Average Fuel Bill .......$750.00 a month !

I live in the Finger Lakes Region of Upstate New York. I moved here in “99″ to escape the Metroplex suburban sprawl that is Central Florida. I was using my blast fuel oil furnace (red keresene) for a grand total of about 1 hour a day to “warm up the house in the morning and when we all ( myself, my wife and my daughter) were back at home in the evening. We were on a set budget and Suburban Gas never informed us that we needed to pay down our accumulated rise in fuel costs to the tune of $2200.00. Instead they kept sending us our normal $100.00 budget bill with NO total cost left to pay on the bill! So around May they send us a bill for $12.00….. so I call them and they say they will get back to me in a couple of days with my new bill? So I purchased an “add on furnace” installed it, cut some extra firewood last year and Wah-Lah, I no longer have a fuel bill !!!!  I have many things to say about not having a fuel bill but you must plan ahead for this particular substitution in heating. I just spent aprox. 7 days pulling 3 facecord of dead cherry & apple trees out of my 4 acre swamp-woods and being 49 years old it took everything I have for endurance. Granted , my electric bill will go up about $40.00 a month but it still beats the cost of fuel last year at a cool $3000.00. My story is only special because I “make time” to prepare for the next winter.

I don’t have a Playstation, Wii, Gamecube- that equals time and you know it !

I don’t have Cable. minimum price $70.00 a month (after the introductory cost with contract only!)

My cell phone costs $4.65 a month-Pre-paid trac phone…sacrifices must be made.You mean to tell me you work for a whole day each month just to text people? money thrown away….. average cell phone bill is $70.00 a month .

Buying an old small used car that gets at least 30mpg. No car payment.

Re-financing your mortgage. You’ll always have a monthly rent payment-even after you pay off your home. by that time the taxes will be about the same as your house payment.

Growing enough vegetables to feed yourself in the winter.

There are many other things you can do to eliminate debt, but what it boils down to is “what do you need?” not “what do you want” more later  TC