Updating the house situation

We had the furnace looked at today. No repair was needed. Somehow the repair manual got sucked into the fan! Still had to pay the service fee, so the guy went ahead and looked over the whole thing. Bad news: he says we've got about a year left out of that thing. There's a crack between the heating element (put simply: the fire) and the blower, which is the beginning of the end. So, now DH and I are trying to decide if we want to just bite the bullet and do it this year (to take advantage of rebates from our gas/electric company as well as tax rebates) or next year. We definitely want to go high-efficiency. It's not that much more $$$ than the regular ones, and it'll save on heating bills. So, that's the news regarding the house. On a good note, the heat is functional again! Oh, and praise God that this happened this year so we weren't surprised by a broken furnace, or had problems with carbon monoxide!