Greener than a German

Some of you know our electric bill has been insane this past year, nearly $200 a month! Our provider estimates how much electricity you will use for the year based on several factors and they charge you monthly based on that assumption. At the start of the new year they reassess your usage and either you owe them more money because you used over what they anticipated or you get money back if you use less.

We have been waiting for the first bill of the year to find out which side of the fence we have landed on. We have heard some really nasty stories of fellow Americans who have at the start of the year owed quite a bit of money. Knowing that we are not frugal beings, we tried really hard to keep our usage to a minimum in order to avoid the nasty surprise bill this month.

We have put on hold a few big purchases that we have needed in order to be careful stewards of the money we have been blessed with. For several months we have been waiting and finally the letter has arrived.

Being that it was in German we understood very little of it. In fact the only part that really made sense was that a large amount of money was left as a remaining balance.

898.17 euros to be exact.

We were shocked. How could this be? We tried so hard to leave lights off and  unplug appliances even though it made life so much more inconvenient. So Aaron brought the letter to church and asked someone what it meant. They weren't entirely sure but they thought it meant that we did owe the above total.

When He came home and told me the news I was confident that God would handle it for us. I really didn't believe that we had some how managed to waste so much, but if we had I knew that God would come up with the money, because even with what we had saved for the purchases that were put on hold we would not be able to cover it.

Aaron walk to the electric company down the road and asked them to explain what the notice meant. Turns out We are so frugal that we would be rated below the Fantastisch category and that we used so little energy that the above total is what they owe us! In addition our new monthly payment had been dropped down to only 57 euros a month. So not only do we get a huge chunk of money back, but we also will be saving money this year by paying a much lower monthly bill!!

So to sum it up:

1. God is ALWAYS working ALL things together for good (even when they are hard to bear at the time)
2. We now know that YES we were paying a crazy price for our electric bill
3. We are better at being "Green" than most Germans