Bills bills bills

And not enough to drink.

Today is massive cleaning day. I'm going to vacuum and dust and wipe down all of the furniture and finally put the parlor together. We will post pics later once it is complete.

Today's topic is bills. We hate to pay them, but it is nice to have heat, hot water, and lights. I mean, how am I supposed to yell at David Brooks or Pat Buchanan during the Sunday morning talk shows if there's no juice for the TV? More important, how am I supposed to get my daily dose of calcium if the fridge doesn't keep the milk and the yogurt from going bad?

One of my jobs in the household is to manage the budget. This involves planning for expected expenses, like utility bills and savings so that we can determine how much we can spend on extras like new furniture and more remodeling. The Boston Water and Sewer Commission has made my job a little bit easier by actually posting our daily water usage. I can estimate, based on the last couple of months, how much water we actually use every day and how much that costs. Using the wonderful powers of Excel and basic math (no algebra needed), I can actually forecast what our average bill will be and put that into the budget. Knowing that we'll be having lots of guests also allows me to just decide to double that budget item so that I am not surprised by a really high water bill in May. And hopefully I will be pleasantly surprised when it is lower than expected.

Unfortunately, the electric and gas companies do not (yet) provide our daily electricity and gas use online. If I want to know how much gas we've used, I have to go down to the basement and look at meter. Even then, the billing is so complicated that I'd have to set up a whole new file using complicated algebra to estimate our bills. I have heard from friends who work in the energy consulting industry that the ability to monitor daily electricity and gas use may be coming in the future. I, for one, look forward to it. There is nothing more satisfying that taking control of your budget. Except maybe paying off credit card bills. That feels really good.

One a related note, when we were moving , I found the notebook that I used to record all of our expenses way back when we were living in L.A. We were poor back then and every nickle had to accounted for. Our average monthly expenses came to just under $700 a month. Our rent was a whopping $500 a month for a two bedroom house. Our gas bills were $12-20 a month. I think the highest electricity bill I saw was $25. Of course this is easily explained by the fact that we were living in L.A., so our gas use was mostly for cooking and laundry. We also didn't have three computers running 24 hours a day either. We didn't have comp and collision coverage for the car. No life insurance, house insurance, or student loans to pay back. It was funny to look back and see how much things have changed.

Have a good weekend. Look here tomorrow night for any new pics.