I think you're remembering another poster talking about not heating when they're not home, since we keep all the thermostats set to 62'F when we're not home. We used a little over 1000 gallons last year, and doing the degree-day math, we'd be on target for 1400 gallons in a normal year. I suspect our friends further north are using significantly more than that, but this is a fairly large historic house near Philadelphia, with plaster-on-stone exterior walls (no interior insulation).
I think it all averages out, in the grand scheme of things. If you live up here, you have to heat your home. Home prices, salaries, and lifestyle are tuned to the local cost of living. When shopping for houses, you quickly learn to factor the money you're going to spend on heating and cooling into the equation, along with your mortgage and property taxes.
What I wonder is how you justfy the cost of installing a wood stove, if you're only saving $100/month on heating! It must surely be that you enjoy having and running a stove. In my situation, I think the stove plus install will likely pay for itself in the first two years.