Around here, people will put a post in a 5 gallon bucket and pour cement around it and mount the mail box on the post until the ground thaws.

Although oil companies are still obviously a huge player in Oklahoma, it doesn't seem like the economy relies on them as heavily as they did in the 1980's...which is why the Oklahoma economy was devastated when the price of oil went below $10/gallon. ($22 in today's money).Since then, the state has done a great job of attracting different business segments and industries in order to avoid repeating history.

Typically, about 10 cents per 1000 gallons where I live so it would take a lot of water saved to pay for the toilet, installation, etc.  

The local Hy Vee has a fuel saver program that you get back $.20 per gallon on up to 20 gallons for every $100 gift card. 

I don't think you need to buy at 70% of a discounted value, rather, I would recommend that you buy at a wholesale value, 50-60%, in an area of town that you know, through some help with a realtor and MLS data, that the rents and values have not dropped as much as in other parts of town.With gas at $4 a gallon, it does not take a rocket scientist to figure that if there are more jobs downtown, people will want to live closer to downtown.

Paint is 50-60$ per gallon (acrylic sherwin williams super paint).

When you buy a Gallon of paint, as an individual you don't get the break we have of the cost of buying 50 Gallons, nor do you have crews doing work paid by the organization.

Plus I only have to have 1 5 gallon bucket of wall paint to worry about at a time, not tons of cans to dig through.

I lean more towards Lowes because it's closer (although home depot is not that far from me) for everything except paint, which I typically buy from the local paint stores (mis-tints)-typically $25 per 5 gallon.

So, we had to buy special cold-weather paint to complete the job, which was about $20/gallon more than standard exterior paint.