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.

You came after me. No idea why.

@LadyFlumpalot I'm sorry but we had to give up keeping fish, because of the cost of running the tank.
We also signed up for economy 7 and we run the washing machine and tumble drier on that. Its a nuisance.

@Everyonehasavoice I don't find them too bad - my electric use is 5.5kwh a day pretty consistently

Please try and find an alternative, something, anything other than having wet washing hanging round the house. It can be incredibly dangerous.

Twelve years ago I got a very bad chest infection that turned to pneumonia and then long term lung disease which still requires two inhalers and annual steroid treatment from doing that. At least there were no children in that house, which was full of invisible spores. I now use a tumble dryer and make savings elsewhere.

Wow
Thats really good.
We are at 6kwh just to keep the house ticking over and if the boys aren’t on electronics , we dont hoover, iron, use tumble dryer.
Think i might invest in one.
Thanks.

Our gas bill was 450 for Dec - actual usage and I can't remember what electric was.
I am actually dreading it if we get a bad winter. :(

Electric immersion heater and the tumble dryer are the guzzlers here....use lots of kw...slash those !

For lighter fabrics I put them in the tumble for 20 minutes then streach them out and put them on a hanger in my side window. That way it's drys in 24 hours but I cut the tumble by 2/3rds usage. Doesn't work for jeans so I dry them off completely with underwear but it's a much smaller load this way. The tumble drier is a lot less than I thought. I check everything on my smart metre

@Onnabugeisha

If you’re on a fixed DD, then why worry? You’ll go into the red a bit, interest free, and then in summer will be building up a credit again.

Why worry!?!?! Are you serious? You have absolutely no empathy for anyone struggling with energy costs. I'm assuming you have a pot of gold you can dip into. So cruel.

I can only afford to switch my small bedroom heater on twice a week, to try and get rid of the cough I've had since mid December.

Okay. Thanks for that. I’ll have a read of what I wrote. please let me know what was a personal attack when I was defending the OP so I can learn for the future. Please also report and let the other posters know who also commented about your commenting to the OP so they can also be reprimanded and learn. Just so I don’t feel singled out ta.

Please don’t message me further on private message.

@LadyFlumpalot i hope the émersion heater is the culprit for you.

So not shocking theb itd thag high. Incredibly silly not to have got a smart meter to monitor usage daily for a while to see if there were any issues like over night and to get a general feel for costs so you could cut back.

Its been in the media so much so yes I'm more surprised you feel shocked about your bill given how blase you and ur husband have been.

Ours is very high too. Gas central heating. I only turn it on when I have to. Luckily house is modern.

I spent 50 quid in the sales. Now I’m broke... Meanwhile friends / colleagues are booking Disney / New York etc... I just don’t know how they’re doing it.

Everyone’s struggling with energy costs, I’m not an exception to that. OPs situation actually sounds a lot better than yours or mine tbf.

The context is that with a DD you are supposed to go into the red over winter no matter how high or low the energy costs are. Since the OP can comfortably pay her current DD, there is no real reason for her to worry as much as she is about just now going into the red and certainly not risk her health over it.

I am so, so sorry. I live in the USA, and my last electric bill was $87, which would be about 71-72 pounds (sorry, not computer-literate enough to get the pound symbol...if anyone knows how, PM ME!). And that said, people here are literally dying because they cannot afford a visit to a doctor over something easily fixable if caught early. I'm not entirely sure which is worse, although I wish to goodness we would quit listening to those screaming "SLIPPERY SLOPE TO COMMUNISM!" Haven't notices you guys becoming communists, and you've had the NHS for decades. And it worked very well until the ultraconservatives got in office. Or seemed to, from here.

I feel you op. I just forked out £600 for oil heating. I dont even have an electric shower. My water is heated by oil and burner is outdated which uses alot more oil and dosent even heat the water. We have luke warm showers at best. Often cold. House built in 50s and oil heating never heats house well enough. Its is never warm. We've no fireplace as it's blocked. Landlord won't pay to put in electric shower even tho we've lived her 11 years. I can't fucking afford this all the time on top of everything else. There's no where to move to and we couldnt afford to as rent prices are twice of what I'm paying here in the village and we were saving for treatment otherwise I wouldn't put up with this shit. We've ate through our fertility treatment money and are left with barely nothing. I've nothing to look forward to except childlessness and cold fucking showers. Sorry I just needed to rant

No DD plan exists where you don’t carry a credit and then carry a debit.

Weird thing to say. I've never been in debt on mine. I had £1k returned to me in November, and I'm £800 in credit now.

The DD is £250pm, I use c£180pm (and I keep a close check on it via the smart meter display and their statements), they refuse to put it down any further. In fact, when I go on the web page to "amend my direct debit" not only does it not allow me to put it down, it tells me my ideal DD should be £317.

So, you're statement is wrong.

In March I shall be writing to them for the third time in two years, with my spreadsheets of six years of usage, averaged per day, week and month, and with their own annual use estimates included and yet again asking for a DD reduction and a return of my credit.

Luckily I'm on a fix currently, but that ends March. I know it will go up quite a bit then, per unit, but I still don't think the DD will need to be as high as they keep saying.

I've stopped sending meter readings (no smart meter) and am paying an amount each month over double the old DD. They can apply the discount and I'll no doubt have a huge debt come spring which I will have to pay off when I'm using less.
I'm praying costs come down or my gas/electric will soon be more than my mortgage was at its highest. Its unsustainable for alot of people if this is the new normal price.

Why on earth have you stopped sending readings @Fluffyhoglets ?

@VanGoghsDog
Weird thing to say. I've never been in debt on mine. I had £1k returned to me in November, and I'm £800 in credit now.

The fact you had £1k returned to you means the energy company did not set up your DD plan correctly, and overcharged you. Martin Lewis has warned about certain companies that tend to do this. There’s no excuse for it, it’s done deliberately.

I still don't think the DD will need to be as high as they keep saying.

Yep, I agree with you. Your company isn’t doing the DD plan the way it is supposed to be done. Never going into debit is further evidence that you are correct as well as the other evidence you’ve gathered.

So, you're statement is wrong.
Tbf, I wasn’t qualifying my statement to include fraudulent misuse of DD plans by certain energy companies to overcharge and create interest free cash floats.

Because I don't want the direct debit to go up any more at the moment which it may well do from what people are posting about their bills. We won't use as much in summer so if I keep paying the same it should even out and pay off the debt.

I know it's not correct, that's why I asked them to lower it and send back the credit.

You said no DD plan exists where you don't get into debt. Mine does. Mine exists.

I don't agree it's "deliberate". I think they are just incompetent. I had to get the ombudsman involved previously as well, and they STILL said "computer says no" (at that point saying I had to pay £480pm, and that was in 2020, before the price rises).

They are not "over charging", they are just morons. They're not bright enough to overcharge. And they're one of the companies that has a good reputation!

I'm glad you agree with me, I'd have felt left out if I hadn't got one of your patronising posts.

At least accept that what you posted was incorrect.

That's libel though, isn't it? Just lucky for you I didn't name the supplier.

You really need to send a reading at the very least before April when the price rises come. You surely don't want your use to be calculated against higher rates than they were when you used the energy?