help! (estimated costs of things)

One bedroom, about $900/mo, utilities Included...or $750, and YOU pay utilities. Wapa can be excruciating....

Gas is going for about $3.26 gallon on STX and I drive a Nissan Xterra there...I usually use about 40-50 per week....

a single friend of mine in Fredrichstad pays
1 bedroom ...nice $900.00
electric.....$175.00- $250.00..........air conditioning?
gas is $2.67 this week............once a week or more on the fill ups
internet........$59.00 to $100.00....T1
cable $59.00 to 100.00 for all channels

we pay
$1600.00 rent....1 bedroom house
$587.00 my new wapa bill.this month...we have no AC
$127.00 dish network
$69.00 hughesnet Internet ...dish
$300.00 for 2 cars gas a month.........or more

good luck

STX gas is actually around $2.60.

thanks to everyone who's replied!
what about the discrepancy in cost of gas per gallon?
also, marty, what do you mean you use 40-50? gallons? dollars?
thanks!
CG

Gas costs have been up and down and up... Hovensa Refinery is on St Croix, so gas here is less than on St Thomas. It has dropped a bit recently, as it has every where.

My guess is that Marty is saying dollars. He drives around as part of his job, so he probably uses more gas than the average. Remember the island is only so many miles long, so even if you drive from far east to far west every day (22 mi x2 trips x5 days=220 ?) you are probably not driving much more than 200 miles. Lets say you get 25 miles per gallon and pay $2.70 per gallon. You do the math.

While its not very long it is very winding and it is all stop and go traffic so you would use more gas then you would driving highway stateside for example. You might want to figure out wear and tear also. Many of us that drive around alot end up with more then our fair share of flat tires or slow leaks. You'll need to have more tune ups etc..

One bedrooms can range anywhere from $600 to $1600. Just depends where you want to live. Location on the island, condo or apartment, etc... I just got our electric bills at one of my jobs and it was down to .39 a kilowatt. I would say for a frugal small apartment it might start at around $60 to $70 and go up to about $350 to $400 for an energy hog. Depends if you need a/c and things like a washer/dryer, etc...

Internet starts at $50 and goes up (set up fees range from $100 to $200)
Wapa requires a $125 deposit
Innovative requires a simular deposit for a cable box
Innovative monthly runs for about $45 to $55 for the extended basic kind of set up
Trash runs about $65 a month or you can haul it to the dump
Groceries are one of the biggest killers, much more then you pay stateside, figure at least 2x as much.

Betty where do you live with a $70.00 wapa bill ?...........I know no one under $350 .00 in my group of freinds

CG, I wouldn't sweat the small costs (like gas). Typical burdened labor (overheads included) costs will end up being $10k-$20k/month.. that will swamp most other costs. To keep from going back to your sponsors later, asking for "slightly" more funding, I would round costs up significantly (they can budget for reported costs - it's much harder to take "unanticipated" money from other projects later):
- housing: $1250/month
- electric: $500/month
- phone + internet: $150/month
- gas(car): $250/month

what about car rental, food, airlines, research materials? Will you need to rent boats, diving equipment, etc for your research? Will you need to ship things in/out?

My WAPA bill is typically between $70 and $90 a month--1 bedroom, no ac, three ceiling fans, fridge, tv, lamps, stove, washing machine etc...-fairly typical. I could see how a WAPA bill could be over $300 if you run ac constantly...but if you don't have ac and turn off lights when you aren't using them then the bill won't be outrageous.

Also, snapper, when you refer to "Fredrichstad" do you mean Frederiksted?

My WAPA runs $130 a month, 2 people, no a/c.

I've not seen gas on STX for $2.60 -- where is that??

yes thank you so much for the spelling lesson........stixem....you are the only person I have heard of with a bill under $100.00 on this island, I don't have AC or even run my ceiling fans and I live in a 1 bedroom house......I asked my patrons at work today and no one has a $70 .00 bill and again where do you live I will move to that neighborhood

I live in La Grange. Also, all my lights have the energy saving lightbulbs. That probably helps. My apartment was recently rewired so perhaps it is more efficient to begin with? Is that possible? I don't know much about electricity.

Boy do I feel like a power hog! 2 people for 10 nights a month no AC, no hot water and using oil lamps at night . . . still $80 per WAPA bill. I must be doing something really wrong. Can those bulbs save that much?

I don't have A/C, am not home all day, only run 1 ceiling fan, use the energy saving bulbs in the one lamp I use & no way could I have a $70-$80 bill unless I was gone all month. Sure would like to know the secret. My hot water tank is under the kitchen sink & only gets turned on for an hour every AM.

I don't know what the secret is. Maybe they are reading our meter wrong or something? Or maybe we are just super efficient for some reason.

I just got my WAPA bill down to $100.00 flat. I never thought I would be so excited to see an $100.00 WAPA bill. I'm still trying ways to get it lower than that though.

Old or inneficient refrigerators and freezers are energy hogs. Some of the new energy star models use half as much. My WAPA bill for a 1000 sq. ft. cottage runs about $60-70.

cruzkandy - help us learn - what are some of the things you've done to lower your bill?

My refrigerator is energy star. If you're in an apartment, did they rewire you so that a neighbor is getting socked with some of your bill? :@)

I first started pulling out some of the appliances that I don't use all the time and only plugging in the ones i need as needed. Like say the microwave, toaster, electric can opener ect.. I plugged my TV, DVD player and stereo in a surge protector, and just turn it off whenever I'm heading out the door. In my bedroom and my son's room we do not have lights in the ceiling, but there is one switch in each room that runs to an outlet, I placed the lamps in those outlets and when I'm not in need of the lights I switch the switch (lol) and there is no electricity running to them. Stuff like chargers for the cell phones, and for the laptop, aren't plugged in when not in use. And also I changed my light bulbs and only use light when needed. Weekdays, we have movie nights where we turnoff all the lights (like a movie theater) and enjoy a good movie, by the end it's time for bed (at least for my son.) Movie nights are a great family time method and also reduces the need of lights, lol. I really don't like the dark, so while on the laptop at night, instead of having on the big light I use a kiddie night light.

This helped to reduce the my WAPA bill by $30.00 or so, but the big killer was my water heater. Before I plugged out my water heater my bill was down to about 130.00-150.00, now that it's not running, the bill is down to $100.00.

Sorry for going on and on!!!! Hope this helps!!!

Trade that is exactly what I thought 🙂

Pia

Great minds think alike, Piaa.... 😀 Even though my rate is higher than most, I've still never gotten my bill that low even being gone for a week or 2.

Well, it is a duplex apartment and the landlord/owner lives in the other side. He did all the rewiring, so if he somehow screwed up, then that is his problem. He does have a higher wapa bill but that is because he has a giant deep freezer and older appliances. I do what cruzkandy does too--unplug the small appliances and turn off the surge protectors for the computer. My tv is also small and I don't have a cable box. Maybe I'm just lucky in the big WAPA scheme of things. 🙂

Well, it is a duplex apartment and the landlord/owner lives in the other side. He did all the rewiring, so if he somehow screwed up, then that is his problem. He does have a higher wapa bill but that is because he has a giant deep freezer and older appliances. I do what cruzkandy does too--unplug the small appliances and turn off the surge protectors for the computer. My tv is also small and I don't have a cable box. Maybe I'm just lucky in the big WAPA scheme of things. 🙂

Consider yourself lucky. We had an apartment that was under a house, but had a separate meter. Our bill was very high, we found that the landlord had rewired the house so that part of his house was on our bill. We worked things out ok. That was before WAPA was WAPA.