A little too much spike in your eggnog?

https://www.mass.gov/service-details/when-am-i-protected-from-having-my-utilities-shut-off

And I'd really suggest someone like you lives in a place like Buffalo. If your view of America is you need generational wealth to be happy, it's because you are in the bubble of everything being overly expensive.

My friends in Buffalo, are all happy and live very comfortably. Even without a college degree, I have one friend that just built a house that could be in a magazine with the most over the top outdoor pavilion I've ever seen.

Another friend who moved there for college and decided to stay, works in a call center, has a nice house, actually his second one and rents the first one, so he owns two homes on a call center salary and is able to raise his three kids who do all the kids sports, and they have a jet ski and belong to the yacht club.... On a call center salary.

Another one works for the federal government, not overly paid, but him and his teacher husband have a fully remodeled home, 3 new cars, every outdoor lawn and snow tool you could imagine, and are well funded for retirement with all the savings from living in a place that's cheap.

I have a family member who lives in a smaller city in NY, not Buffalo, but works at a copy place for $16 an hour and owns a home.

I think just living in MA you have a skewed view of what middle class is, that things are unattainable. That's just here and San Francisco. Most of the country still has rich local culture, and the ability to own a home.

Some of the most common posts on here are about high housing and high electric rates (and I'd add high water rates). Buffalo has the same electric company as I have here (National Grid), yet their rate is 70% less than here. Everyone is on Natural Gas rather than the number of people here who use oil, far better for the environment.

The fact that Buffalo voted for Biden at a lower rate than Boston, doesn't help me much when my electric bill is three times more in MA, and my house costs more than a mansion in Buffalo.

Buffalo and Cleveland are not empty farmland. They are cities with pro sports teams (that normal people can afford to go to), gastropubs, hot pot, and outdoor yoga. Dunkin and Papa John's both failed in Buffalo, and local coffee shops are prevalent in city centers and libraries. Without the overpriced real estate and traffic jams. The Wegmans parking lot is just as crowded there.

And what good is the culture of a place if you have to work crazy hours, live so far away from the city to enjoy it, and your rent is so high you can't afford to go to Mare (My wife's favorite Boston restaurant).

You think people that grew up in Cleveland or Buffalo didn't grow up with education? Cleveland with one of the top hospitals in the US, ranked higher than Mass General? Buffalo with the first cancer hospital in the US? You really have a superiority complex if you think Massachusetts is the only place with education. That is really looking down on their mostly post-1900 immigrant population.

I say that all the time, and the response I hear is the culture and activities we have in Boston. What good is 500 museums if you are spending all your time working and commuting to afford to live in Boston. You can live in Cleveland or Buffalo where you have a 10 min commute to work from your gorgeous $300k house, and still a few dozen museums you can easily visit whenever you want.

But this is just the cost for CT... 1% of the national population. Without even factoring the likely cost overruns, it would be $25,000 per resident in the state.

I'm not a tax advisor, but if you earn more than $8k in MA as a non-resident, you need to file a return. It could be in your interest to do so anyway as you could very well have overpaid them in withholdings.

You'll file a return in MA as a non-resident first and then one as a resident in RI. When you do your resident return in RI, you'll put how much tax you paid in MA. You'll need to ask someone in RI what kind of credit RI gives you if it's 100% or not, but usually it is. Example, if you were supposed to pay $6,000 in tax in RI according to your income but you paid $5,000 in MA, then you only owe RI $1,000 (if they give you the full credit). MA does, I earn income out of state, but haven't done it the other way around to know about RI.

An Air Conditioner has a COP (coefficient of performance) of 4 while electric heat is 1. Which means you can move 4 units of air-conditioning with the same electric use as moving only 1 unit of heat. So already AC is more efficient, add to that AC is lowering the temp usually no more than 10 degrees, and heat is routinely 40 degrees, you are talking around 8 times the daily AC use for heat.

I'd certainly lower that thermostat and bundle up.

Also, as others have mentioned, getting a third party electric supplier is good, and you have to be on top of the rate - I like Inspire or Ambit as they don't have cancellation fees. It's predicted next winter will be much much worse electric rates than this winter, since MA is dependent on natural gas from Europe (and thus Russia) for our electricity production.

It's 48¢. You can look on their website. 11.04¢ for delivery, 2.7¢ for MassSave 33.821¢ for supply. Comes to 47.6¢. It was to be 48.2¢ but they lowered delivery about a half a cent. Again, how can National Grid offer electricity for 17¢ in NY and 48¢ here? It's local politics, nothing to do with profit. Their profit is capped by the state. They have to do everything they are told by the state.

National Grid is out of SMART rebates, the state didn't allot them correctly.

I have National Grid in Massachusetts, I had National Grid when I lived in New York. National Grid in New York right now is about 17¢ (just looked at a family members bill today), when it is 48¢ in Massachusetts. It has nothing to do with being a publicly traded company and everything to do with the laws in Massachusetts that make it more expensive for consumers.

You can choose between like 200 suppliers. The list is on the state's website. National Grid posts their rate for the next 6 months 2 months in advance. I check daily until it's posted. All suppliers are way up to account for our lack of natural gas pipelines into MA and our need to rely on Europe and thus Russia, unlike the rest of the US that has cheap flowing natural gas and electricity. They say next winter will be way worse than this winter, so buckle up and get in a contract with a third party supplier. Ambit and Inspire are two of my favorites since they have contracts without cancellation fees.

Will you be able to put the flooring back down? They wanted it to be so high that I wouldn't be able to put the flooring down. They agreed to make it high on the sides, low in the middle so I could put the plywood down in the middle, and before they did the insulation, I added 2x4s across the sides so I could put plywood on top of those.

In MA it does not affect net metering, you still get your summer credits based off your utility's rates at that time. But when you buy back your energy, you get it at the third party rate (hopefully lower). Note these suppliers sometimes have lower starting rates and raise them after your contract. Sometimes this isn't the case, but if it is that's why it's good to be hunting around for cheaper rates before your contract is up and why it's nice to not have a termination fee.

Gas as in Natural Gas? Yes, that's much cheaper if you have the same electric rate as the OP. Much cheaper! Assuming again a bad efficiency of 80%, a 2.6COP, natural gas would need to be under $4.35 a therm, which Eversource is $2.51. if you have a 92% efficiency, you'd be at $5 equivalent, so natural gas would be half the cost of the heat pump.

Well, a higher efficiency makes oil an even cheaper proposition over electricity. The boiler itself may be rates at 80% but other system inefficiencies also take place, it only operates at maximum efficiency right after cleaning and gradually gets worse. I've pretty much calculated my system at 72% and that's with a 12 year old boiler. But if this person gets 72% or 80%, you can recalculate the math and it's going to result in higher equivalent oil prices, meaning you'd want to use oil even more often then electricity.

Certainly have to lock in providers sooner rather than later. You should lock in before the winter months. I did last year for 9.5¢ when National Grid was 14¢, and this September for 12.69¢ after national grid announced their 33.8¢. Ambit has a plan for 23¢, saves you 10¢ at least, and I don't think there is an early termination fee. Inspire has some good rates, cheaper I think but I can't get them to show up right now, also no termination fee. Constellation has even lower rates, but they have long contracts with big cancellation fees.

Check to see exactly which gree you have. In Massachusetts, roughly half your heating load is for when the temperature is above 27°, half below. So if I look, the only Gree 24k I found that fits the 23seer, 10.5 HSPF is their multi+plus unit, which at 27° has a COP of 1.76 at full capacity. They don't list their partial capacities, assuming your home doesn't need the full BTU load, efficiency may be higher, something like 2.6 COP.

If we assume your oil boiler has poor efficiency, let's guess and say 65%, oil has a BTU of 90,000 adjusted for efficiency. divided by 3412 btu per kWh of electricity, divided by the COP (we're guessing at the 2.6 since we don't know the load or the efficiency of the gree at a lower capacity), times your electric rate of $.482, we get $4.89. Oil would have to be more than $4.89 per gallon to make you want to use your heat pump all year. Certainly below 27°, you'd want to use oil. Now, if your heat pump needs to pump out it's full capacity at 27°, the COP is 1.76, using that same formula above, Oil would have to be more than $7.22 a gallon for you to want to use electricity. So certainly, you'd want to use oil if your heat pump is operating at high speeds.

I should make note that when I say "you'd want to use oil" I mean from a financial standpoint - I always get one or two comments about environmental impact. And of course, I am only guessing at your oil boiler's efficiency, good ones are in the high 80's, you mentioned an old one, so I went with 65%, Same with the COP assuming your home doesn't need it's full 24,000 btu heating load, if it does, you'll be closer to that higher break even point for oil, meaning you'll want to be using oil, certainly with temperatures below around 30°. Check with gree and your specific unit to see if they have better numbers for you, and if you can get an energy meter on your unit to see how many kw your unit pulls to see how close to capacity it is running at any given point.

This is something a legal service plan works great for. It's many times offered as a voluntary employee benefit for $5-10 a week, or could be purchased on your own. As an employee benefits agent myself, I tell people I don't sell these plans to get rich, I sell them because it saves you from going broke. They let you get advice on any legal matter so it saves you from getting into bigger legal trouble later on. I'd check to see if your workplace offers it and see if you can get enrolled now; some plans would allow you to get assistance on this very matter right away, saving you on lawyer fees right from the start.

You have to have a good electric rate. Right now, gas is cheaper than a heat pump to operate. You'd need electric at under 17¢, and that's just the utility difference, it doesn't even pay you back for the cost of the heat pump, which for me was $18,000, after the $10,000 rebate. $28k without the rebate.

What is the rate? Most of that increase is because you used more.

I was talking to a homeless guy today who told me we are expecting some flakes this weekend. Damn that made me out of touch to get my news from a homeless guy, but I guess he needs to know more than I do.