Cursed by the Oilman, Stuck at a Terrible Price

I woke up this morning a bit later than usual, and heard the oil burner running. Oh no, it’s that time of year when we need to heat up the house with oil since it’s less than 30 degrees outside. I am in a quandry about this year’s heating costs, and there is nothing I can do about it.

You may recall my breezy blog about meeting my oil man and his ‘good news’ about lowering our oil price. Well, back in August, thinking that prices may go ‘down’ to $4.09 a gallon was good news. But now, it feels like a terrible trap. I gassed up the truck yesterday for $2.97 a gallon, yet now I see that I am locked into that 4.09 price for the season. Then I hear that oil is down to a lowly $69 a barrel!

I called up the oil man’s son-in-law and asked him if there was any daylight, any relief from the crappy price he’d bought all of his oil for. No, he said, you’ve guaranteed to pay us that $4.09, and even if it goes to 50 bucks a barrel, that’s what he has to pay. Ugh! So now my budget plan is $400 a month and I’m two months behind!

I used to think I’d just pay for it with my company funds, but no, can’t do that. Something about the IRS getting hip to all of us business owners who pay for personal stuff with the company dough. So, no breaks, just a painful big ole check.

Last night we made a fire, and it warmed up the whole house. Too bad our stove isn’t bigger so that we could have stoked it to run all night and maybe stopped this furnace from coming on at all.