My gas and electric bill is £242 per month!!

[Meltinthemiddle]

For 3 bed end terrace. 2 adults and 2 kids! We are with SSE and out electric £162 and gas £80. I've tried looking at others on u switch but apparently this is one of the cheaper one only saving £10 with some others. Why is it so expensive 😭

Your bill will show your estimated usage for the year in kWh you need to use these figures when doing comparisons. If you use the costs your paying now the monthly cost will not come down.

I love in a huge crafty Victorian house and mine isn't that much. Something is wrong!

Drafty not crafty. Although the way it eats my money is crafty!

We used Look After My Bills and have ended up with People's Energy, our monthly dd is £135 for both gas and electric, 4 bed Victorian semi, we're currently well in credit but this evens out across the year.

We are 7000 khW a year for electricity! But our gas usage is only around 1300 so we pay £130 a month or so. My husband works from home in IT and has multiple pieces of computer equipment running all day, I work from home and have the same, etc. so it's not a massive shock. And we use tumble drier, have games consoles on most evenings, etc. So I don't think it's that mad if you're using a lot of stuff

The gas seems really high though if that's year round. Check you haven't got a leak!

We only use £80/£90 worth of gas around December/January time and then it falls again and at the moment we are using around £25 worth.

Electricity is pretty much around £80 a month every month

That is a LOT

Our rates are £45.80 for electricity and £65.61 for gas for a 4 bedroom detached house in Pennine Yorkshire. We both WFH and put the heating on whenever we feel cold. We are with Utility Warehouse.

I'm a bit confused why our gas is so low actually. We have gas central heating and a gas hob 🤔 Guess I'm spending my evening looking at old bills and meter readings!

We live in a 5 bed detached, both work from home, tumble dry etc and we pay less than £100 a month. Can you check your appliances? Do you have a really old tumble dryer or something like that? How are you using so much electricity

agree with pps suggestions, it's often immersion left on all the time. also I came accross a rogue fridge once which was causing trouble using loads of leccy. but electricity is going to get more expensive unfortunately.
re the tumble dryer: apparently the lakeland heated airers are a godsend for drying clothes!

That does sound too high. Extended 60s semi here and we probably average £120 pcm year round. We are up North, too, so winter bills can be high.

@earsup

switch to octopus...the cheapest right now...i just did a 3 year fix with them....sse are expensive as are bulb...immersion heaters etc suck loads of power...anything that heats...flooring etc...you need to say what you have that might affect the bills.

They aren't for me. Blanket advice about which supplier is cheapest doesn't work, as it seems to depend on where you live. Octopus have never come up cheapest on comparison sites (compared by actual usage) for me.

We’re a 3 bed ems terrace with single skin construction (so bugger all insulation). Thermostat is set at 18 degrees all year round, two of us working 100% from home and we use the tumble dryer when needed.

We pay £118 per month combined.

5 bed detached, at home all the time as my husband is wfh. 5 children, loads of devices, washing and dryer on constantly and we pay less than £200 a month for both gas and electric. Yours seems rather high to me.

mines 347 a month

Have you got a leaky fridge or freezer seal? Been there. The new appliance paid for itself in energy saving quite quickly.

Ours was that much with sse. 3 bed, 4 family home, same as you. We switched to octopus energy and it’s about £40 a month cheaper. I accept we just guzzle a lot of energy though- we all have gadgets on non stop charging and gaming etc etc tumble on non stop and so on.

We've just had a huge shock. We currently pay £108 for both gas n leccy with EDF. We're ar the end of a fix and their cheapest 2 year fix will increase our payment to £175 per month.

When you go to uswitch, they will only show you plans which they can switch you to. If you filter in the deals where you manage the switch yourself, there are much cheaper prices available.

We did this and are going with the flexible Octopus tariff. It's not fixed, but there is no exit fee and will cost us £145 per month (saving £30 per month). I'll just have to keep my eye on energy prices (joy!).

As an aside, the wholesale price of energy has increased massively in the last couple of months, but I haven't read any sensible reasons for this.

It's a paid DD, dh has been giving them the readings. We only have heating on in autumn/winter. No airing cupboard. It's hard to judge as moved to new property just before lock down and now dh working from home. No hot tub but we now have a dish and fan oven. Always had tumble dryer. My teenage son does shower every day and uses the hair dryer for ages!!

Everything has gone up this year, we've moved to octopus and DD is £168 but we're only 4 months in and have credit of nearly £400, were going to wait until the worst of the river is over and look at whether we can reduce the DD. It's been higher because of home working but also there are now no days s week the house is enough, DS is looked after here by grandma two days a week, me or DH two days a week, were all around at weekends and the day he's at nursery is my WFH day. Very different to pre DS when DH and I would lock up and everything would be switched off for 8-10 hours a day

Are you in Credit?
Just because they ask for a certain amount per month doesn't mean that's the amount you are using each month. You need to look at your actual usage rather than the direct debit amount

I submit readings each month and within minutes I get an updated statement with how much gas/electric we have used. We have 2 adults, 2 teens using showers daily, electric oven, gas central heating, etc. Dont have a tumble dryer or my electricity bill would be even higher

*we're going to wait until the worst of the winter is over...

@KingdomScrolls

Everything has gone up this year, we've moved to octopus and DD is £168 but we're only 4 months in and have credit of nearly £400, were going to wait until the worst of the river is over and look at whether we can reduce the DD. It's been higher because of home working but also there are now no days s week the house is enough, DS is looked after here by grandma two days a week, me or DH two days a week, were all around at weekends and the day he's at nursery is my WFH day. Very different to pre DS when DH and I would lock up and everything would be switched off for 8-10 hours a day

It's very easy to change your direct debit with Octopus and you can do it yourself online/on the app.

@Meltinthemiddle do you have a combination boiler or a big cylinder tank?