We should start seeing some reduction in our monthly expenses now (at least until the house gets done). I called and put our Dish satellite service on "pause". It's $5 a month, so that is saving $80 a month. The lady I talked to on the phone was so nice. She was in Oklahoma and we had a good chat, LOL. We no longer will have a water/sewer bill, which will save at least $70 a month. Our car gas should go down (though I had to make 3 trips into town yesterday! 20 mile RT) now that DH won't be driving back and forth (at least once) every day. Our food bill is lower, due to eating lighter dinners. I'm guessing our electric will go down, too. It's a co-op we are on now, much cheaper and I don't think we will use as much in this shop as our house did. Plus, it's just two wall units blowing out the heat - not a big furnace system, using a bunch of electricity to blow the heat through the whole house heating vents. We'll see, I guess. The house will have a heat pump system, so should use much less electricity, from what I know of them. I remember my grandparents had one installed at their house and their electricity bill went down to very minimal.
In September I'm also going to do some more research and get DH's health insurance switched over to a cheaper (non ACA compliant) plan. They are short term, but can be renewed for up to a year, is what I'm reading. They are much much cheaper. I'm currently paying $560 a month for him and I'm certain it will go up when renewal time comes in November. According to what I am reading, with the tax penalty still in effect for this year, as long as he had Obamacare insurance for 9 months out of the year, we would not have to pay the penalty. So, I'll have the new insurance start Oct. 1. Even if I can save a couple hundred a month, that will be very nice.
So, the post office locked my box! Geez. I went in yesterday afternoon to pick up our mail and stop at the counter and let them know we just moved and will be getting our new mailbox set up this weekend. While I get that the PO box is free, because at the house in town we didn't have mail delivery, at least give me until the end of the day to address the issue. Apparently the new owner went in yesterday, before I did, so he could set up his free PO box with the address. So, they locked my box! They could have stuck a note in the mailbox saying we need to pay for it now, if we want to keep the box. Anyhow, she gave me a 10 day grace period on it. I'm going into the city tomorrow to deposit my settlement check, so I'll stop and get the mailbox we want and DH can get it put up this weekend. He wants to get the same mailbox as our 2 neighbors used, so they all match. I think eventually he's going to build us all a little covered timber mailbox thing that all our mailboxes can sit on and look nice and neat.
DH is excited - his drone is supposed to be delivered back today, all fixed up. Just in time to start recording the house build.
It sounds like things, large and small are moving right along. One thing I meant to ask. Since the area you will be heating in the shop is larger than the area you are living, how are you going to heat those high ceilings and the rest of the shop? I had thought maybe you were going to put a wall around your living area in the shop and maybe some sort of ceiling, making yourself a box that was easy to heat.
ReplyDeleteThat is strange locking your box at the PO.
according to the place DH got the heaters from, this Rinaii wall heater will heat this size of shop, no problem. We'll see, I guess! 2/3 of the shop is now stuffed up 9 feet high with all our stuff, so it taking a lot of the space up, LOL. I'm anxious to see how it well it works. When we turned it on to test, I was standing about 12 feet away and could feel the heat blowing on me. We also put a small unit in the bathroom. They can go on a timer too, so we can set the bathroom one to come on a bit before we get up and have it nice and warm in there.
DeleteI do admire your determination to keep cutting costs! Cut on the things that aren't important so you can spend on the things that are!
ReplyDeleteI agree. I;m sure we'll add back satellite when the house is done. We do enjoy tv watching in the evenings, but I think I will go with their smallest channel package, this time.
Deletebe careful with the short-term insurance. I pay just under $300/month, but what I didn't realize is that the very high deductible, $6000, starts over every three months. The short term are four 3 month policies. I had to pay $5400 out of pocket in January for a emergency room visit and would have to do so again each quarter, if I had a recurring problem. There is also no "contract" with the health care networks, which usually reduces the amount you would need to pay.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the info. I did catch that was the case in my research and will have to take that into account in my decision. I was looking at a plan for DH that has a $2500 deductible and would save over $300 a month from what we are paying now. That's a good chunk of that quarterly deductible - if he would have to use it that often (which isn't as likely, I'd hope!)
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