I blogged a few months ago about enrolling in budget plans for our heating fuel and electricity.

So far, things have been going well. Our heating fuel supplier simply charges us a flat rate (last years usage divided by 11), and June is the settle up month for any over or under payments. We've paid a flat rate each month Jul.-Sept. October's payment will be automatically withdrawn from checking on the 20th.

Our electricity plan is a bit different. They charge us a rolling average of the previous 12 months bills, so payments aren't equal, but they are normalized. Our electric bills tended to be erratic in the past, not only for variations in monthly usage, but also because we report our meter readings to the electric company each month. We have a choice, but we save $5 each month by self-reporting our meter readings (the electric company audits our reporting by checking themselves a couple times a year).

I try to report usage on or about the 15th of the month, but sometimes I'm earlier and sometimes I'm later, and I have, at times, forgotten to do it at all, but I'm getting better with that.

I looked at the electric company's web site yesterday. I checked out our bill payment history. (OVER THE TOP FINANCIAL ANALYSIS WARNING) I calculated the average of the 12 prior to enrolling in the budget plan, and the 9 months after enrolling. What I found is:

For the 12 months prior, 3 months were within 10% of the average billing, 5 were within 20%, 2 within 30% and 2 were outside 30%.

For the 9 months since enrolling, 2 were within 1% of average, 1 was within 3%, 3 were within 5%, 2 were within 7%, and only one was outside 10% of the average.

In statistics, they would call that "a lot less noise in the data".

While I'm on the subject of utilities - we've gotten three bids back from geothermal installers. Bids range from about 15K to about 17K. Even if we saved until the end of next summer, we wouldn't have enough without borrowing. We're probably going to wait on that.

I also entered my employer HR web site this morning. I enrolled in the FSA program again for 2014. This year I contribute $1200 into the FSA. Next year I'll contribute $1,500, or $25 more per month. We over spent this year, and a big reason for that was DD2's root canal. If we end up over contributing for 2014, we still have Jan., Feb., and Mar. 2015 to use it up.

Finally, I increased my contribution to my retirement plan by one percentage point.

That's it for now, have a great weekend.