Food Not the Only Thing Short

I do not make it a habit to watch the evening news but this evening I happened to while finishing my supper. There was an article on how many families are losing power because they cannot afford to pay the bills. Usually this story shows a family that survives on government money. What they showed this evening was a single mother who is a steel worker but cannot pay for electricity. I know that the winter was easy here in TN but my bill spiked one month. I was wondering how things were looking in your areas. With the increasing cost of power and necessities next winter could be torture on those who are not prepared.

LOL! I live in a one bedroom apartment, and 2/3rds of my total bill is fuel surcharge. My bill is a minimal 50-75 dollars a month, but when 50 of it is fuel, pfeh.. I shiver to think about 2 story houses with central A/C

Our (me and my wife’s) whole electric bill is only $50 (winter) to $75 (summer) per month. Our source for heat is a high tech air tight wood burner with a glass window in the door. I scavenge all the wood for free. A lot of the wood I burn is sweet gum. I burn any wood that looks like a hard wood. The only wood I won't burn is pine.

For cooling we never run any air conditioning. We live in a heavily wood area by a national forest. To cool our home I have a large powerful fan on a table in front of a window. It runs 24 hours a day when the temperature is 80 degrees or higher. This fan blows out which pulls in air in through all the other open windows.

For security while we are away from home the window with the large fan that we leave running has an expanded metal grate bolted to the window and 3 other windows that I leave open for air intake are covered with an expanded metal grate. We have 2 other window fans suspended from the window frames in the bedroom and living room we run only when we are home as needed. Our home is on 1 acre with a tall fence and 4 large dogs.

Our well runs on electricity as does our water heater. The well has a hand pump for back up. Our stove runs on about 100 gallons of propane per year.

In order to get my wife to want to live cheaply we keep our money separately and we each pay half of all household bills. She pays for the car she wants to drive, she buy her own gasoline, and I don’t let her drive my car or pickup. She did not like this financial arrangement when we first got married but when she was able to put a lot of her money in savings she started liking it. I like it because I can buy more guns, ammo, gear, and survival supplies. My wife has a fit when I tell her that all the money she puts in the bank for retirement will be almost worthless due to hyper inflation by the time she could retire in 34 years.