Who Is Ready For Some Snow This Weekend?

[sam_gordon]

Because I ran up a $600 electric bill by keeping the heat on 68-70 throughout the storm and dripping the faucets, thus constantly running the electric hot water heater. Plus, we cooked at home for 5 straight days, using even more electricity. DW just wasn't happy I ran up such a large bill when we could've just used blankets and hoodies and turned the heat off. And we haven't even seen our water bill yet. No telling what that will be since we dripped our faucets from Friday night through Wednesday morning.

You could have turned down the thermostat 3-5 degrees. Turning it off is a bad idea. Do you have any unheated areas (garage? Basement?) Tell her to wrap up and go sit in that area for 2-3 hours.

 

[barkley]

For those of you who are worried about high electric (or gas, or water, whatever) bills, see if your utility offers a "budget plan" (or similar). Basically, they take the total of what you paid over the last 12 months, find the average, then that's the bill every month for the next 12. Our first year finishes in April, and we'll see how we did. We're currently $147 to the "good" with three months to go.

ETA: Programmable thermostats could help also.

we use this method of payment as well-it's nice knowing we will have the identical bill every month (and when they adjust it at the end of the term they take into consideration any anticipated rate increases over the following year so no terrifying surprises come high utility months). we've also found that maintaining a temperature within our home vs turning heat/ac up to heat or cool is far less costly. I tried to explain this to my oldest but it never really 'hit home' till work from home became a reality so there was no more turning down of the thermostat during work hours/trying to cool down or warm up when home. what he thought would be an increase in utility costs at his apartment being home 24/7 resulted in a savings.