Finance Travels

Yesterday I received our first “real” gas bill since the gas hot water heater was removed (I say “real” because the previous month’s bill was an estimate, and I couldn’t use it for an accurate analysis of gas usage).  For those who don’t remember, I replaced our natural gas powered hot water heater with an electric one back in February.  At the time, I was concerned that I had made a mistake going from gas to electric, but I didn’t have much choice given that I would have had to go with a “power vent” natural gas model, which was not available at the time.

The new gas bill shows that we used 4.7 MCF of natural gas in March of 2009, compared to about 7.3 MCF in March of 2008.  At current gas rates, this translates to about a $40 savings.  Considering that this bill really covers 2 months of use (due to the previous month’s estimated bill), it comes down to about a $20/month savings.

Our electric bill with the new hot water heater went up about $17 last month.  So it looks right now like I’ll be saving about $3/month, at least looking at these initial numbers.

So, it looks like I should have held out and waited to find a power vented natural gas hot water heater.  The differential between the numbers is going to just get worse as soon as PA electric deregulates and the price we pay for electricity sky rockets starting next year.

The markets and our savings were kind to us this month.  For the first time in almost a year, we’re able to report a net worth increase of over $5,000 for the month.  March 2009 was significant in several ways:

• March is the anniversary of our whole life insurance policies and they have gained about $1,000 over the course of the year.  Sadly, it is probably our best performing investment of 2008.
• We paid off over $4,000 in 0% interest credit card debt that we’ve been holding over the past 10 months.
• Our van was paid off (short of $12).
• Both vehicles kept the same value as they were in December (I update these values quarterly).
• We successfully transferred our primary bank account to another bank with a decent online presence.  While this process was painful, I expect that I’ll now be saving at least 30 minutes each month by not having to manually reconcile my checkbook, find missing transactions, etc…
• I’ve decided to start a day-trading experiment.  I’ve set $1,000 away in an online brokerage and I’m going to see how big I can make it grow, if at all.  I’ll be posting more about this in the future.

March 2009 Net Worth