Whether your heating bill goes up this winter depends on what heats your home.
Your Daily Dad Joke
Why did the golfer bring two pairs of pants?
In case he got a hole in one.
What heats your house
There’s a morning every fall when the heat clicks on for the first time since spring. The house warms up, and somewhere in the back of your head a little meter starts running.
That’s why I wanted to pass this along.
You may have seen a headline that home heating bills could rise 21% this winter. That’s real. But it’s not the whole story.
So is your bill about to jump 21%? Probably not.
That number is for homes that heat with oil. The federal government’s winter forecast puts those at about 3% of households, mostly in the Northeast. For them, it’s a real hit.
Gas is the most common way to heat a home in this country. CNBC, working from that same forecast, says a gas-heated home is expected to spend about $640 this winter, down 9%. Propane is expected to be down 3%. If your heat is electric, which is more than four in ten homes, it’s about 4% more than last winter.
I know. A forecast doesn’t pay the bill. These are averages, built on the weather the forecasters expect, and a cold January can change all of it.
Here’s the one thing I’d do this week. I’d find out what heats the house. The bill tells you, whether it comes from the gas company, the electric company, or the truck that fills the tank. Then I’d pull up last January’s bill. That’s your number.
If January was the month that hurt, it’s worth a call to ask whether they’ll spread the winter out into even monthly payments. And if paying for heat at all is the worry, the same CNBC piece points to LIHEAP, the federal program that helps with heating bills.
Anyway, I wanted you to have the real number before the first cold bill shows up.
What heats your house, gas, electric, oil or propane? Share it in the comments so we can all learn from it. I read every comment.
Knowing your number before the envelope arrives is a small thing. It means you’re opening it to check, not to find out. That’s a different feeling, and you earned it just by looking.
— Steve
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