Annual Utilities

I've never lived anywhere before that had annual utility bills. It's interesting.  Also, it was a bit of a surprise.  After taking possession of our new house, we paid for the year (pro-rated).  Here's the breakdown:

• Garbage - $125.04
• Recycling - $31.08
• Water - $246.60
• Sewer - $313.20

Hydro (electricity) is billed every other month, so time will tell what we can expect there.  |The source of heat for the house we bought is baseboard electric.  It\s 100% efficient, but electric heat is pretty expensive.  My cousin lives a few blocks from our house, with the same heating and they pay around $300/month.  They are on an averaging program....so I'm expecting an expensive winter.

Do any of you have annual utilities?  How to you manage it?

Bill Creep

I struggled with a title for this post - but basically what I'm talking about is all of those bills we have - for TV, phone, internet, radio etc. that starts off at a promotional rate, and then creeps up in price over time.

I don't have a set schedule for it, but at least a couple of times a year I call up our service providers to make sure we're paying the best rates for our services and see if I can negotiate better prices.

Today I called up Shaw (TV/Cable), Bell (cell phones), and Sirius (satellite radio) - I had no joy with Shaw and Bell - but I had great success with Sirius.

We got our satellite radios when we purchased our cars - of course it was free for the first six months and then there was a fee for it afterwards...but I didn't really look at the details until now.

We had been paying $190.84/year for one of them and and $119/year for the other...what?! $310.88!  So I asked if we bundled them what pricing deals he could offer - and the agent came up with $294/year ($175+$119) - I told him $300 for radio was just ridiculous, commercial free or not, and asked one more time if there was anything he could do to get me better pricing.

and he did.

We renewed the account for $120 for the next year!  Saving over half the price if I hadn't made that phone call.

That's pretty good for only 15 minutes of time over my lunch break on a Friday.

...One more change

After writing today's post yesterday, and then reading it again today, I felt good about saving the $20, but it didn't feel like enough.  We went back through the TV plan and decided to get rid of the premier package ($89.99) and move to Personal (basic) TV plus the Best of HD for a total of $74.90.  That will bring in an additional $15.09 in savings! 

That brings our total bill from $180.40, to $149.90!

Now that feels better.

Home Phone?

Do you still have a home phone?

It seems that less and less people actually do...I actually feel like a bit of a dinosaur for still having one.  Every time it comes up, we always find a reason to keep it...but here's the thing, we really...really don't need it anymore.  Our personal cell phones have unlimited national calling....so why pay for a service we don't need?  Especially, when yesterday I wrote about needing to come up with an additional $230/month to get the Escape and Line of Credit paid off within the next three years. 

So, Jordan and I not only looking at our house phone, but our whole package with Shaw.

We're going from a total of $180.40, broken down as follows:

• High Speed (25) - $60
• Phone - $15
• TV - $89.90
• Rental TV box - $15
• Time shift - $5

to:

• High speed (10) - $55
• TV - $89.90 
• Rental TV box - $15
• Time shift - $5

That brings us down to $160.40 - saving $20/month.  It's not a lot, but it's a start.  We could save another $15, we we switched from a rental agreement to a two year purchase agreement where we would have no fee but be committed to Shaw for 24 months.  If we left, we would have to pay an early penalty of $15/month times the remaining months.

Do you think it's worth it?  We talk about switching companies from time-to-time, but in reality - we probably won't unless it was a super good deal to move.

You might have also noticed that I dropped our internet down, we lose a loot for only $5 savings - but here's the kicker.  We're not even coming close to what we're aloud to use...plus, there is NO penalty for going over the bandwidth limits at this lower tier...none! 

This is our usage graph from Shaw...the green line is what we're permitted to use....you can see that we increased it when our friends moved in temporary in anticipation of much higher usage - but that never happened.  If anything, we used less.

The change goes into effect this Friday, so i'll be updating the budget - but I'm still going to keep our commitment from yesterday, and keep tracking those Escape snowflakes!

Utilities - Year in Review

It's silly really - but I love being able to do my annual report on utilities because i've been tracking it for so long, I am able to create pretty graphs.  Keep in mind that each month is that which the utilities were billed, so if it was billed in November, it was actually the utilities used in October.

The trend line, while a bit bumpy, cleary shows the dip one would expect to see in the summer - and spikes in colder months.

For those that find the above graph a bit too cluttered, this one shows the monthly average a bit more clearly - I use this data to predict my monthly bills now for budgeting purposes and find that I'm usually within about $10!  I'de say that's worth doing all this tracking.

The last little graph I have for you is the combined monthly average year over year.  Remember that we've only been in our current house for the last two years - and the differences was less than $2.

Utilities - 4 Year Trend

As long as I've been tracking our daily spending, I've been tracking our expenditures on utilities longer.  This late in the game, I wish I had a break down on gas, water, electricity, power, sewer, ect - but this includes it all.

Total Breakdown

Having this much data gives me a huge advantage when setting up our annual budgets.  I know, within a small margin, how much our bills will be each month.  Given that the annual monthly average was $235 last year with the smallest bill being $149 and the largest $333 - it's very helpful to know how much to budget for.

2010 Utilities in Review

Below is a graph of our utility expenses for the 2010 year.  I thought it might be interesting to share this and to see if anyone else does a similar blog post.  Our average monthly bill decreased from $267.45 (2009) to $252.73 (2010), which is stellar.  Hopefully next year we can see a similar if not better decrease.

I should mention that we're heating a three bedroom, 2.5 bathroom townhouse - so it's a decent sized home.  Not as big as a big house, but not as small as a condo.

Each bill includes:

• Electricity
• Gas
• Water
• Waste
• Recycling

It looks like May had a huge spike, but May/June had a billing error.  The actually usage is the average of those two numbers.  Apparently, that sort of thing happens fairly often as they had a process in place to deal with it.

What do you pay a month for your utility bills?

Do you Bundle?

We currently have our TV, internet and phone services bundled with Shaw.  Normally we are pretty pleased, but leading up to yesterday the customer service has been pretty dismal at best.  The PVR was glitching, the prices went up b/c some promotions fell off, and I've spent far too much time on hold (over 45 minutes during my lunch hour yesterday).

Jordan and I went down to a physical Shaw location - after I was told that we could have a student discount applied to our services, but Jordan would have to take over the bill and there would be quite a bit of jostling to do.  Well, it turns out - if your nice to the lady behind the counter, it's not that hard to get your Shaw services sorted out.

She applied the student discounts to the account even though it was still in my name (I mean, we live together, so what's the big deal) and even gave us an extra $20 bill credit because while standing in line we discovered that we were being over billed for our phone service!

Because the bill for this cycle has already been generated I can't quite figure out exactly how much each service is now, but I know that it's around half what it was before.  It took about two hours yesterday (including on-hold time and waiting in line at the Shaw place), but I'd say it's well worth it!

Bills are In

Enmax: $214.44
Shaw:   $116.56
Total:    $331.00

We each pay $82.75


Our Enmax bill is exactly $6.00 less than is was last month and  $4.22 less than last August!  Check out my 2009-2010 comparative chart below. There was a bill sanfu in May/June, but other than that it's a good reflection of our usage.

Utilities

It's that time again...bill time.

Enmax for June (will be billed i n : $220.44
Shaw for June: $94.73

Sub- Total = 315.17
Total Each = $105.06

A Few Notes:

Shaw is less this month then it has in previous ones because I changed the billing cycle.  I wanted the enmax bill and Shaw bill to line up closer to billing dates and thus when they have to be paid.  This will work better when we have roommates moving out on the first, we'll have the bills in before then.

Looking at what we were billed for each month (each month that we were billed was for the previous months usage), there is a consistent reduction in the amount we are paying which means - we're using less!

The only discrepancy's here were from the May and June bills. This is because we were over billed in May and then June was a correction.  For more reading on how much fun that was check out my post last month.

utilities and settling up

Utilities

Bills, do they every take a month off?

Shaw is $101.73

Enmax is $133.73

Total is $235.46 - total for each of the four of us is $58.87.  Why so super cheap?  Do you remember a while back I told you that enmax over charged us for electricity usage?  Well, we caught up to ourselves this month and that portion of the bill was only about $2.

Settling Up

Now that the bills are in, it's time to settle up with our roommate who recently left.  

Damange Deposit $500

Damage                     0

Bills                   (58.87)

New Key          (10.00)   he lost his....

Parking              (25.00)  his car is broken down in our parking spot.  we're charging him $25/week                   until he moves it

Total Refund $406.13

WHAT?! Something's not right...

So, I was going to write about my flower garden again - but Southern Alberta is facing another winter storm warning.  I covered my newly planted garden with a tarp and laid heavy rocks (and flower pots) around the edges so it wouldn't fly away.  This will help keep the snow and biting cold from the wind (which is supposed to get up to 80km/hour today) off of them.  Residual heat from the ground will also stay under the tarp, created a sort of greenhouse.

At least, that's what I'm hoping will happen.

It's entirely possible that the wind will get so strong and be long gone by the time I get home.

So, on to the bills.

Enmax: $360.58
includes all utilities: gas, water, electricity, waste water and drainage and waste and recycling.


Whoa! That was my reaction too when I saw the bill online.  I was expecting something closer to $220.  I did some investigative work that included calling Enmax to find out possible reasons why I had a summer bill this high when I've lived in the same place for three years and it's never been that high.  I checked out the electricity meter (which the enamx folks said was where the trouble was), which was hard to find by the way.  The conclusion: the person who reads the meter, did so incorrectly.

On April 9, 2010 they reported that our meter read 38,445 kWh. Jordan and I checked it on April 30, 2010 and the meter reads 38,026. So, Almost a full month later and we still haven’t used as much electricity as the meter reader said we did.


Next months Enmax bill will show our true usage and thus will be next to nothing for electricity usage (as we will have already paid for it).
Shaw: $130.96
We recently changed our Shaw bundle to include home phone, internet and TV.  


This particular bill includes $13.45 in long distance charges and $7.99 from a video rental. The raw cost of our services is $214.80 and we receive $114.50 worth of bill credits each month. That plus taxes is where the $130.96 comes from.

So for this month the total is $491.54 - so we each pay $122.86.
...which really isn't that bad. 

sloooowww internets.

That's what i have.

I mentioned on Saturday that Shaw came to install our TV - well something happened while the guy was here.  I was impressed to begin with because despite which appeard to be a severe hangover - the technician was professional and looked into our internet issues while he was here(the single was dropping a lot - but when we had it, it was strong). 

He put an ampliphier box back (which the last tech had taken) which is supposed to allow everyone to get cable in their rooms or some such thing.  He changed a cable which looked like it had been spliced poorly (the one in our room - behind the cable hook up in the wall where we hook up to the internet) & our 'nitro' high speed internat promotion ended.

We still have high speed internet - and Shaw only gave us that promotion b/c of some other issue we had 6 months ago (can't remember what it was now).

Well....since he left the internet has been very very slow...it's rediculous! The internet has never been THIS bad and i've been here for going on 3 years.....

Jordan wasted over an hour on the phone with their 'tech support' last night just doing different speed tests....which all had the same result = slow. The best that they could do was send someone to check on the modem on saturday! 

If it doesn't improve soon - i'm calling customer service.  No way I'm paying for the internet when we can't use it.

Saturday Morning: Money Here & Money There

Not too long ago I told you that Jordan and I were making the TV switch from Bell to Shaw due to an amazing offer!  Well, the Shaw guy just left and we're all hooked up!  We will now have two bills each month instead of three - Shaw and Enmax.  We'll have a final bill and cancellation charge from Bell, but after the deals we get with Shaw - it'll still be worth the switch.

I also mentioned a while back (this is six months ago) that we got a deal on our Shaw, well today - that deal was up.  I had spoken to Shaw twice before to make sure we wouldn't be billed for the promotion they gave us - and they messed it up.  The bill is $10 higher then it's supposed to be.  Ack! Way to go Shaw....  I'm on hold with their customer service now, so hopefully it won't take too long to fix it... by the time i finished writing this post, I had spoken to Shaw and they had fixed the billing mistake!

Here's what the bills look like:

Enamx $280.92
Shaw       50.50
Bell          77.47
Total    $408.89

We split this by 3 for Jordan, myself and our roommate who just moved out (because these bills are for last months services) and we have a grand total of $136.30 each.

Roommate had given us a damage deposit of $250 - so we owe him $113.40.

We'll write him a cheque, give him a call and leave it in the mailbox for him to pick up this weekend.

i hope you are all enjoying this lovely weekend

Programming Change

About five months ago, I spent some time exploring our utility bills in great details.  In particular, I was looking to reduce costs of our TV (Bell) bill.  At the time I wasn't able to find a better deal for the programming we were receiving, and we were splitting the bill 5 ways - which significanly reduced the individual expense.

Shaw has been trying to woo exisiting phone/internet customers to become tv customers as well.  Before now, it hasn't been worth it to switch.

I won't get into all the details of the negotiaion - but I will share with you the end result. 

For a total price of $35.60 this is what we will get:

• Price guarantee for 12 months
• Free rental of their HDPVR
• PVR is a duel tuner with 160G hardrive
• Includes Digital TV package
• Includes 13 HD Basic channels
• Includes 18 HD Plus channels
• Includes HD Time Shifting
•  East and West feeds of ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC HD channels in most markets 

The regular price for this package is $69.95 plus $19.95 for rental of the HDPVR.

The cost to cancel Bell's service early is $150, and our contract end date isn't until July.  I did call and let Bell know about Shaw's offer - I told them that if they could come up with a discount equal to or greater than $30/month ($150/months left in contract = $30); however they wern't able to be competitive with Shaw's pricing.

We currently pay $78.12 for Bell - the difference between that and Shaw is $42.52.  So, in the next 5 months we will save $212.60.  After the cancellation fee - we still save $62.60 (taxes included).

We're happy with the programming that Shaw will offer, and the savings is worth it!

January Utilities - Bills are In

I'm staying with my family this weekend while visiting my grandmother in the hospital and got to talking about the utility bills with my mom.  In the spirt of that conversation I thought that I would post this months bills.  When I say this months bills, I actually mean last months usage.  I get the last of the three bills on the fifth of the month following the month we're being billed for (follow that?)

The Enmax bill, which includes gas (heat), electricity, water, waste water, recycling (* relitlvely new), etc. went up by $7 since last month.  According to Enmax (yea, i asked) our water usage is about half of where most peoples are (proportionate to the number of people that are living in the house) - stayed about the same, electicity stayed about the same - it's just the gas part that went up a bit - this is heating costs.  I hate to imagine how much it would have gone up if we hadn't covered our windows.

The Shaw bill went down by about $6 because I talked less... I used my cell phone quite a bit last month, and actually went over in minutes (don't worry, not by too much).

Bell is the same as it always is (unless Jordan orders a pay-per-view or some such thing).

So, we each owe $147.77

It's not so bad, but it's not so great.  When Jordan and I set up our bi-weekly contributions to our joint account, we estimated that the highest utilites would ever be is $150 (with three people splitting them).  As long as the bills don't go up again, we'll be right on the mark - and they should start to decline as the weather warms up.

I fear that some of you will say the bills are too high, however; I have actually negotiated lower rates on all of the bills above.  Unforutnatly we're bound by a two year contract with Bell - so can't look at other HD television providers until the middle of this summer - but that time will arrive before we know it.

Utilities in the Winter

I`m not sure about all of you folks, but for me, winter is the hardest time of year to keep the utility bills down.  It's cold and costs more to heat the house, and people generally spend more time inside and at home (using more resources).  Rainy Day Saver has spoken about her struggles with this as well.

To try to combat the house heating woes this year, we installed some special indoor glass plastic over the windows that is supposed to act as an insulating double pane.  I did this before Christmas, and as the heating part of the utility bill is always a month behind, we`ll see the effects on the bill at the end of the month.

Before that happens, I wanted to share with you how easy it was to install!!  I did it myself while Jordan was watching hockey.

Before:                                                                     After:

Other then a bit of shine, you can`t tell the difference between the two!  I`m really hoping that in a few weeks, I`ll be able to share how much $$ we saved!

Further to the fake double pane, we also where sweaters and use a small room heater when necessary - so we're only heating an extra small space instead of the entire place. We keep the house at 20C, and I turn it down to around 16C when we leave for work in the morning.

Do you live somehwhere where you have to combat the heating bill each winter?  I'm also wondering if folks have used this type of insulating plastic before and if you noticed a different.  We used it on our the bedroom/bathroom windows as well as the door - all of the major heat loss affenders.

Household Bills Are In.

On the 5th of each month, I receive the final bill (of three) for the household for the previous month.  I don't know that I've posted this before, but I'm going to start so that I can keep track.

• Enmax $235.55
• Bell $75.98
• Shaw $41.39

Total = $352.92

what a fantastic number!  I've written about it before, but I will mention that I'm pleased with these numbers because over the last few months I've been able to negotiate a $20 Bell bill reduction for 12 months, plus we got on the student plan for our internet/phone with Shaw (our bill this month is $26.34 then it was last month)!

When Samantha moved out, we made an arrangement whereby she would pay $20/week for utilities for each week in October.  That way, she didn't have to wait until the end of the first week in November before getting her damage deposit back.  Based on the date she moved out, I held $65 for her portion of the utilities (our agreement was that I would deduct final utilities from her damage deposit as she didn't have cheques).

So, the total $352.92 less $65.00 is $287.92.

This number is then divided by four as these utilities were from the month when Jordan/ME/Brother/Lindsay were all living together.

So, we each owe $71.98.

what to do about cell phones...

My cell phone is crapping out.

I actually used to work for Bell for a couple of years when I was going to school, when I graduated and got my real job, I left the cell phone world.  At that time the best plan I could get was with Solo Mobile, a subsidiary of Bell's.

Unfortunately, my solo hardware (LG Rumour) is dieing.  I'm getting these white screens of death, when it's not white, it's green/yellow.  It's not water damage, it's not pressure damage. It's just lame product defect.  Unfortunately, it's not under warranty anymore.

So here are my options:

1. Cancel the cell phone plan and not have a cell phone
1. Cost: $300.00 to cancel
2. No more cell phone monthly cost - save $45/month * 21 months left in contract = SAVE $945
2. Cancel the cell phone plan, find a new phone and provider
1. Cost: $300, $0 new phone, $50/month for a plan and locked into a new 3 year contract
3. Cancel the cell phone plan, use an old Bell phone I have and go on a month-to-month plan 
1. Cost: $300, $50/plan but not locked into a contract
4. Buy a new solo phone for about $150-$200 bucks and put it on my account.

So...what do you think I should do?

Bill Reduction

Not too long ago I reviewed some cost saving options on our phone/internet plan.  When I did that assessment, we had five people living in the house.  Now that we're down to three - I called our phone/internet provider to see how much we could save if Jordan and I eliminated our house phone.

During the conversation, I found out that this company has a Student Plan.  WHAT?! A student plan!? I've lived with and/or been a student the entire time I've been in calgary.

Okay, not going to dwell on that.

Jordan happens to be a part-time student right now, hurrah!  So, as a first step we decided to get on this student plan and then decided next month if we want to keep the phone or not.

We were able to reduce our plan from $55.95/month to $44.40/month (plus GST of course)

That saves us $13.55 every month!  


Granted - that's not a huge sum of money, but I'm a firm believer that every little bit helps.