How much are your gas and electric direct debits?

[Candlescushionsandthrows]

Just that really. Ours is going up to £250 per month.

We're a family of 4 in a 3 bed house. No idea how we can cut back any more.

Everything gets switched off when not in use. Showers instead of baths, tumble drier no longer being used.

3 bed house on my own with 2 cats. £31 electricity, £30 gas. I work long hours full time and everything is off when I'm out. The cats have cosy beds and warm blankets with heated cushions in winter.

The direct debit amount is largely irrelevant. You need to look at the unit cost / standing charges (which you can't control) and how much you actually use (which you can control).

The monthly direct debit isn't for unlimited use. I am in a couple of fb groups and it is scary how many people don't realise that and the energy companies really don't make it clear. It isn't a mobile phone contact.

Look at how many gas / elec units you used in the last 12 months. Work out what it is likely to cost on the current rates (and potential October increase) and divide it by 12. That is roughly what your DD needs to be - NOT a random figure the utility company decides.

I'm on an Octopus Agile Tariff where it takes a reading every 30 minutes - the prices change and I only pay for what I use. This month it's £62 for both. There's 3 of us in a 3 bedroomed semi-detached.

Yes I do realise that it's usage. I know that it's not a case of using as much as you like for the £250!

We are just with Octopus on their variable tariff which I believe is as cheap as you're going to get at the moment because of the price cap. There are no fixed deals to be had.

What I can't understand is how we are using so much. We moved house roughly 5 years ago and since we moved our energy bills suddenly went sky high.

The only thing that I can think to do is monitor our meter readings closely and cut things out to see what's draining the electricity.

2 adults in 4-bed house + 1 extra adult 50% of the time. All WFH/someone in the house pretty much 100% of the time. £140 dd fixed runs out next month; quotes for our next 2 year fix are £370!!!!!

Are you in credit or debit on the account? Do you know how many units of G&E you use per year to work out whether the £250 pm is reasonable. Many providers are setting DDs too high to contribute towards higher winter 2022 prices, but we now know we're getting the £400, which will help.

But you need to look at what you are heating. Most other uses are a drop in the ocean in comparison, unless perhaps you have gaming PCs running for hours at a time.

Shower - if electric, costs about £3 an hour to run. How many showers per day, how long are people in.

4 people each having one 10 minute shower a day could cost about £60 pm, just on showering. Plus many on MN report a lot more showering than that.

What's your heating and insulation like? Can you lower the temperature and make sure people are wearing socks and jumpers rather than heating to t-shirt weather. Also use a timer and only heat when you are in, and never in the summer, at night or when you are out.

What cooking do you do? If you use the oven a lot for things like fish fingers, chips etc, an air fryer could use less electricity. Likewise a slow cooker for casseroles.

Finally laundry - do you wear clothes until they are dirty, fill the machine and use the long cycles which use less energy or are you washing everything daily on the quick wash, which uses more energy and has a smaller load, so needs more cycles too.

Be aware that the unit cost on the new fix is likely to be far higher than doing nothing and rolling over onto the capped rate so unlikely to be worth taking.

You'd likely be agreeing to pay over the odds for your G&E for the next two years.

Ours was £107 on a fixed rate, now £190 on SVR, we are 2 retired adults in a 1930s 3 bed detached house.

We pay £210 for electricity (no gas) a month. 3 of us in a 2 bed flat. ☹️

Mine is fixed until Oct 2023, by some fate of god I must have switched just before this all kicked off so only pay £103 for one adult and two teens. By oct 2023 both dc will be at Uni so I hope I can be more frugal. I work away a couple of nights a week too and have a log burner so will use that when they arent at home. I will struggle a lot as a single income household, will have to do more hours at work. Mortgage has just gone up £60 a month from the end of my fixed deal and I have fixed for 5 years now.

£150- octopus requested £250 and I declined and agreed £150- I’ll top up if I need to.
Similar here. I'm currently paying £175/month and slightly in credit. Octopus want £253/month. I've overruled them and kept payments at £175. I recognise the credit I build up over the summer might not get me through next winter but I'll put the money somewhere else so I can make top-up payments as necessary then.
I'm reluctant to build up too big a credit balance as there's still a chance the whole privatised consumer energy market will fall apart within the next year or two and I don't want loads of money trapped if/when it happens.

Funnily enough Octopus have set our DD too low. We're currently paying £160 pm and have a debt of around £300 on the account, which is slowly decreasing as we use less in the spring/summer.

But our annual usage gives an average monthly cost of more like £230. I'll just let them increase it when the review is due in October, we'll have been with them a year then after transferring from Avro when they went bust.

@BarbaraofSeville our shower is heated by the hot water system which is gas. Our oven and hob are gas. Funnily enough the gas isn't actually too high. It's the electricity that's massively high.

We do use the washing machine every single day, this is in spite of me guarding the laundry basket but I only ever run it on a quick 40 degree wash for 30 minutes. Dishwasher is also on every day but on an eco cycle.

We've been round every room checking what's running on electricity and there isn't all that much really.

We aren't in credit either unfortunately but not in loads of debit but we are paying for what we use.

We are running an extra fridge in the garage and a chest freezer, but we batch cook and freeze a lot so we don't end up ringing for a takeaway when we're tired and don't want to cook.

I only ever run it on a quick 40 degree wash for 30 minutes

Are you aware that this could be using more electricity than the standard or eco cycle that takes hours? The water is heated faster and the machine agitates more. The long cycles have the clothes soaking instead, which uses less energy.

If you're showering and cooking on gas, then it is strange that your electricity is high. How many units a year are you using? You don't have a forgotten hot water immersion heater or storage heater do you? No sneaky fan heaters that get left on? No fish tanks or hot tubs that you've forgotten to mention? Old style halogen light bulbs? Some of them can use quite a lot.

We were also with Avro and I found that despite giving them regular meter readings they didn't bill us regularly.

We're with Eon and pay a fixed DD all year around based on annual usage so are in credit in summer months and it seems to balance out in the winter
We were paying £168pm on their fixed rate
We have now gone on to variable rate and its gone up to £268pm based on last year's cossumption
The fixed they offered us were a lot more
We're a family of 6 in a 5 bed detached built about 25 years ago
Both wfh and kids have computers on a lot and we use the tumble dryer and dishwasher a lot but trying to cut down

We've just bought a new washing machine and I read the instructions in great detail and it states that the quick wash at 30 or 40 is by far the most efficient for both water consumption and electricity costs
The next best was the eco cycle which is getting on for 3 hours

No I didn't know that about the fast wash cycles. I suppose this is where smart meters come in handy.

No immersion heater or anything like that just a combo boiler. There is a towel radiator but that's on a timer for an hour morning and evening.

We do need to change some of the bulbs to low energy, although I never leave lights on but that might not be helping.

Im not sure how many units we are using without checking but I will have a look.

£85 in total and I live alone. I'm very careful though- no heating since Christmas, only short showers, use the air fryer instead of oven, etc. Given how little I use, I find £85 very expensive and it's only going to get worse.

For reference, I use between 7.5 and 8.5kw per day

I'm with EDF and they're prompting me to fix. I'm not sure what's the right thing to do - I pay monthly and submit meter readings into the app. Standard Variable. Might just white knuckle it through the winter.

£103, two people in a small three bed. Gas heating, stove, hot water. Octopus fixed 15% above the cap until March 2023.

@Svara can I ask when you fixed?

We're in a two bed rented terraced house and are using £120 but paying £180 to prepare for the price rise in autumn. They wanted us to pay £220 but we said no thanks. Ridiculous to ask people to pay 100 quid over use!
Sorry to hear about your situation x