How the fuck am I meant to afford this? Electric bill this month

[LadyFlumpalot]

My electric bill is £643 this month. SIX HUNDRED FUCKING QUID.

It's correct, I've checked and double checked. It was £400 last month. In the summer it was approx £180 a month.

I'm in a three story attached town house thing, fully electric. Two adults, two children. One fish tank. Usual tumble dryer, appliances etc.

I've got a balance built up of £450 so with my usual monthly payment I will just about break even this month. Next month will be a challenge though 🥶

And it's only going to get worse.

Not really looking for advise - just sympathy and solidarity. We are about to go full fucking Victorian. There will be no tumble dryer, no dishwasher, no charging appliances at home during the day.

TBH it's ridiculous, I have a perfectly good garden and an airer that can go in it, but my neighbour reports it

Yeh that is absolute nonsense

What actually happens if it's reported?

The management company send me warning letters threatening I'm breaking the terms of my lease. It's a fair way down the line but they could technically evict me even though I own the apartment because I'm breaking the terms

Part of the terms, if you fancy a laugh

I don’t know if it might differ between countries, but in Scotland a residence association can fire a management company and appoint a new one. Might be worth looking into if you haven’t already.

A lot of leasehold people has rules i the lease and the mortgage also requires yiou to stick to the lease I think they can be enforced (eg nothing kept in communal hallways due to fire safety reasons and that kind of thing).

We don't have a tumble drier or a dishwasher, I didn't realise we had gone " full fucking Victorian".

In an entirely unrelated matter, out fuel bill for December was less than a quarter of the OPs. The energy threads on here amaze me. We have the heating on whenever we want, gas now but our last house was in a village without gas and we used coal and wood to heat the house. It also heated the radiators.

I can't work out how those who claim to never use the heating still seem to burn through way more kWs than we do, yet we have ours on all the time. I think there is a lot of energy use denial going on.

If you choose to live in an all electric house and are blase about your use then getting a massive bill is the likely outcome.

its not like the prices of fuel has been kept secret.

"I can't work out how those who claim to never use the heating still seem to burn through way more kWs than we do, yet we have ours on all the time. I think there is a lot of energy use denial going on."

Or people have different heating systems, and different houses, and different insulation levels to you?

The good news being that if the guitar player from hell moves in next to you, you'll at least know the management company have got your back.

@GasPanic oh no, when you actually WANT them, they're nowhere to be found

My neighbour complained about my tree, so they came and trimmed it. But just half of it so it now looks like it's lopsided
If you try and contact them with something urgent, you never hear back

You are right but the OP and most of the energy threads describe their house, for the most part average, like ours.

I suppose they could secretly live in Downton Abbey and doing a major grow in the loft.

I would love to know this as well.

I received just before Christmas a bill dated February 2022. It was for just user £700.

It is a bill I never received from an account I have never accessed

I would love to know how I used double the number of kws than I have ever used before over a 28 day period instead of the usual 30 or 31.

We have electric central heating but it is so old it doesn’t work properly and it costs too much to put on.

But 20 degrees is still cold. I wouldn’t call it heated.

FWIW We moved from a gas central heated 5 bed house which we used to set the temperature gauge to tropical, the tumble dryer would go off every single day and our house was always well lit.

Our bills were maximum £360 per month.

Yet in February (before the price rises) I have a bill for just under £700 for a terrace house that we have never turned the electric radiators on (they don’t work properly)

I would love to know why

I hadn’t even used my tumble dryer.

Presumably it's based on (incorrect) estimated readings @Kennykenkencat ?

No. We have a smart metre so the readings are apparently correct.

Utter nonsense. 20 degrees is well heated and within the recommended temperature range for homes. That's the temperature at the thermostat which is in the hall (the coldest part of the house), most rooms are degree or two warmer.

Recommended temperatures are pretty universally 18-21.

There are people (many of them on this thread) whose houses are barely in double digits. And you're arguing that 20 is cold.

You say your bills were max £360 a month in your old house, but mention a bill for your new place from February 2022 bills in your new house. So presumably you left the old place in 2021 or earlier - in which case prices have at least doubled since then.

20 degrees is boiling! Rarely put thermostat above 17. Much healthier. Keeps us moving!

I can happily just wear a t shirt indoors at 20°..

How come? electricity will go up 50% from April 1st.... wiping out what is being saved on heating IF we get a mild April, it also means most will not build up a credit buffer over summer autumn.

If Putin does something even more stupid, then gas prices will increase again and UK has not decoupled gas from lecky prices like the EU has nor has it any storage to absorb gas price shocks...

For me I feel the cold. I need the heat. Which makes living where we do so much more horrible.
On holiday in 112 degree heat and I am jogging and walking without pain. I need the heat otherwise I find it so painful to move around

Prices didn’t start to go up until April 2022 and this bill was at the old rates
But even moving into this house my bills went up because before I was paying so much less per unit than where we live now and we can’t change energy suppliers to some one cheaper.

If 20 degrees is painful for you then why spend money on a holiday somewhere hot, so it will be a shock to return to UK temperatures again, rather than put the money on the heating instead?

In that case your heat tolerance and requirements are kind of unusual, most Brits (as we're talking UK prices) would find 112° F (44 °c) loathsome. I don't like to be cold and I'm mostly just wearing a long sleeved top or a single jumper at 20°C, i.e. normal clothes.

We were in a (much smaller and older but with a modern boiler) gas heated house before and out of interest I just pulled the info from our last tariff switch there - Jan 2020 the rates were 2.489p for gas, 14.48 for electricity, and that was a fix which would have taken us to Jan 22 so probably not a bad comparison. Now the rates are 10.33p and 34.04p roughly. Using my actual usage from that house we would have paid £1,547 per year at the old rates. It would be £4,864 now for the same usage. So your £360 bill for tropical heat back in 2021 or earlier would possibly be £1k plus now...

At the moment it doesn't really matter which supplier you are with as they're all charging the price guarantee anyway. But all electric can be really expensive if you don't have an efficient heating system, the poster I originally replied to has individual electric radiators which is a horribly expensive system.

You are making the assumption I am British. But even in my family I was the one who hated the cold.
I should never have been born in the U.K. Something went very wrong.

Also pre energy price rises in this house it was 21.9p per kw. It is now 44.9p per kw
No gas
That is why there is such a difference.

So your bills would be around £6000 per year. Just based on the fact I am paying 25% more on electric But probably nearer £8-9000 if you converted your 10.33p per unit of gas to a 44.9p unit of electric.

Should add I booked a holiday to Dubai in August. It was 50 degrees and it was wonderful