hear ya on the wood heating.
We cut our propane bill down 1,000 bucks a year by going to the woods < with property owner permission of course> to cut the fallen tree’s for our fire wood.
Yeah, it’s work but that xtra 1000+ bucks in our pocket was priceless ~
Living along the Upper Yukon, it gets cold about Jan-Feb; always get 3 weeks minus 65 at 6 am. We have 2400 sq ft cabin and heat bunch of empty space (high ceilings driving me nuts), we go through 10-12 cord from Sept to May. I can walk out back door, go literally 250 miles in any direction, nothing but birch, spruce, and mnts. So everybody has a wood trail out back, we get our wood once we have a good hard trail for snowmachines. I can load up 4-5 birch trees that are 12 inches at base in my wood sled and skandic pulls it all home. I get maybe 40-50 loads a winter, one a day when I have time; my winter exercise. I easily have 20 cord stacked and covered at all times. Me really likes spending time in the woods, see lynx, moose, marten, even have come up on wolverine on my trail. Wolves use it too, and once I stop baiting my bear barrel, the bear follow my atv tracks towards the house too, ha. They must wonder why the goodies have stopped and come looking to find where I live. Dogs at house always run them off when they wind them.
There's just so much everybody can do to be more efficient & cut costs, thus allowing more bucks to go for toys, savings, or whatever.
No joke, fuel is quite expensive in rural Alaska, but we don't use nearly as much as urban people use. It's $4.60 a gallon here now but I don't go through $150/month in fuel and most of it goes into atvs, snowmachines. Common for us to put 2k miles a winter on snowmachines.
We mostly use stihls out here, everybody buys 250's. Last year I picked up a 260 pro, like almost 600 bucks; so much more the saw than 250 stihl; better built, will last a lifetime; get one with the money you save.