Three Ways To Make An Exact Budget For Your Home Heating Oil
If you have to prepare for the winter time, this often means storing logs for your fireplace, getting out the heavy coats, and figuring out how much home heating oil you need. The winter time may cause your expenses to increase. This is due to the holidays taking place over the winter months as well as the increase in the bills due to the cold weather outside. If you need to come up with an exact budget in order to know what you can afford this winter, there are three steps that you can take to figure out your heating oil budget. Here are the steps to take to make a budget down to the pennies.
Add up your old heating oil bills for the month
If you are looking to purchase enough heating oil to last you for most of the winter, you should go by last winter's bills. Find all of the bills for the months of the last winter. Add the sum total together to get the purchase amount for the oil that you will need. In order to make sure that this number is accurate, you should make sure that nothing has changed in your household. This includes adding new family members to the home or having an extension or addition physically added on to the home. A change in the household situation means that you should add more money to the estimate.
Ask your neighbors
If you are new to buying home heating oil or you are new to the neighborhood, it can be a good idea to gather some sums from everyone else. Ask your neighbors with similar sized homes how much oil they used during the winter months. Gather this information from several neighbors with similar sized homes and take the average. If you want to err on the side of caution, you can go by the upper end of the heating oil liters for your estimate.
Get backup heating sources
In order to ensure that you stay on budget, you should have backup heating sources for your home. Some nights you may be able to turn off the heating and utilize the fireplace and portable heaters. During the day when the weather breaks and most people are not home, you may wish to turn off all forms of heating until the first person arrives home for the evening. Getting backup heating sources to use will insure that your oil lasts you through the winter months and you remain on your strict budget.
To learn more, contact a company like Olympic Energy LLC.