I almost did something dumb. Today, I checked the gauge on the oil tank in the basement, and panicked a bit, because it's down to about 60 gallons! I could've sworn I just filled it up back in the spring. I looked up my spreadsheet, and saw an entry for 5/15/2022. 155 gallons, $575.06 total. And a note that said "$3.559/gal market price + various fees".
But, that just didn't seem right. I have dual zone, heating/cooling. The upstairs unit is all electric/heat pump. The downstairs is heat pump with an oil backup. It's a 275 gallon tank, and probably wouldn't have even started relying on oil until well into October. And going through ~215 gallons in two months, when we're not even into the coldest part of the season just didn't seem right to me.
It almost seemed to me, like it hadn't been filled up. So I started looking through my credit card records, and could find no payment to the oil company around that time.
Then, I looked at the spreadsheet a bit more closely. Something about that note just didn't seem right. I use the different tabs on this spreadsheet to track my electric bill, and the oil bill, but also have some old tabs from the old house, and even a tab for the electric bill at my old condo. Well, I look at the tab for the oil bill at the old house, and sure enough, on 3/11/2008, I bought 155 gallons of oil. The bill was $575.06. And there was a note that said "$3.559/gal market price + various fees".
When I made the spreadsheet for the new place, I just copied it from the old one, deleted most of the fields, and entered new data as I bought oil. So I'm guessing that on May 15, 2022, I was going to order some oil, and even entered that date, but then when I looked at the gauge and saw I still had a decent amount of oil, I figured I'd hold off. The oil company gives me a bit of a discount if I order 200 gallons or more, so I try to let it get to that point.
And, that would make sense. Considering gasoline was flirting with $5/gal around that time, in these parts, I'm sure home heating oil was more like $6 or more. So I probably figured at the time that I'd hold off and see if prices came down.
But, I just forgot to clear out those other fields at the time, in the spreadsheet. Is this really what getting old is going to feel like? Forgetting stupid stuff like this?!