Shoutout to NWE

Hey Northwestern Energy! Thanks for the new bill format. I love the information on the bill now - the charts, the graphs, the temperatures, its wonderful. Thanks!

New year, new projects

What to do with a nice tax refund check from the wood stove...??? Its so hard to decide. Finish off 2009 ROTH contributions? Tempting. New roof. Perhaps. Windows. Very tempting. There are still some federal energy tax credit dollars out there so we're seriously considering replacing the windows (although that has been a goal for several years, just not one that has ever come to fruition). Then this time next year we'll have yet another refund and use that to bank roll the roof.

I know all you financial scholars out there are yelling, screaming, "change your withholdings" but really we're just too lazy. Once things are a little more settled, ie I hope to start a new career later this year, we will but for now the spring project fund is nice.

Long time no see

So its been a long time since I posted on here. There's a multitude of reasons, a big one being the 18 credits I'm working on this semester. But no excuses here.

I have been anxiously awaiting our utility bill for weeks and it has arrived! I LOVE getting the gas/electric bill. Each month is a surpise to see how much we saved. This winter I'm especially excited due to the addition of our wood stove. I'm proud to report that not only is this the warmest winter on record in our house, but its by far the cheapest. According to the bill the average temperature was colder this Feb than last, but we still used 1/2 the dekatherms of gas when compared with last year! Hooray for $60 utility bills in the winter!

On the negative side our electricity use has gone up - I guess the days are longer now and the computers are constantly fired up thanks to school and work. Overall we used 135KWH this month - still much less than the "average" household, but hey we've always been several standard deviations from normal.