My energy bill will still quadruple even if I put a jumper on?

[verdantverdure]

AIBU to think that even if I participate in this weird new “wear warm clothes in wintertime” trend, shut doors, buy draught excluders, buy Oodies, buy thermal curtains, and buy a £300 air fryer my energy bill will still quadruple.

Especially as most people wete already doing all or some of that.

Nothing short of turning the heating off is going to make much difference is it?

(Although of course I'm trying.)

After all, the money saving expert himself, Martin Lewis, says this isn’t something individuals can fix on their own , and it would be pretty arrogant to think I know better than him.

The "Put a jumper on" advice doesn't help British businesses at all does it?

What do you think?

The BBC shared an infographic the other day with helpful tips about wearing more warm clothes, taking fewer baths, doing less laundry which would save the average household around… £200 a year. When bills are expected to be several thousand.

Can’t believe how many are missing the point of OP’s post. There’s nothing remarkable about wearing jumpers in winter, the point is that all the jumpers in the world won’t stop your bills from going up and up. Pointing the finger at individual consumers and making it our jobs to find little ways to reduce our bills is trying to bail out a sinking ship with a teaspoon.

FWIW I work from home and in winter I often do so in a big hooded dressing gown, thick socks, slippers etc but that doesn’t help if your fingers are too cold to type.

I'm sorry if that's how it came across @oldwhyno. It wasn't my intention at all. I just don't think it's realistic to think we can avoid our bills quadrupling sometime in the next year.

I was also irked by all the "put a jumper on" advice. As if most of us don't already wear warm clothes when it's cold.

It's going up again in October though, and not expected to stop there.

I think reducing your thermostat is supposed to save up to 10% of your heating bill but i have seen other articles suggest lower amounts of 4%

See mine is going to £200 DD, and I'm a low user. There's nothing else I can cut. Use about 2000kwh electric a year and 6000kwh gas

£200 a month puts me in fuel poverty, that's for a single person in a 2 bed apartment, everything is energy efficient, I don't own a dryer or dishwasher and I'm miserly with heating already
£200 out of min wage is a lot on top of council tax, mortgage, water, food...

Someone who has been used to paying £165 over the last few years will be paying something like £450 a month in January and £550 in April.

I wear many layers in winter already. If I wear many more, I won't be able to move.

However, I do seem to remember jumpers being warmer when I was younger. Is that because they were made of proper wool? It's so disappointing when you buy a big, thick jumper..... and it's not actually very warm.

YANBU to point out that for the vast majority of people even if they do limit their useage to a smaller or larger extent then their energy bills will still be higher than last year - although quadrupling is an overestimate for a lot of people - once I've factored in the govt 400 quid I'll probably only be down a tenner or so a month if my useage remains the same.

YABU to think that currently most households don't waste energy to some degree and that by limiting this, whether this is by not putting the heating on as much, not using a tumble dryer, showering less often, whatever it might make the difference between a higher energy bill and a HUGELY higher bill. I'm surprised you don't know anyone who wanders around in a t shirt with the heating on full blast, takes multiple showers a day etc because I certainly do! And if you don't just look on the threads on here!

Since when is wearing warmer clothes in colder weather a trend???
it’s what you do?
rihht now out heating is off = lower energy cost for us
when we turn it on to make the house warmer as the temp outside falls we will use more energy and spend more £££
so then suggestion to keep your heating on a lower temp or on timer rather than on continuous and wear more clothes to keep warmer is sensible…

Yes, thank you.
I think for most of us, we could try hard to reduce our usage a little, but when your annual energy bill is set to be £5000, or £6000 or £7000 then the small savings we can make by putting on a jumper will be a drop in the ocean.

You'd be surprised. My in-laws wear just t-shirts like its the height of summer during the winter and have their heating on full blast. We arrive dressed for the season in jumpers and fleeces and have to strip off or faint 😂

But remember every single thing you buy is dependent on energy. We will be lucky if food 'only' quadruples at this rate.

Undoubtedly. Wool is better imo, but not as common as it used to be, tends to have a higher price point and harder to find. Same applies for blankets and throws.

I would stick my nose in and explain how it really is in that scenario. Even if they looked down their noses at me and said I didn't know what I was talking about, chances are, at least one of them would go and check.

I saw that the electricity bill for running UK trains will go up from £500ish million a year to £800ish million a year!

Someone who has been used to paying £165 over the last few years will be paying something like £450 a month in January and £550 in April

The only good thing is that most people will turn their heating off in April, if not before. But it might cost as much next year to keep the hot water on as it did the heating on this year :(

Well, for domestic users our hard-working, noble Prime Minister (soon to be ex) - note snark - has just recommended a brilliant idea to reduce high energy bills this winter. Wait for it - just buy a new kettle & you can save the princely sum of £10 a year on your electricity bill. Cost of living crisis over.

Someone who has been used to paying £165 over the last few years will be paying something like £450 a month in January and £550 in April

If the prices keep going up at the same rate, not everyone agrees that will happen.

Also, if the government help doesn't increase, which at those rates it simply has to, or else literally half the country will be bankrupt.

But in any case, people's bills will only increase like that if they don't do anything about what they use, which would be silly, because we use around the price cap and yes, there are things we could do to reduce our usage, probably at least by a quarter or a third, which we will be doing, as it is likely to save us around £1k pa and make it so our bills don't go up quite as much as they might do. We are a long way from turning the heating completely off, so there are things we can do to reduce the increase by a bit.

We have a fridge freezer and a second freezer. The fridge freezer is getting on for 25 years old and likely not very efficient, so we will look at replacing it, even though it still works.

We don't shut internal doors so the cats can roam freely around the house so we will get better at that.

We will be checking that all the light bulbs are low energy and be better at turning them off.

We will turn the heating down a bit - is currently set to 21 in the evenings and a little in the morning and I press the boost button a couple of times a day when WFH. We can try 19 or 20 C instead, that's well within a normal household temperature range.

It’s amazing how members and former members of our beloved Government think that people in general are breezily wasting loads of energy and can easily cut down to avoid bills going up. Edwina Currie has been doing it, going on about how people need to take “sensible measures”. Boris Johnson must think we’re all thick if he thinks we’ll fall for the idea of buying a new kettle to possibly save ten quid per year.

In my household we really can’t cut down any more without being properly cold. I was brought up in thriftier times and my parents struggled with money. All my life I’ve saved energy as much as possible, either because I had a low income or for environmental reasons. Cabinet ministers aren’t generally like that, so they’re thinking in terms of saving by turning the heating down in the 10 rooms of the mansion that they don’t use, and have a vague idea that all of us can do something similar.

I'm pretty sure we could buy a new kettle and put a jumper on and our bills will still quadruple. I honestly can't tell if they are completely out of touch with the normal British way of life or competing with each other to make the most patronising "helpful" suggestion.

I agree with a lot of wfat you say, but I think the most salient point is that A household that has been used to paying something like £225 a month could reduce their usage to the level of a household that is used to paying £165 and they will have to pay about £450 from January and £550 from April then more from October if the predictions continue to be correct/a slight underestimate.

It does seem to be expected to last at least a couple of years. Nobody seems to be predicting a drop.

Maybe if you're rich enough or somebody else lays your energy bill you just don't worry about it. I expect they think, "Well if I was ever cold I'd put a jumper on" and so they suggest it to us.

Honestly I think too many people are enjoying catastrophising over this.

That’s not to say that energy prices aren’t going to rise and that people aren’t going to struggle, but right now nobody knows exactly what their energy cost is going to be, the media are loving saying that “average energy bills could reach £7000.” It’s all speculation with the emphasis on could

obviously if you have your heating on in your 6 bedroom mansion and you have the oven on constantly then your bills are likely to reach that kind of level. But your average 3 bed semi, if you don’t have the heating and electricity on 24/7 then while your bills are going to increase, and people are going to struggle, they’re unlikely to reach those levels.

And most people absolutely are using gas and electricity frivolously. I’ve lost count of the number of threads where posters say they have their heating on at 18 24/7 in the winter. That they can’t do without. They absolutely can. Buy a warm duvet and a hot water bottle, when you’re in bed you don’t need the heating on.

We need to look at this as being a middle ground.

Nobody is not going to find the difference in their bills. But equally many people are absolutely going to be capable of reducing their energy consumption and thus their heating bills.

I trust Martin Lewis in this. Some people have accused him of catastrophising too, but I'm not arrogant enough to think I know better than Martin Lewis or the people whose job it is to predict these things.