Ninja Bill Part Duex

For the second time within a week I have been hit with a sizable unexpected expense.  I picked up the term ninja bill from other bloggers, and it means any expense, for which you had not budgeted, that sneaks up on you.  The first ninja bill of the week is some car repairs for my wife's Dodge Caliber (you can read more about it here: Dreaded Ninja Bill: Car Repair).  My utility bills are my most recent unexpected expense.

I will start with a little history, my wife and I purchased our first home at then end of May, 2007.  Since our purchase, we have had very little variation of our utility expenses.  The water and sewer bill comes from the local coop, and it has been within a few cents of $45 every month.  Our trash service, electricity, and natural gas are all provided by the city utility company.  This bill has been was consistently around $150 for May-July and September-November.  In August the bill peaked slightly at $180.  

Base on my first six months of usage, I set up my budget for the gas, electric, and trash bill to be $180.  That covered my peak usage during that time and if the bill turned out to be lower I would simply have a little cash left over at the end of the month.  Starting in late November our gas furnace started running regularly. The bill for December jumped up to $210 with over half of that being the cost of natural gas to heat the house. 

Now, I live in the South and had never expected it to cost more to heat my house in December than it would to cool it in August.  It made sense to me that year round average temperatures run about 75.  In the summer it is normally in the upper 90's and in the winter it is normally in the lower 50's.  Yes it can drop down to freezing for a night or two but not very often; about as often as it jumps into the low 100's in August.  The bills from my apartment jumped between $110 in the spring and fall and $150 in the summer and winter.  There was very little difference between heating and cooling.  Apparently heating with gas is much more expensive than cooling with electric A/C!

So to continue the story, yesterday I got my bill for January.  I had to do a triple take because I could not believe what I saw.  $324!  That is almost double my baseline utility costs.  The natural gas alone was 70% of the total cost.  I really wish now that I had pushed for an electric heat pump in the new house.  I also got a water and sewer bill for $54 which is a 20% jump from every other month we've lived in the house.  In all, my utilities this month are $153 more than budgeted.  Ouch.

Thankfully, I have the money to pay the bill.  I've been selling unused items on eBay and it just so happens I have an extra $400 this month.  I had planned to use it to accelerate paying off my credit cards, but in this case my debt snowball will have to wait.  Now I realize that $324 is nothing compared to the bills all of you Yankees face each winter, so please don't get too mad at me for complaining.  The real message of this post is to remind people to budget for realities like cold weather in winter (Duh!) and keep from getting smacked with a ninja bill like me.  For the future when I get an nice low $150 utility bill I will make sure to bank the savings to keep me above water when I get a whopper like January.