The winter before last, my husband and I were trying to save money to go on a cruise the next summer.
We cut several corners that year— no big date nights, no shopping sprees, no video games, no silly purchases; we had really tighten our belts.
When autumn rolled around, we decided to skip our usual heater servicing to save money; the fall had been very warm, and the winter was projected to be mild as well. The fall season seemed to last quite a while, the temperature hovered right around 50 degrees even into what was conventionally considered the “winter months”. The temperature was very mild up until it wasn’t. It was in mid-January when the bottom dropped out of the temperature and our furnace was not up to the task of being switched on full blast to keep us warm. In fact, our furnace broke down. While we were waiting on repairs– apparently the HVAC technicians were really backed up as many folks in the area had decided to skip the fall furnace service– we had to stay at a local hotel for 3 nights. Naturally, as supply and demand would have it, the hotel had many local patrons that winter and their prices had skyrocketed. By the time it was all said and done, my husband and I had spent nearly all of our vacation savings on the hotel room and furnace repair costs. Lesson learned. Since then, we haven’t gone a single year without having our furnace serviced in the fall to make sure it can get us through the winter.