My efforts at frugal living

[Kaleva]

50. Update 1/17/13

Received my Michigan Home Heating Credit Claim form in the mail yesterday. After doing some rough calculations, it looks like I'll be getting about $135 credited to my natural gas account. That amount would cover what I paid on my gas bills for Sept, Oct, Nov and December of 2012.

On the back of the form was info on applying for a low interest home improvement loan. I called the local office that handles this and the lady is sending me an application. Based on my income, I'm eligible for an outright grant but there is only so much money available and they award the grants on a lottery system. Even if I don't get the grant, the lady said I'm eligible for a a 4% loan of up to $7,499 with no collateral. I can get up to $24k something at 4% interest using the home as collateral and have up to 20 years to pay.

If I get the grant, that would really improve the level of insulation of the house and further reduce my heating bills and if I get about $135 a year for home heating credit, this place will be very cheap to heat and for hot water and cooking.

Playing around with a loan calculator, I don't know if getting a loan, even at 4% interest would be worth it as the interest alone for the first couple of years would be well over $200. By year 3, the interest would drop to about $160. Over a 5 year period of time, assuming I got a loan for $7499 to be paid in 5 five years, the total interest would be about $800. Would I save that much in gas over that period of time? Especially when considering my gas bills are so low to begin with? If I don't get an outright grant, I may be better off just paying for improvements as I go. The plus side of getting a loan would be that everything would be done right away and not be dragged out over a 5 year period of time if I were to pay out of pocket.

Did some more rearranging in the basement and now have room near the food storage shelves located on the north west wall for a small chest or upright freezer on the north wall between the work bench and work area shelves and the food shelves. The basement stairway walls have been painted white and that sure did brighten it up! Going to put up hangers and nails on the east side of the basement stairway wall to hang up pots and pans to free up kitchen cabinet space. Sometime in the future I'll paint all the basement walls white. Did laundry this morning and it was actually a pleasure as there is so much more room. And all I have for garbage out of that project is a small garbage bag as I reused everything else. Just rearranging things did the trick!

I'm a simple guy with simple pleasures and it's stuff like that that make my day.