So Superman and I have come to a decision- and that decision
is that we are going to do our best to have the money on hand before we do any
home repairs/additions/finishing. To do that we are going to have to work on
cutting down some utility bills and work harder on paying down the remaining
Credit Cards and various loans. Why are we doing this? Easy, because it's
smarter, and we are all about being smarter.
Our first step in the process has been focusing on bringing
down the utility bills. First, we had the money to buy a new toilet to replace
the one that wouldn't stop running every 10-20 minutes- so we did. Now we live
in a community where the water plant is not county owned, it's privately owned
and that means that water is more expensive. We're on a community-well that is
privately owned. It took me a little while to understand that- and that it
means water is just more expensive. Our water bill since we moved in has been
around $90 a month. I'm not happy about it- but I'm sharing the amount because,
it's a water bill, I don't particularly care if you know how much our water
bill is. However, we still feel like $90 a month is RIDICULOUS and we
attributed a lot of that cost to the ever-running and not-at-all water
efficient toilet. SO we bought a Glacier Bay Dual Flush, High efficiency
toilet. I'm ridiculously excited about this new toilet- I never thought I would
be so excited about toilet. ANYWAY, we installed it ourselves, which really was
not as hard as one might think- though a bit on the yucky side- mostly because
of the amount of rust the ever-running toilet had.
So we installed the new toilet and no more running water! It
also doesn't have any leaks like the old one did and it flushes quieter and if
I had to guess- I would even venture to say it regularly uses about 1/4 - 1/2
the water the old toilet used. It also looks SO MUCH BETTER and since it is
high efficiency we should be able to get a tax write-off for it. Woohoo! We're
looking forward to seeing how much of a difference it makes!
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| Our new toilet! |
The other utility we're trying to reduce our monthly bill on
is electricity. We were gone for a week in March and it knocked $50 off our
monthly bill. We think a lot of that is the lack of cooking, TV watching and
keeping the thermostat at 50 degrees Fahrenheit. However, we are
determined to see how much we can knock off during the spring/summer/fall.
Luckily our house is in the shade so hopefully that will help keep the house cool
once we get the A/C going. But to help us keep the A/C off longer we finally
bought a replacement fan for the one in our bedroom that died. We installed it
last weekend, but we haven't used it yet because one of the electrical cords
didn't tuck properly so it is hitting the motor and by the time we get home in
the evening the light is fading too rapidly to fix it. So we will fix that this
weekend hopefully! Despite that issue we've managed to only turn on the A/C
once or twice in the past 2 weeks- hopefully we can keep that trend
up! We'll see how much of a difference it has made on the next
billing cycle :-)
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| This is the old, not working fan. |
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| New, soon to be fully functional fan! |
So what's next?
On the utility front we're going to work on replacing our
dishes with ones that fit in our dishwasher better. They will also be smaller
so our portion sizes will automatically shrink so that will help with the
grocery bill in theory as well (and help us loose weight!)
We're also working on reducing our grocery bill (cuz it's
ridiculous- mostly my fault cuz I'm the one who does the shopping). I'm slowly
starting the process of couponing- but I'm focusing on couponing the right way!
We're starting off slow hoping to knock $50-$100 off our monthly grocery bill.
As we find ways to save I try to remember to share them here.
So what's our goal for doing this again?
1) Saving money for our projects- we're saving up for a deck
and fence next year.
2) Pay off debt so we can get closer to being debt
free!
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