I figured out our home heating expense for the heart of winter: November, December, January, and February.

We primarily heated our 2,000 square foot home using a wood-burning stove fireplace insert, fueled by wood of course. Since I work for a company that uses a lot of wood, I was able to get all of our kindling for free -- and over the course of a winter, that's a lot of wood! We used our central gas-powered heater sparingly; in other words, we hardly ever turned the thing on. We primarily used the central heat when we were going to have company over and we wanted to warm the house up without waiting for the wood heat to kick in. Out here in the boonies we buy gas (propane) for our home by the gallon and store it in a 250 gallon tank adjacent to the house. Based on the gauge on the tank, I'd estimate that we used 12 gallons of propane throughout the winter. (Of course, some of that propane was used for cooking, but cooking uses hardly any gas when compared to heating a home.) We also have small liquid-filled radiator heaters for two bedrooms. I'm not sure how much those heaters cost to run, but I've heard they're about 5 cents an hour. With that in mind I'm going to guess that we spent an average of $30 per month using those heaters.

So, here are the numbers:

- Twelve gallons of propane at $2.39 per gallon equals $28.68
- One cord of oak wood for the stove insert, $130
- Four months of space-heating at $30 per month equals $120

The grand total is $278.68 for four months, only $69.67 per month. Seventy bucks a month to heat a home -- even in central Texas! -- isn't a bad deal at all. In fact, I still have about 1/4 of a cord of wood!

That sort of savings wouldn't have been possible without the wood-burning stove insert. I love that thing.