The cost of the high effeciency is not only the amount of water you save but
you also use less soap and the cloths come out much dryer in a front loading
machine thus saving you on drying time and energy as well. I have a Bosch
front loader and it was well worth the extra money. Until I got this washer
my dryer could never keep up when doing several loads at once, now the dryer
is done before the next load of wash so that tells me I'm saving money in
the drying process as well.

Rich

We did the same, we found the same.
We did go for the Maytag Neptune series, and I know there is a lot of
buzz about them not being all that, but our experience has been good,
no problems to date. I bought scratch and dent ones and saved over 1/3
of the price. One tip on front-loaders; use baking soda in addition to
the soap. That eliminated front-loader odor. I buy a bucket of it at
Sam's for ~$5 so not much additional expense there, it lasts forever.