Anyone else cry over their bills?

[insanegasbill]

Got our monthly energy bill this morning.

£525. For one month.

I honestly cried. I can't remember the last time I cried over a bill. How is this even possible?!

Last month it was £390 ish which was bad enough so we budgeted around £400 for this month and our usage seemed to be very similar.

We are both employed with good jobs and we are sinking with these ridiculous outgoings.

In January our rent will be £900 as it's going up.

So we are looking at £1400 ish just for rent, gas and electricity come January.

Heating is on a timer and we really do try to limit it, we've been using electric plug in heaters as much as possible instead.

AIBU that this just isn't sustainable? I just needed somewhere to get that out and scream into the void...... What's the actual point of working as hard as we do to be struggling like this? 😢

It's your electric heaters! Our boiler is on the blink just now so we have no gas central heating and we've been using 2 or 3 electric heaters around the house to warm rooms up. They cost a fortune!

DP uses a similar garage in Cheshire when he's over there for work. The man who runs it has his own small fleet of petrol tankers so asks the Stanlow refinery for their best price and goes and fills up when he can get a deal, or uses up his stock if the price isn't right. I know there's also refineries in Essex, so perhaps they're doing something similar @JoyBeorge ?

When you have a supply chain like that, it's not always the same as larger operators that cover the whole country.

But I agree that the supermarkets are currently overcharging. I only fill up every few weeks, filled up at Asda and found that it was cheaper at the Shell I passed on the way home. Moral of the story is to keep an eye on prices, the Petrol PRices app is useful for this.

@insanegasbill are you with Scottish Power by any chance?

We are - while it won't help with monthly costs, if I don't manually 'submit' my readings at the same time every month it is so hard to see how much we're being charged for and how much we're using if I don't do that.

Your electric heaters won't be helping. I believe it's the electric radiators you need.

Very logical. I guess my thinking was desperate times and perhaps just heating one room is a lot cheaper than heating the whole house? What your saying does make sense though.

@insanegasbill please do not do this as it will cost more.

Seal all drafts in windows, put curtains over doors, turn all electric items off not in use and turn radiators down if you have the option.

When working from home layer up and use a hot water bottle. I do this and use a fleece hoodie which keeps me toasty.

The heating is on for 3/4 hours a day in our house for my daughter and my bill is under £90 for gas every month.

Honestly electric plug in heaters will be consuming ridiculous amounts of electricity and are really not practical to use. You may find oil filled free standing radiator heaters better on energy consumption.

As far as I understand, "oil filled free standing radiator heaters" are a type of self-contained electrical heater, therefore they cannot be better or worse in terms of running cost than other self-contained electrical heaters, assuming all heaters involved are putting out the same total amount of heat as each other.

Now if one were talking about heaters that burned oil to produce heat, that would be a different ball game, but that's not what these heaters do, assuming we are thinking of the same thing.

No we are with EoN

Gas is cheaper than electricity so you're better using your central heating rather than electric heaters

My gas cost is 10.28p/kwh
My electricity cost is 33.76p/kwh

Totally relate. I have a 3 bed small terraced house and it’s costing me £7-8 a day just for gas ( smart meter , British Gas, we have one hour heating in the morning , two hours at night and shower every other day family of four ) this morning I turned it off after 15 mins when I saw we had gone through £15 of gas in a day and a half .

i went to full my tank and that was £90 then I went to asda which isn’t exactly Waitrose on prices and got hardly anything for £95 . Back home now with the heating off and the switches off . I am so depressed by this

@Brighton5555

It's utterly depressing isn't it.

Heating using electricity costs three times as much as gas. This has always been the case. It is the reason we have gas supplied to most of our homes. Gas is considered to damage the planet so the cost benefit is glossed over by the green lobby.

See if you can get a sandtimer for the shower from your water company. Ours times for 4 minutes and we've saved loads implementing this with the kids

I mean it's a big bill but 2 full time salaries in good jobs must still leave you with a decent disposable income? Half of those costs only comes to £700 each, for housing and gas/electricity that's not bad. Even on minimum wage you'd have around £1500 left for everything else.
I'm a single parent with housing costs alone of 1k a month (rent and council tax), current utilities costing £300 p/m, to put things in perspective.

I was going to say this. £900 in rent for a large house is incredibly cheap, and you both work full time!

It might sound "incredibly cheap" but when you factor in high outgoings - for example a large childcare bill - on top of everything else, it's tight. Everyone's situation is unique isn't it.

@Getoff Not in this house. I've watched it carefully on the smart meter. In these minus temperatures it has definitely cost less.

When the ambient temperature rises again next week and we are more back to normal then I fully expect that the heating will go back to normal and will be cheaper to use on the timer, which is our usual modus operandi.

With minus 8 last night (and still well below freezing now, I certainly want to minimise the possibility of frozen pipes too. Had that before and it wasn't fun.

True OP, fair enough.

No it's not that. This isn't fair to OP. I am a single parent also and it's not cheap it's just not comparable to a 2 person housholds bringing in 2 incomes

I truly don't mean this to be a boast but I am worried about our bills the other way.

About August time we were advised by our energy supplier to incease our monthly direct debit to £240 a month (gas and electric). Don't have a smart meter but DH submits monthly readings and we can then see online how much in debit/credit we are. We are now about £850 in credit, £100 up from last month! I don't understand it. This surely can't be right. Being careful with usage but certainly not going cold. I know there is a long way to go with winter yet but I'm really worried they are suddenly going to say something is wrong and we owe them hundreds of £.

We've just moved in to a new house which has electric underfloor heating in the part of the house that contains the dining table, so if we want somewhere for the kids to eat and do their homework we have to put the heating on in there for at least a couple of hours a day.

Our electricity bill was £650 this month.

It's not even warm with that amount of heating, just not totally intolerable.

The gas was £250, so £900 in total this month.

We've closed the doors to the dining room now, we just won't be able to go in there this winter. Kids will have to eat off their laps and do homework on the coffee table.

If you're getting bills based on up to date and accurate meter readings, it could be right, but your credit probably won't last much longer. We're currently about £400 in credit, but I expect most of it will be gone in a couple of months, and we'll probably be in debt by Easter before paying it back over the summer.

However, in August, that could have been pre government protection, so if that was the time we were expecting typical use sized bills to be £3/4/5k pa, you might be overpaying a little.

Some providers only bill every 3-6 months, so you'll build up big credits in the time between billing.

Your bill should show your annual usage and you can work out how much it should cost and hence whether your DD is right:

www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/lower-energy-direct-debits/#calc

You could also be one of the minority still on an old cheaper fix, although most people have tipped over onto standard pricing now.

I have a smart meter and I did a test of this yesterday and today. GSH, 3 storey house in a inefficiently converted old hospital building. Big big windows (wooden but double glazed) and high ceilings. very old gas boiler, heating dial/sensor is on the ground floor which tends to be the coldest floor.

Yesterday, trying to save money - I had a 1 hour heat in the morning and a 2 hour stint in the late afternoon. Temps stayed pretty static - ground floor 14/middle 16/ top 17. In PJs, fluffy socks and hoodie - hot water bottle regularly topped up. WFH 'office' (box room lol) is on the middle floor and it feels colder being super sedentary. £10 gas for the day. It felt cold and uncomfortable all day

Today, dial set to 18 and continuous. no hoodies, no fluffy socks, no hot water bottles - house is sat at a steady even 18 on all floors and a little too warm if I am honest. £6 so far. So it seems to hold true that not having small stints works (for this house and our usage) - but ill run it over a few days to check

Tomorrow I will tinker with, dropping it to 17 and see how that goes.

Its worth experimenting in your own house within you own comfort zone to see what works for you you

Both my current and past house were better with heating always on (and I tested carefully)

Current house is very well insulated and modern with an air source heat pump. It doesn't heat the radiators as hot as typical gas heating so takes quite a while to warm up from cold but once it's warm it's very good at maintaining temperature, just clicking on and off as needed.

My old house was the opposite, stone built and not very well insulated. We'd not had it long when the boiler broke down, temps dropped to 6 degrees inside. It took days to heat back up, it was like you had to warm the stone first! We tested always on (we did drop it a bit during day when we were out but only to about 18 vs 21) vs having it off during day and coning on say 6-8 and 4-9. For us, it was cheaper always on -the boiler would be running constantly to bring it up to temp from cold vs just firing on and off for short periods to keep it warm

Every house is different and it's something people should test

We are managing between £6-£10 a day depending on how cold. Use the electric heater every now and then but it has a thermostat. I wear my Oodie whilst working so heating is only on for a few hours a day.

November no heating at all. Bill was £150 for both gas & electric. Expect December to be around £300 but we have £100 in savings. Plus the £66.

Before you do anything else STOP using the electric heaters
They are very expensive ti run.
Oil filled radiators are the best but still expensive
This is why people don't use them and have central heating which is way cheaper.
Are you taking daily readings?
I take mine EVERY day.
So far we are £200 odd ahead