How the f*** are you all managing your electric bills?

[cofingalthetime]

I don't have gas...
Electric has gone up from 139 per month, to 225, and now the latest is 450...

I don't know how I'm supposed to manage.

Do you all pay by DD. I don't want a meter, I had one before, and it was a nightmare, so expensive.

If 450 goes out of my account next month I won't be able to buy food or petrol or clothes

I got the 150 from the council, and paid it immediately into my electric ,b ut that's a drop in the ocean. How are you all managing.

I'm really really scared.

What kind of rate could you get last September? I know some people locked in three year contracts then with the kind of foresight that I can only envy.

No I am definitely better off full time cater on UC than I was part time work plus tax credits

*carer

To the lady giving up work . Thank you to my son who has just left for a 12 hour shift in a food production company and is paying a lot of tax.Also to my 70 year old DH paying a lot too.
Your Welcome

I turn off everything at the wall when I go to bed at night, except the kitchen clock and the fridge freezer. Even the router and the land line go off. I've cleaned all the fluff off the bars on the back of the fridge freezer.

And the central heating (gas) went off on April 1st and I've used up the last of the logs in the wood burner. I'm already stacking prunings for next winter.

I have turned into my mother

Is that directed at me ?

caring for my severely disabled dc full time after having to make the only decision I could that would secure us financially

When I got my revised bill for utilities I sat down and looked at the figures. I can’t afford more specialised childcare to be able to work more hours or to get a second job so I took the best and quickest financial option available to us.

I’ve been eligible to do this for 6.5 years and struggled to keep on working - now the gas and electric bills are so high it’s the only way for us to survive so I’ve used the benefits safety net

Jfc, do you have any idea how much money carers save society?

Can you put less into savings OP for the time being? Is the reading accurate?

Haven’t rtft so sorry if this has already been said but I would work out what it would cost you based on your current annual usage (which should be on your bills) on their standard variable rate. I think you’ll find it’s much cheaper than fixing at 450 a month.

Our bill went from about £70 to £180 that’s for gas and electric, direct debit, for a three bedroom detached house. It’s with Bulb so god knows what will happen once the administration has gone through.

I’m also on prepayment meter and have only noticed a small increase in my weekly top up, I will be paying a little more on gas over summer to tide us over a bit of the winter

I would contact your supplier and ask them is this the lowest price I can get from you as I am struggling to pay you and eat. I have sky but it’s now unplugged and I am not watching it. I wake up at 6am and switch off the lights and cooker at the fuse box and only switch it back on when its dark when I had to defrost my fridge I switched off the sockets at the fuse box too
then put them back on. I am now living on foods I don’t need to cook such as salads smoothies and sandwiches. I only have my hot water on twice a day for the shower, do one or 2 washing machine runs a week and that’s it. Instead of the constant teas and coffees I normally have I now only have bottled water. Haven’t used the central heating since 1st of April. It’s terrible. It’s a running joke in our household that I am going to buy camping gear and live in the garden. Let’s hope the government does something soon or we will have riots. let us know how you get on. I am with octopus I found for me they are the cheapest.

Tbh I’m in major debt with gas/electricity that I’m not to bothered about at this moment. The government should not have let such a hike in prices that are unaffordable for your average house hold. I have 3 kids 2 have autism one of them has severe autism he is non verbal. I am full time career still trying to get DLA for my youngest mostly who is non verbal(that’s a whole different story not as easy as they make out it is to get dla) so I’m on very very low money, and I can hardly afford to feed the kids and pay rent at the moment. Iv been out of work for 4 years and was used to working but it is not possible as the amount of apps and calls from school and nursery is a full time job on its own. My youngest sleeps 4 hours a night, so I get about 3. So at the moment I pay what I can afford towards my bills but I haven’t been able to since last year, the equipment my youngest needs is very expensive and his needs comes first. I have been trying for dla for the last 2 years, the form takes 3.5 hours to complete. And I am once again waiting for a response fingers crossed because I can’t afford to feed myself, I eat kids scraps just now. I am hoping things will get better and everything will get sorted out.

its not a complete myth, yes there are jobs out there however most are poorly paid and it’s one of the reasons people are reluctant to take on the jobs. Someone being out of work for a number of years would struggle finding a well paid job compared to someone with recent work history.

To the lady giving up work. Thank you for being a full time carer and saving taxpayers a fortune in care home fees.

I’d like to point out for my £180 we don’t skimp on what we use. There’s no hearing on as it’s so warm but we use the same things as normal, gas cooker, shower, hair dryer, PlayStation, lights, etc.

I am starting to worry if we are being undercharged judging by peoples comments…

Thankyou

You should all be thanking her and the army of people who give up their jobs to save the country billions on taking care of its severely disabled citizens.

You're welcome.

Honestly have had a good cry over this thread . I didn’t want to give up but looking at the figures there was no choice. If the gas and electric hadn’t gone up I wouldn’t have chosen to.

its a bad situation for so many I know other parents with disabled dc in similar situations. A lot of us use more than average gas and electric too. I actually think the government need to do more (what I’m not sure but something to address this problem)

So we got a two year fix with Sainsbury's energy. That got us £60 worth of nectar points for signing up. The tariff is electricity 20.009p per kWh with 24.02p a day standing charge. Gas 3.847p per kWh with 26.12p a day standing charge.

At the time it sounded high. We had just come off a tariff paying just over 12p a kWh for electric. Just a week after we signed up the comparison sites stopped doing quotes for energy.

I've been keeping an eye on my Scottish Power account as we switched to the SVR when our last deal came to an end last year. They put us up to £222 per month back in February from £190, which didn't seem a massive increase so I was concerned it had been underestimated.

I've just had the next bill - 1st March to 20th May (81 days) = £489.55, so not great but not horrendous either. They haven't wanted to put my DD up either.

81 days is the equivalent of around £183 per month but I realise the winter months will be more expensive than summer, especially with the future cost increase coming. Hopefully our monthly cost will go down now the heating is off, so we'll build up a bit of a credit before the new cost increase later in the year.

We've not done anything significant to cut costs, but will do if the prices go up massively.

We appreciate we're in a fortunate position to not have to worry about it, but I do feel for those that are - I grew up in a very cold house due to not being able to afford the bills and I know it's not fun.

@cofingalthetime you'll definitely find the monthly DD on the SVR is less than £450 a month. I'm surprised they're even offering you another fixed rate deal at the moment. Scottish Power don't even have a fixed rate deal as an option for me on their app at the moment.

You need to do your own calculations as bills vary so much due to different house sizes, types of insulation, types of heating and what temperature/how often, frequency of use of shower, tumble dryer, oven etc, anything 'extra' like a fish tank, hot tub etc.

People in well insulated homes with a modern boiler and timer system who put socks and jumpers on instead of the heating when it's cold, have one short shower per person per day, use the eco settings on their dishwasher and washing machine and only run these devices when full and line dry instead will use a tiny fraction of the people in drafty homes who have the heating running 24/7 while they sit around in t shirts and bare feet before they have a 10 minute shower and a bath every day, and wash all their clothes and towels on the fast wash after a single use and then tumble dry it all. Two/three/four times difference easily.

The price cap tariff works out at £162 pm, so you're paying more than that, so it's not like its unrealistically low what you're paying.

They will do fuck all. They know that we will never abandon our loved ones no matter what.
My children are both disabled, as am I. I am s/e and my husband is a f/t carer for 3 people while struggling with his own health. I do what I can for our sons within my own physical limitations.

We save the government a fucking fortune and are begrudged the pittance we are allocated. People who wang on about My Taxes should enjoy thinking about the tax hike needed to pay for all the care needs of all the people with disabilities if all the unpaid carers said enough is enough and put their loved ones in the hands of social services.

I spent the last few years replacing every device I could in the house with the highest rated ones I could, setting up small scale solar to recharge tablets/phones/ etc.. (not connected into the household electricity) swapping all the lightbulbs to the low energy ones, getting electric blankets & underblankets etc.. (which cost a fraction of the cost of having the heating on) & creating habits (like turning everything off apart from the fridge/freezer which runs on solar anyway) that meant I more than halved my gas & electricity usage as I wanted to keep my costs as low as possible.

It means my bill has stayed about the same amount of money as it was over a year ago but my actual usage is lower in kw hours.