Happy New Years! Here is a recap of our 2014 in numbers
1,224 GB Data Used
While I don’t have full usage history for our internet connection, I do have the past four months. If I extrapolate that data then I can summarize that we have used on average about 102 GB of bandwidth each month in 2014. Most of that is probably Netflix related. In total we spent $399.78 for internet in 2014, or 32¢/GB. You can read more about trimming your bill here and here.
1,140 CCFs (852,000 gallons) of Natural Gas
Our furnace, water heater, and oven all use natural gas. Heating continues to be the number one demand for gas in our household. 1 CCF is 100 cubic feet or the equivalent of 748 US gallons. An olympic swimming pool holds 660,000 gallons. We couldn’t quite trap all of the natural gas we used this year in an olympic sized swimming pool.
Insulating (part 1 and part 2) our house will hopefully conserve more resources in the future. Our main enemy are our leaky windows (temporary fix).
40%
Is the amount that we have trimmed off our mortgage principal. We started making quadruple payments in April and are motivated to be mortgage free by the end of next year. Living frugally and skimping on gifts to ourselves has helped (see frugal gift ideas here). Debt is an emergency!
18,700 Gallons of Water (2,500 cf)
That is about three milk tankers.
According to the EPA, the average American uses between 80-100 gallons of water a day. Thanks to the installation of low flow faucet aerators (here) and low flow toilets (here and here), we averaged about 25 gallons per person (with Frugal Boy included it would be about 17 gallons).
5,514 kWh of Electricity
According to the US Energy Information Administration, the average household uses 10,837 kWh a year. We came in about half of that thanks to using CFL and LED lightbulbs instead of incandescent. We also use the low heat setting for our dishwasher and try to turn off lights and other energy suckers when they are not in use. Our total electric bill for the year came out to be $652.92. $49 of that was just to have service provided.
$36,757.30 in Medical Bills
Having a baby is expensive, especially when things don’t go according to plan. Having good insurance and understanding what it covers means that we only paid $387.98 out of pocket. That was even with the highest deductible plan. Health Savings Accounts, HSAs, are awesome (especially when it is employer money)!
7
The number of states we visited this year. Read more about it here, here, and here.
I was too lazy to make a new map showing Wisconsin as visited, just take my word for it
8
The number of teeth that Frugal Boy has. Aye aye aye!!!
96
The number of times we bought prepared food (restaurants, take out, forgot to pack a lunch, anything except the grocery store). February we had a baby and grabbed more than one lunch/dinner from the sandwich shop. July and September we went on semi long road trips. Maybe a good challenge for 2015 would be to go a month without going out.
1,320 Minutes Talking on the Phone (Andrew)
According to the little statistics screen on my phone, I blabbed for about 22 hours in 2014.
1,083 Blog Visits
Google Analytics tells me that is how many sessions (not to be confused with page views) that this blog has had in 2014. 90% of those visitors are from the good ole United State of America. 7.5% are from Russia (hey leave a message, assuming you aren’t a bot), and the rest are scattered about.
2,157 Spam Comments Blocked
You may have noticed that you can no longer comment on older articles. That is my attempt to cut down on spam. Thankfully I have to do virtually no work to manually eliminate the junk because of the wonderful Akismet wordpress plugin.
2015
The number of roads a man must walk down or maybe just another good year. Enjoy and live frugally!