Why are our bills so high? 6k a month...!

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Is anyone able to workout why our bills so high aside from suggesting we move house?! Are other people in similar size houses (5 bed, very old single glazed farmhouse) paying similar?

We pay about:
2k nurseries fees as work full-time (cheapest local village nursery, another year still school starts!)
£400 electricity bills each month (this is so high as bloody kitchen is only heated by underfloor heating, no radiators, which we didn't realised cost so much when we moved last year, we set it to 17 degrees so always freezing still)
£400 oil (thermostat to 17 daytime, 18 evening, single glazed house)
1.3k mortgage
£35 tv subscriptions
£35 Gigaclear
£100 for x 2 phones (£50ish each)
£265 car (Renault Clio)
£368 council tax (!)
Rest on food and baby wipes and trains to work etc.

Don't get me wrong we live in a gorgeous 5 bed in a village and appreciate we have a wonderful life but we moved from a terrace house in London and just can't workout why our bills have got so high. Especially as never eat out or anything like that anymore. Struggling to afford everything but on our salaries it shouldn't be so hard... am I missing something blindly obvious we can change (besides selling the house!) or is life just crazy expensive?!

This is pretty standard with small kids.

ours will be 9.5k this time next year 😵‍💫

Even with solar, if you get this you still have to pay the 'standing charge' on energy bills so hard to reduce them by much

Eh? The standing charge for electricity is about £15 pm. The OP is using £400 a month and her entire electricity and oil bill is about 3 x the national average, mainly due to having a large, poorly insulated house with an inefficient heating system. She absolutely could reduce her bills by a huge amount but it's going to take investment, eg double/glazing, solal panels, alternative heating.

OP, did it not occur to you that a large house was going to cost a lot to run? Also, council tax in London is well known to be lower than a lot of other places so it's not surprising that your large house in a rural village has a high bill.

Your phone bills are also insanely high, those can be cut to under £10 pm per phone as soon as your contract ends. I have no idea why people have contracts any more, it's a really expensive way to pay for a phone service.

£800 on energy! Look into better windows, better insulation, a ground source heat pump and solar panels.

We have a five bed with a large stone tiled kitchen with underfloor heating ( electric mat) plus TVs computers etc etc and our electric is only about £120 a month if that. The secret with underfloor heating is to keep it on low all the time , it gets expensive if you turn it on and off , we don’t have any other heating in the kitchen at all . The rest of the house we only have the gas heating on for 3hours in the morning and 3 -4 in the evening , same with water and avoid the immersion .

I have a large, old house with single glazing and no insulation, electricity is £130 a month including timed underfloor heating in bathrooms and under £200 a month on oil which includes running an Aga. We can’t change our insulation situation as it’s a listed building so planning refused for double glazing!

Have you got an old boiler? When was it last serviced? We get ours done every year and when we replaced the old one our bills dropped as the new one was much more efficient.

Probably because you have moved to a money pit and don’t need 5 bedrooms.

If you plan to stay in the house long-term then you need to spend money now to save money.

Insulate the loft, double glazing, solar panels, thick curtains, rugs and draught excluders etc

If you're thinking of moving soon then just layer up in winter and remember your heating bills will be smaller in summer (and you may be paying council tax over 10 months rather than 12?)

Childcare costs will drop in a bit and that will be a massive saving, but in short a big house means big bills 🤷‍♀️

I don’t know anyone that keeps their heating on in the middle of the day. Is it on even when you’re not at home? I just have it on in the evenings when needed and maybe the morning briefly and only between late October and early April. I live in a 3 bed terrace and pay the same in energy costs a year as you do a month.

Look to insulate the fabric of the building and get double/triple glazed windows. Do you have draft proofing? Go round each door and window and check for drafts. In my old house, I would seal gaps with clear packing tape in winter. You'll never make it air tight so ventilation is usually OK.

Thick, interlined curtains on windows and external doors. You can make your own by sandwiching blankets in between curtain and lining. Rugs and loose carpets on any bare flooring will help insulate.

Consider reusable cloths rather than disposable wipes, it soon adds up.

If you have a buying group for oil in your village, join it, they can be cheaper. If not and your tank is big enough, get your fuel in the summer, it is usually cheaper. We get through roughly 4000 litres each winter and at just under £1 a litre, it is painful. A log burner will keep your main living space warm.

There's a reason why country folk wear sweaters and body warmers! Also, I can recommend Lands End silk jersey thermals, not bulky, but will keep you warm and sheepskin slippers for toasty feet. A dog/cat will also keep you warm.

As others have said the early childcare years are the worst (I'm there too!). Biggest thing that stuck out to me were the energy and phone. I pay around £150 a month for energy (a smaller place than yours, but 1860s so not great on insulation) and around £45 for two mobiles. Appreciate probably little can be done on the energy but maybe on the phones?? Good luck and just try to hold out until the childcare costs go down

If the underfloor heating is expensive get a plumber to install a good sized radiator.

You'll be 2k per month better off in 12 months time that will be a big relief.

Our heating is cheaper but it’s a new build and well insulated. We pay £2500 a month but we don’t have childcare costs. If you add your childcare on then it’s not massively different.

This
Take these steps:

To find out what the right temperature setting you need to feel comfortable, follow this process:

• Set your thermostat to use the floor sensor and set it on manual mode.
• Set the temperature to 25°C and wait for the floor to heat up.
• After a couple of hours go back to the room and feel whether it is comfortable for you or not. If it’s too hot, turn it down, or if it’s too cold, turn it up.
• Repeat until you hit your perfect comfort level.
• Finally, switch the thermostat so it uses both floor and air sensing. In this mode the thermostat will show you the ambient temperature of the room. So now you know the ideal room temperature for you by ‘feel’ which is the best way.

Example:
The floor could be 6°C warmer than the air in the room and if your thermostat is using the floor sensor and you set it to 17C, the heating will switch off when the floor reaches 17C. However, the room may only be at 11C and therefore still feel cold! Because of this, you may think the underfloor heating is not working properly.

You can’t have underfloor heating being switched off at night or only on a few hours a day- the cheapest is to have it on all the time. Setting it to 17C is actively cooling your house down- which is causing other heaters to work harder and that is why your bills are so high.

High childcare costs and an expensive house to run is why your bills are so high!!
Childcare costs will decrease eventually.
If you can put in double or secondary glazing or thermal curtains it will help.
We also have underfloor hearing in our kitchen it is expensive to run!
And we're also on oil- replaced our boiler a year so ago and thst decreased our oil usage but new oil boiler is expensive.
Our house is smaller than yours- 4 bed semi but old house.

£400 a month on oil in coldest winter months sounds about right but you shouldn't be spending that in summer.
Electricity bill sounds high- our direct debit is about £180 a month but we use over £200 a month in Electricity in winter - less in summer obv -are you paying off arrears or do you have credit in your account?
Sounds like you have a lovely house though!

2k is extortionate for childcare and I’m saying that as someone who lives in London. Don’t have more than one child in nursery?

your mortgage is costly per month and so is the council tax - are you paying this over 10 or 12 months?

assuming your phones are on a contract so can’t be changed?

gas and elec is very high - ours is £130 a month as a family of 5. Appreciate we have double glazing though. I would suggest plug in radiators if cost effective? And replacing the window if possible.

It depends on the area - I pay £1700 a month for the cheapest nursery in my area (inner city London), my friend in the suburbs of London pays £2199. It is crippling!

Get rid of phones and buy a SIM card. Smarty were selling unlimited data, unlimited tethering, unlimited calls and text and 2 months in Europe. All for £16 over Easter. Look out for their offer.

Velvet curtains with thermal linings is what you need. Hang one in front of doors too.

5 bed , mostly single glazed in the North.
presumablythe oil is for your heating and only during the winter months.
We have gas and pay approx £50 per month to heat the water and then Nov- £300, December £420, Jan £650, Feb 575, Mar 300, April will be about 300 then we will turn off the heating. We also spend £200 per winter month on coal and wood for an open fire.
Our electric is roughly the same at £220 per month throughout the year, and we have a gamer who is using £40 per month of it. If you are using a tumble dryer I can see your bill going rapidly upwards.
our council tax is £340. Water is 60.
We were just quoted £70k for double glazing. Ha ha ha, not going to happen.

Secondary glazing would be a much, much cheaper and more effective in terms of heat loss and noise transmission

I lived in a similar house for a while.

We double glazed half the front windows. Cost 40k.

Solar panels/heat pump/double glazing etc will cost thousands and thousands.

What we did:

Heavy velvet lined curtains. Keep the heat in.

Electric blankets on beds and no heating or minimal heating in the bedrooms

Only used the kitchen/diner in the winter - living room had no heating and basically wasn't used.

Bought everyone thermals and gilets.

How much does that add up to? Not £6k as mentioned in the title. What is your joint salary. Nothing other than the heating bills seems that abnormal.

How are you using so much oil? Do you never have your heating off? We find we only need an hour or two in the morning and the same in the evening in the cold months. We turn it off in between. Ours is not quite as big as a 5 bed, but is a very old badly insulated stone cottage and we still only spend about £16-1800 a year on oil. That keeps it really cosy. Also, does the kitchen really need that much heating?

Agree on the phone bills also being high, its just not necessary nowadays to pay that much.

Childcare will go down so your monthly bills will reduce a chunk anyway.

Agree with this, what else are you spending on? It sounds like your shopping bill or eating out or something must also be quite high?

£800 a month on electric and gas is huge

We live in a huge barn conversion and our oil bill is about £200 a month, we also only have underfloor heating in the whole of our downstairs, no radiators