While we've had what most consider a mild winter so far, it's still costing us big bucks to keep our homes warm. It doesn't really seem to matter how you do it, be it natural gas, electricity, heating oil or propane..keeping up with the heating bills as they continue to rise isn't easy.
Take for example the cost of home heating oil. In October, the going rate was around $2.65 per gallon. Today, it's $3.40 cents. That's a 75 cent jump in just four months and with fuel prices the way they've been over the past few years, we can only expect to pay even more as winter goes on and the demand goes up. That's why it's so important to shop around. Suppliers set different prices. Just in the past few weeks we've done stories about Suburban Propane charging 50-70 cents more for heating oil and propane than their competitors. Customer loyalty doesn't get you very far these days so even if you've been with a company for years, make a few calls to the competitors, every time you need a fill-up, to make sure you're getting the best deal.
Also, it's too late to do it now but next heating season... seriously consider locking into a fixed price. It can be a little risky depending on the market but if you'd have done it this season, you'd be saving anywhere from 60 to 75 cents a gallon! Multiply that by say, a 250 gallon tank and you'd have paid nearly $200 less.
When it comes to Natural Gas, believe it or not, National Grid's price per therm dropped by three cents from December to January but you're probably not going to notice a huge difference on your bill and the season is still young.
How are you handling home heating costs?
