New Years Eve - quiet and figuring out money

I tried to call our insurance agent, for our construction loan insurance, this morning but their office is closed today. I was hoping they'd at least be open part of today, so I could get some answers on if the mold issue might be covered or not.

Friday our propane wall heating unit started acting up. It would not fire up sometimes and had a code 11, which means...it's not igniting. We'd push the button that does the temp up or down and it would come right back on. Run for hours, even all day, and then suddenly do it again. We'd notice it would start getting colder inside and realize it was code 11 again. Of course, now it's the long holiday weekend - and of course it's 20 some degrees outside. Yesterday DH messed around with it. I'm not sure what he did, but so far so good. Keeping fingers crossed. It worked all day yesterday and through the night and so far so good today.

Yesterday afternoon we made a trip into the city for grocery shopping. It had been two weeks and I was just about out of everything. My two week budget is $275 and we spent $265. We are now saving a bunch, because we are not providing soda and water (mostly soda) to the framing crew! They drank a lot. Sometimes I really hate DH's need to always be feeding people, LOL. He said when he'd clean up he'd find pop cans almost full, where they'd take a sip or two, set it down to work and leave it. We still had the two cases of soda we bought at the store 2 weeks ago, so that was nice. We didn't need to buy any extra water this trip, either.

Mostly, we've just been trying (unsuccessfully) not to think about this mold issue and how it's going to get paid for. It's pretty much making us sick to our stomachs.  We are very happy with the insulation crew. They are even going above what they said they would do for the price. The mold remediation guy looked around at our insulation and said "boy, you sure won't have much of a heating bill". I'm hoping that is the case! Our HVAC guy says we won't, between the insulation we are getting and the system he is putting in (electric furnace and heat pump system) our heating bills should be pretty low.

So, far I'm pleased with the electric bills here. Granted, it's just for the shop and whatever the construction workers have plugged in outside- power tools, generators, etc. But my highest bill has been $114. In our house in town, though we did have an electric hot water heater, even in our summer months, my cheapest electric bill for that 1400 sq ft house was $160. I know we are using up propane at a faster rate here, but still way cheaper than heating our house we had in town, where my winter bills were $400 a month PLUS propane (to heat). Apparently the combination of a gas furnace, but that had to use electricity to blow the heat through the house, was quite expensive. I'm guessing this 1000 gallon propane tank is gong to last us (heating the shop to live in) about 5-6 months before we need to fill up. So about $2000 for the year, approximately. Plus, I'm not spending about $1000 a year on water and sewer, as I did before. That's another $83 a month, on average.

The $470 a month saved now on health insurance for DH sure is awesome. It's huge. His old insurance plan went up almost $100 a month, that would have started Jan 1st. No thank you.

We'll have to see what this coming New Year brings for a salary increase, as the next few months are usually when we find out. I am hoping for at least something to boost the budget a bit.