Anyone else decided to stop caring about heating bills?

[ClarissaParry]

I put the heating on during the cold snap in December, and now I'm £200 in debit.

I'm not happy about it, but my dc were warm.

I've decided to put my head in the sand and crack on with staying warm over winter. We're not talking 24C 24/7, but 17C or 18C morning and night, and during very cold days, for longer. Minimum temp is set to 13.5C at the moment, but on cold and damp days, I go for broke and up it to 14C!

I'm hoping spring is early this year and we have a long run of not needing the heating on so I can avoid getting too deep into debt with the energy company, but I'll still keep the house reasonably warm regardless. Am I the only one willfully ignoring their energy balance?

My house insurance comes up in April so I use the money from 2 months no council tax to pay that!

Any money left over will be used towards utilities.
For now I'm doing ok - saving in my own bank account as well as my DD every month.
Timing settings & thermostat have remained the same, just boosting for an hour when it's really chilly.
Even after cranking the heating up during that cold spell in December, I'm still £150 within my planned budget.
Just worried about the bills in April onwards when I would expect to start saving again over the summer...

I put the heating on when I want to and dont care about the cost
However, I am lucky to be in a position to do that

Do you not get peat?

Same here! If I can't afford the bill, I will just call Octopus and say I'm struggling. I've got two little ones and I'm pregnant and I just don't care anymore. It sounds like we are similar to you OP in that I put it on for an hour in the morning and two at night. It goes off once my children are in bed but the house has warmed up then.

I've never missed a payment in 20 years, we will manage.

I grew up in a cold house, I refuse to have my kids do the same.

I did not care during December until I got my bill of £383 and then unfortunately that made me care.

I cannot afford to pay that each month. I am frozen and bordering on being Ill but what can I do ?

Single parent and even with the £66 which I'm grateful for, it's still too much to pay.

Fine Bedding Company do a coverless duvet (well, several) which may be what the poster means.
I have one on my bed and it is lovely, soft and snuggly. I have it on top of the normal duvet as an eiderdown.

Not having to change a cover on a duvet you use on the sofa seems sensible. I just use fleecy blankets on the sofa.

Us too but I am having to keep it lower than I usually would as it's a cold house so anything about 20 means the boilers on nearly all day. Nov and Dec have cost about £500 but I have a toddler and older child to bear in mind...

Same here. I’ve turned the hall and kitchen radiator off and left them off. And have used the tumble dryer about 5 times.

But we have the heating on pretty much like normal. We have it set slightly cooler and it’s not in as much. But it was just vile when it was cold all the time, and mould was growing everywhere.

You can submit readings, get into debt and make an agreement with them to pay it back in the summer. The way the direct debit smoothing works is that you stack up credit in summer, go a bit into debt in winter. They rarely ask you to pay off your winter debt in a lump, it gets paid off over the summer.

You seem to have missed my point that it's mad to submit the readings after the price rises because each unit will quite likely be charged at the higher rate when you actually used it at a lower rate. Why pay future higher prices for something you've already used?

However, if as you say they don't "hold back" on the estimates and the estimates are pretty close to the real readings anyway, it's a bit academic and daft to even be trying to control it that way.

@DogBowlsAreMyWeapon

no gas & no trees, that does rather present a conundrum!

the idea of living somewhere like that is appealing, on paper, I'm not hardly enough!!

my friend keeps saying he wants to live on an island north Scotland. He'd never cope!! 😂😂

I now submit my meter readings on the last day of every month so I know where I’m at. And that includes water.

You seem to have missed my point that it's mad to submit the readings after the price rises

I didn't miss your point- I said I'd submit them in April immediately before the next price hike. And I know I can pay it off rather than a lump sum which is why I've decided to do it that way. My outgoings are significantly less in the spring, summer and autumn over all - not just in the case of utilities so I'm on a far better position to do it then

Yes in December I got rhe horrible flu thing and I am still coughing.Being cold certainly doesn't help recovery

My heating is set to 15 degrees during the day, bumped up to 18 degrees on weekends when I'm actually home more.

I struggled with it for ages and then my boiler died on the 21st December. I had no heating or hot water for 2 weeks (currently 22 weeks pregnant) and ended up with a nasty cold and condensation everywhere in the house.

I decided that I need some heat for my health, and baby's health. Especially as when the baby is born the temperature will need to be much higher than that.

The big bills are a problem but I feel I don't have a choice. I'm just naively hoping that by next winter things will be better. Even paying a fixed rate (albeit a much higher one) would be a relief, to have the heating on and not worry every minute I can hear the boiler going!

I grew up in the late 90's early 2000's without central heating so for me I haven't found cutting back to bad at all. We live in a large 4 bed detached that's almost 100 years old so not the most efficient home to heat and me and my DH both WFH. We put the heating on for around 2 hours in the morning, the rest of the day and evening we layer up and occasionally will use a small eclectic 2000w fan heater to warm the room we are in. My DD is 9 and has never once complained she is cold, we all take a hot water bottle to bed. We don't have a dishwasher or tumble dryer and use a halogen oven most of the time to cook meals.
No problems whatsoever with mould or damp my only gripe is getting washing dry in a reasonable time but we manage. I'm spending around 240 a month and have a decent build up of credit on my account.

I simply can't forget about them. I live alone and last month's bill, for the cold snap was £300. I can't maintain that so the heating is OFF and I am layered up more than ever, pup wears a jumper overnight and we huddle in one room all day and evening - I WFH. I go to bed early too, to save heating costs in the evening.

If we did it on a population scale across Europe it would be trillions of dollars, whats being cold vs what Ukraine is going through

If. If. If. It's a bloody silly equivalence anyway to say that turning off the heating isn't nearly as bad as being invaded and bombed to oblivion and we should just suffer and be glad we're not Ukrainian. It's the adult version of 'eat your greens, children are starving in Africa.' Guess what, I did and they're STILL starving. The situation in Ukraine is just a little bit more complex than 'turn the heating off and Putin will see the error of his ways.'

BTW, the pp who wants this, are you boycotting Unilever? they're still trading with Russia. (And Yemen's being bombed to oblivion as well but they don't have gas, of course).

Same. I’d clocked up a load of credit on my account but Im burning through it this winter. Im worried longer term but I can’t cope with being cold at home - especially not when In paying £250 a month for the privilege

@schnauzerbeard thank you! I do submit readings, they prompt for them but I think maybe I should just do them monthly from now. Thank you that's helpful and gives me a steer on how to get a handle on it.

Me. I'm not working full time in a job that knackers me out to sit at home cold.

So if I'm in debt so be it.

I have a disabled child so have to keep the house at a certain temperature for his comfort.
No idea how we’ll pay for it though.

Every little helps and yes we are boycotting Unilever to be fair the only thing we used was comfort so have moved across to method (Johnson and Johnson).

Good point made about submitting meter reads before prices change again. I'll definitely do that.

I've actually become curious now what the damage actually is 🫣

In a way. Yes. But I prefer to be warm and not have a damp house which needs costly repairs. Heating although expensive, is cheaper than having to have new plaster on walls, redecorate and replace furnishings etc. heating also has a positive effect on my mh, whilst damp and subsequent repairs makes me utterly depressed.