The first cool morning of September, I pulled Greg's old flannel shirt off the hook by the back door and wore it to get the mail. Cool mornings always remind me of one thing, the January gas bill. Last winter our worst month was $248, and I remember writing it in the green notebook with a frown.
This year I'm working about 12 hours a week doing bookkeeping from the kitchen table, not the full-time paycheck I had at the school office. I wanted winter to be something I could budget for, not something that happened to us.
Gas works like electric here
In May I switched our electric supply using the state's Apples to Apples chart. It turns out natural gas works almost the same way in Ohio. Our utility still owns the pipes, delivers the gas and sends the bill. But the gas itself, the commodity part, can come from a supplier we choose.
If you don't choose, you're on the utility's default supply. In our area that default price is set fresh each month based on the market. So it can be low in September and much higher in January, exactly when you're using the most. That's the part I wanted to get away from.
The Apples to Apples chart has a natural gas tab. Same layout as electric: rate, fixed or variable, term, monthly fee, early termination fee, and notes about introductory pricing. Gas rates are shown per Ccf, which is 100 cubic feet, or per Mcf, which is 1,000. Our bill uses Ccf, so I stuck with that.
What I compared
From the notebook, we use about 840 Ccf a year, and roughly 520 of that falls in December, January and February. That told me the winter rate mattered far more than the summer one. A cheap variable rate in September doesn't help much if it jumps when the furnace is running nonstop.
I narrowed it to three offers:
- A 12-month fixed rate at $0.62 per Ccf, no monthly fee, $50 early termination fee.
- A 12-month fixed rate at $0.58 per Ccf with a $6.95 monthly fee.
- A variable rate starting at $0.49 per Ccf for the first two months, then whatever the market does.
The variable one was out right away. It was cheap for October and November, the two months we barely use gas.
The fine print I nearly missed
The $0.58 offer looked better, and I had my mouse on it. Then I did the math. The $6.95 monthly fee is $83.40 a year. Spread over our 840 Ccf, that adds almost ten cents per Ccf. So $0.58 was really about $0.68. The cheaper-looking offer was the more expensive one.
That wasn't the only thing. When I opened the terms for the $0.58 offer, it said that at the end of the 12 months it would roll into a month-to-month variable rate unless I took action. The $0.62 offer said I'd get a notice with renewal options before the term ended. That's a difference I want to know about now, not next September.
We went with the $0.62 fixed rate. Greg's only question was whether the gas would smell different. I told him it's the same gas in the same pipe, and the only thing that changes is one line on the bill.
What it does and doesn't protect
I want to be clear with myself about this, so I wrote it at the top of the notebook page. A fixed rate locks in the price per Ccf of the gas. It does not lock in how much gas we use. A cold winter will still mean a bigger bill. It also doesn't touch the delivery charges, the customer charge or the riders, which stay with the utility no matter who supplies the gas.
So this isn't a cap on our bill. It's a cap on one piece of it. If January is brutal, we'll still feel it.
A few other things I did while I was at it. I scheduled the furnace check, which runs $89 with the company we've used since the 2015 replacement. I bought a three-pack of filters. And I wrote the end month of the gas contract right under the end month of the electric one, so both reminders sit together.
The switch happens with the next meter read, so the November bill should be our first one at the new rate. I'll check it line by line, which by now surprises nobody in this house.
