Anyone Else Paying This Much for Winter Heating Costs?

We moved into an old drafty farmhouse a few years ago. We don't have oil, ours is all electric. Our first winter here, I couldn't keep the house warmer than 60*, no matter what I did. And our electric bill was about $500 a month during the winter. I think we paid almost $2,000 in heat that winter. It was awful. I would up having to ask for help from HEAP because we simply couldn't afford it. We did a few improvements the following year. We put blown-in insulation in the whole house and installed baseboard heat upstairs. There wasn't any heat or insulation in the upstairs! That made a HUGE difference. The house stayed warmer, but our bill was still crazy high. This year we got a propane fireplace and it's made a world of difference. My electric bill is about half of what it was last year.
If I were you, I'd talk to your landlord about insulating the house. Insulation, especially if it's the blown in kind, settles over time. It needs to be re-done once in awhile. You can hire someone, but if you're handy types, it's not hard to do yourself.
Do you have plastic on the inside of the windows? That makes a HUGE difference for us. You can buy the kits at just about any store. They're easy to do and are fairly inexpensive.

We used to turn our upstairs heat off during the day and then lower the downstairs heater at night. someone then told me that could be costing us more $ because the heater has to work extra hard to raise the temperature versus just maintaining the temp. Just a thought....

Are the ceilings vaulted at all? The more space there is in the house, the more it will costs. So if your ceilings are extra tall or vaulted then most of the heat is going into the empty space. I love vaulted ceilings, but they are so expensive!
What we do in out very drafty old house is we close most of the vents on the main floor, and some in the upstairs. All of the vents are open downstairs. This way the basement get's most of the heat and then it will rise. If you close off the vents you can lessen the amount that you have to have the heat on because you are allowing the heat to do what it does naturally. Downstairs we maybe had the heat on for 5 minutes every two hours and it's perfectly fine.

$600 bills for any utility is outrageous, unless it's a 10,000 sq ft home! Did you sign a 1 yr lease? I would start looking for a new place and keep the age of the home in mind!

Not sure why this couldn't have occured to me earlier than 3 am...

Is the tank buried? It could be leaking and you would never know It's not uncommon, especially the older the tank is. I really hope you don't have well water - if the tank is leaking, it could get into the well, depending how close they are too each other. Looks like there's a lot of info on the Internet on this subject.

Good luck!

We never ran our upstairs heat even growing up my parents never turned the upstairs heat on they would drop the downstairs heat at bedtime but heat rises and hubby and I did the same thing. We now have ranch and keep the house at about 68 last year winter we went through about $1800-2000 in oil and this year it's ore expensive and it's only going to go up. We don't run our heat until nov 1st. So what you are paying seems about right considering the price increase.
Edited some companies will let you pay for the winter and lock you in a certain price.

How big is the home how many bedrooms that is alot for heating I haven't had that kind of bill for a while we did replace our heating & put in central air 4 yrs ago our bills did go above $200.00 in the winter the summer not so much since all we had was a window unit & no rooms to fill upstairs but now since all the rooms are being occupied we still aren't paying that much.
During the day when we are home it is set to 68 with all the doors closed however the past few days I have put it up to 70 then at night 67 with their doors opened when we leave I set it down to 67.
The door drafts is there draft guards on the bottom of the doors?It helps since most often there is a gap between the doors.
I would suggest since the furnance is 2 years old maybe it has a warranty still have someone come out & look at it see if it needs to be cleaned or if something is wrong with it.There is warm air coming out from the vents does it seem to work properly?