A Little Of This And A Little Of That

I still have not gone grocery shopping. I am hoping to do that today. Our week that wasn’t too busy has turned into a very busy week.

The company who we hired came out on Monday to check out our A/C. We have a leak. We had the man give us an estimate of what it would cost to find the leak. It was $1400. plus about $160. for the freon after they fix the leak. So $1560. + tax to fix it. Since our central A/C is 13 years old, we asked him what it would cost to replace the unit. The repairman gave us an estimate range but he said he would have to have a sales person come out to give us that. He came out about dinner time. That estimate was $6,000. + tax after giving us a cash discount. Plus there is a Federal Tax credit of about $1400. for 2023. Since this unit is almost at the end of it’s life, Hubby and I discussed what to do. The unit we have is a 13 seer. The manufacturers’ no longer make them. They have a few in stock but that was it. That sent up a red flag to us that if we replaced it with a 13 seer that they have in stock, how long would they continue to make the parts to repair them.

Since Hubby is an engineer, he discussed the seers of the units with the guy. Hubby determined that we would go with a 16 seer because it also qualifies for the Federal tax credit for 2023. It will be much more efficient than the one we have especially since the one we have Hubby had noted had slowed down last year. It took a lot longer to get the temperature where we wanted it. The price they quoted us was for the 16 seer. With utility prices up, an efficient unit is important to us. It will save us money in the long run and will be a selling point if we decide to ever sell our home.

It was important to me to ask the guy when they could install it. It is getting hotter here and we do not do well with humidity. They had one opening on Friday. I was relieved because we were thinking it could take weeks. So we have contracted for the new unit.

We are well aware that when they replace the coil in the furnace, they may find that the box is cracked. If that is the case, we will have to replace the furnace. That would be about another $6,000. plus tax. I believe there is a Federal Tax credit for the furnace if it needs to be replaced also. Hubby will be in the basement with the installers when they put the new coil in so he will know if it is cracked or not. We are praying that is isn’t. But if it is, we will do what we have to do.

I am often asked why we continue to be frugal. This is why. Things break and have to be replaced or repaired. If we had not saved our entire lives, we would be left having to finance these things and we hate debt! Debt brings stress and we wanted a carefree, stress free life in retirement. So if you are planning your retirement, account for repairs and replacements for your house and to replace your car when need be. The cheapest way to do that is by paying cash. You can usually get a cash discount if you ask and by not financing, you are saving all of that interest.

I also wanted to let you know that we got our electric and gas bill yesterday. Last year’s bill was $145.93. This year we used 11 less kilowatt hours in electricity and 1 therm more of natural gas due to the furnace being on longer due to how cold it has been here this spring. Hopefully it is now off permanently.

This years bill was $129. 24. A lot less but the bill was for 4 days less than the same 2022 bill. We have also been doing everything we can to keep our usage down.

Now I am off to the grocery store.