-sive!

I feel like we could be doing *so* much better than we are. But I don't know how to get there.

Curtains

One of the problems we're trying to address is how much we're spending on utilities. Our monthly bill for gas and electricity is $238. We're on the budget plan, which spreads out our expenses in equal amounts over the year. And we're making up for an $800 shortfall from last year, because the utilities company didn't charge us enough last year. Yeah.

So we're doing what we can to make our large 83-year-old house more efficient, especially the old leaky windows in the living room. The latest in this step is to buy some insulating plastic, which was on clearance at Wal-Mart, 66% off (I've avoided doing this, because UG-LY, but whatever). And last night I finally found some thick cream velvet drapes Shopko (Target-esque local store) on clearance for $7.49, down from $24.99.

I came home (because I was at the store with no cash, no checkbook, no credit cards, and no debit card) and told my husband about it, and we talked about it, and decided that it was worth it to spend some savings on.

Whew! I was beginning to think we'd have to hang blankets over the windows this winter.

Our Budget Today

Anyone want to see our budget? Maybe not. :)

Bills - Save for upcoming expenses - Cash budget - Debt snowball

15th
$190 - Student loans
$229 - Utilities
$94 - Car insurance
$18 - Netflix

$100 - Preschool
$57 - Water
$42 - Christmas
$12 - Lawncare
$25 - Misc/overflow
$15 - Medical

$30 - Gifts
$285 - Food
$105 - Gas
$20 - Books/clothes
$10 - Fun

$481 - Debt

30th
$706 - Mortgage
$91 - Phone/Internet/cable

$8 - Car registration
$15 - Medical
$25 - Misc/overflow

$30 - Gifts
$25 - Books/clothes
$35 - Home improvement
$285 - Food
$105 - Gas
$15 - Fun
$10 - Oil

$302 - Debt

I rewrite our *actual* budget every two weeks, because we don't always need the gifts category or new clothing, and when we don't, that money goes toward debt.

And, hey, a random video for you. D is maybe like 11 months here? And I'm not Sarah Palin, whatever that accent may suggest.

The Other Half

I wrote here about our budget for the first half of the month. Below is our budget for the second half.

Cash balance:
$10 in gas

Savings balance:
$120 water bill
$16 car tags
$21 other savings
$75 Christmas
$45 dentist

Take-home pay: $1254.64
$189.55 Student loans
$131 Emergency fund ($24 to go!)
$293 Utilities (This is crazy, right? We're working on it!)
$94.21 Car insurance
$19.07 Netflix
$57 Water bill
$75 Christmas
$20 Taxes
$25 Save
$220 Food
$70 Gas
$20 Books/Clothes
$30 Fun money

A Winter of Cold

I thought I heard that April was supposed to be springtime? But there's still snow on the ground here! And it's still pretty cold in our house. In this post, I talked about what we'd done to try to lower our utilities bill this year. The biggest thing was just keeping the thermostat down - it's been at 64 degrees for the last month, after spending most of the winter firmly at 66. We lowered our utilties bill from $293 to $243, and I have high hopes that next year it will go down even more.

It took awhile to get used to the cold, but sweaters, blankets, hot tea, keeping active, and just time worked, and we got through. Summer won't be as easy, though. I have zero tolerance for being hot, especially pregnant, so we may have to splurge a bit there. ;)

Pay Bills Day

I pay my bills the day before pay day. I would love to some day have enough money (or enough self-control) to pay my bills the day they arrive rather than when they're due. I don't see that happening anytime soon.

So I paid bills today.

The actual "bills" portion was 39% of my paycheck. This included our student loan payments, utilities, insurance, and Netflix.

I'll take out 23% in cash, and put into our Food, Gas, and Books budget envelopes.

That leaves 38% of my paycheck. All of which went into savings, in various categories. I'm thrilled with this number, it seems great. Of course some of that is just saving up for bills that don't come every month (or to balance out the bills so that we have enough from each paycheck to pay them), including Water, Taxes, Preschool, Car Registration.

We're also saving in the following categories:
General Savings (I always blow this, I should call it blow money, but I don't), Christmas (2008), New Car!, and Kids' Birthdays

We're getting closer to paying back our emergency fund. It should be back up to $1000 by the end of January.

It's the Little Things

It's hot at my house.  Not all the time, but right now, it's hot.  We drink a lot of cold things and we hang out in the baby pool. In the winter, it's cold.  Cold, cold, cold.  Brrr.  We wear a lot of clothes and use a lot of blankets.  And when our friends come over, they're all JEEZEALOO, people.  We have plastic over our historic (cough - old - cough) windows, under the insulated curtains. We do lots of little things when we can, like hang laundry to dry, and use the bread maker and crockpot instead of the oven, and turn off the lights when we're not using them.  Basically, all the time, we try to conserve energy in our house.

I just heard from the utilities company.  And our monthly payment just went from $229 a month to $138. 
Woo! 

Financial Shape in 2008 Challenge: The Budget

Here it is folks, as inspired by the Money Saving Mom.

$702.83 The mortgage
$93.00 Phone/Internet/TV
$8.00 Car registration
$213.26 Minimum student loan payments
$70.00 Preschool
$243.00 Utilities (a $50 decrease from last year, despite a 5% increase in gas cost)
$93.00 Auto insurance
$18.01 Netflix
$57.00 Water
$75.00 Christmas (no firm decision on this yet)
$9.00 Lawn care
$20.00 Taxes
$25.00 General savings
$473-ish Debt snowball (clearly, always less as there is some unexpected expense every single month)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
$505.00 Food
$170.00 Gas
$40.00 Books and clothes
$25 Fun
$60.00 Gifts

Everything above the line is managed within our checking account, including a separate register that includes all of those savings categories. Everything below the line is on a cash system.

Better Budget Challenge #3: That's Too Much

This week, Kacie at Sense to Save asked us to take a look at what expenses we could elminate from our budgets. As I've mentioned before, I've examined and re-examined our budget endlessly. Believe me, I have considered getting rid of Netflix and cable TV and cutting back on our Internet. But the truth is, we're about as bare-bones as we're going to get unless we meet some financial crisis in the future. BUT, I can share how I did cut our expenses to get here.

Cable
Our cable bill is $93 a month. Yikes, right? However, it includes:
Television - $15
A few years ago, we were paying about $35 a month for about 40 channels. Or something. And the cable company decided to introduce digital cable. Which required rental of some kind of converter box and whatever else, and would just about triple our bill. Uh uh, I don't think so. So I called and, after asking, "So, do you have anything cheaper than basic cable." Oh, you do? So we have a "limited basic" package, 22 channels for $15. Just right for us!
Internet - $45
SuperDad insists on having cable Internet, and this is what it costs. The end.
Local phone service - $33
I've tried and tried to shop around for this, to see if we could get a cheaper deal anywhere, and have even switched three or four times, but the bill is always within a dollar or two of this no matter what. It seems to be mostly taxes. :(
I realized we could "bundle" these services. I think for $99 we could get the Internet and phone and a bazillion TV channels, but we've decided we just don't really want those channels. I'd rather save the six bucks, honestly.

Utilities
This one is a biggie. We live in a big old house with big old windows. Our gas/electric bill is $243 a month. That's down from $293 the year before. We did the following things this year to lower it:

• Sealed our windows with plastic film and bought thick curtains (from the Salvation Army for $3 per pair) for over that.
• Bought new air conditioners.
• Bought a new fridge.
• Put in energy-efficient light bulbs, as we could afford them.
• Started being much more diligent about turning off lights and unplugging appliances.
• Living at more uncomfortable tempeartures. We've been keeping our house at 66 degrees this winter. If you come over, bring a sweater, I'll make you some hot tea. I can't remember what we kept it at in the summer, but I can tell you I don't have as much tolerance for heat. I'm guessing 72 or so. Maybe 74.

I had hoped our bill would go down further than this. Maybe next year.

Car Insurance
Our car insurance is $93 a month. I know we could pay less for this, but this is one thing we are not willing to compromise on. We've had great customer service from our insurance carrier, and we have decided they are worth it.

Netflix
Worth the $18. Just worth it.

That's about it for our monthly expenses. Over and over, I've considered cutting Netflix and TV, but upon evaluation, that $33 just doesn't speed up our debt repayment enough to justify it.

The Big Plan

A few things are coming up which should dramatically speed up our debt pay off. These include:

• A reduction in Christmas saving, as we'll have all year to save for next Christmas = $33.00 more dollars for debt
• Changing our withholdings so that we don't get the big tax return = $300+
• The adjustment of our budget payment plan for our utilities = $88

With this plan:

1. We'll be out of debt, other than the mortgage, in two years or less. (2009)
2. At which point we'll be able to build up a $10,000 emergency fund in one year or less. (2010)
3. And we'll begin saving 6% of our income for retirement. (On top of the 9% given/matched by company.)
4. And we'll buy more life insurance.
5. And begin saving for the kids' college. By the time E is 18, we'll have about $130,000 saved.

And this is if our income never increases. Um. Wow?!