When I first found this blog and started drinking the punch, I was on fire and quickly starting looking at trading in my 2011 Audi Q7 (yes .. I was an earn to spending thinker back then) .. well I finally concluded that selling within the three years of owning it would not be the prudent thing since most of the depreciation has occurred already. I also found that switching to mid grade unleaded gas as opposed to premium did not hurt the car or my mileage. I also have found that I get fairly decent gas mileage if I'm not lead footing it around. So we will just have to ride it out on the car for now .. live and learn.
Our house is 2400 square feet for our family of 4 and our utilities are as follows:
2013 Monthly 2014 Monthly
Oil $250.00 $250.00
Electric $125.00 $125.00
Gas (Propane) $27.83 $27.83
Real Estate Taxes $8500 per year
We just had an energy evaluation on our house and will be upgrading our very old (probably original insulation when the house was built in 1966) insulation and hope that it makes a dent in our utilities. We had a brutally cold winter in the Northeast this past winter and managed to keep our oil heating to apprx. 3K for 2013 which I think isn't that bad but again, adding the insulation should bring that down further.