Keep On, Keep On Saving

Halloween marks the end of month five. Two months left in Project Money. We have a kiddie Halloween party every year - hayride, pumpkin carving, games, crafts, and food. It’s a fun time but lots of work. This year Jenna helped us set a budget of $200 to spend on the party. We would have stayed within the budget except we decided to rent a port a potty. Last year we had 50 people at our house and only one bathroom. There was a line down the hallway all afternoon. Even though we didn’t have as many people this year it was still nice to have a little relief for our septic system. 

Even though there are only two months remaining in the contest, we are still trying to find new ways of saving money. With the help of our coach Jenna, we looked into refinancing our mortgages with Summit to take advantage of the extremely low rates.  Unfortunately, due to the struggling real estate market, we didn’t think our house would appraise high enough to be able to refinance with Summit. If the appraisal came in lower than it did 2 years ago, we would have been out $500. I’m not willing to risk that even though we could have saved $100/month.

We are also trying to save money on our heating bill this winter. We heat with propane. This year, propane prices were up about one and a half times what they were last year.  I have the option to pre-purchase gallons of propane at a certain price then pay equal payments throughout the year. In the past I bought 700 gallons a year. This year I only bought 400 gallons. In order to make up the difference we are installing a wood burning stove that friends just gave us. I haven’t priced out the materials I will need to install it but I hope heating with the wood stove in addition to the furnace will save us enough money in the long run to make the effort worth the while. I’m not really looking forward to the project but I don’t want to pay anyone to do it. I can foresee a lot of woodcutting in my future. Luckily I have access to hundreds of acres of woods around my house.

Hopefully we will finish have a strong finish in Project Money. This has been a long and sometimes stressful year for us. I’m already looking forward to next year, even if we don’t win the giant check.