Categories
Every Day

Our January Natural Gas & Electric Bill

Let’s start off with our January 2022 bill. It was a total of $ 234.54 for 30 days. We used 536KWH of electricity and 147 ccf’s of natural gas.

Now here is the one I got today: The January 2023 bill. It was a total of $ 285.16 for 29 days. We used 545KWH of electricity and 135 ccf’s of natural.

We used 9 more KWH of electricity this year and 12 less ccf’s of natural gas. However, today’s bill was $ 50.62 more than January 2022’s bill. That is a 22% increase in 1 year.

I fully expect that our next bill will be over $300. Yikes! What makes it even worse is that the bill was one less day this year. But I don’t know what I can do about it short of turning off the heat! In these temperatures we would freeze to death!

Over the years’ I have given you many tips on how to save money on your utility bills. I would really appreciate it if you could help give me some tips on what we can do to lower our bill.

What are you doing? Please comment and help me and everyone else.

17 replies on “Our January Natural Gas & Electric Bill”

Hi Precious. Wow! Hoping ours won’t be as bad since we were already billed for the really cold days last month. I will report when we get.

We do a lot of the same things you do to save electricity and gas. We do use our electric blanket at night to warm up the bed, but then turn it off when we get in. I wonder if it would do you any good to get one of those blanket things to wrap your water heater in? We keep our heat lower than you do, but I know you have to keep yours higher for health reasons. I always wear a sweater in the house and if I am still cold, we have some of the little blankets to throw on my legs, if I am sitting on the couch. Kitty also keeps me warm in the mornings when she sits on my lap. 😉 But she is definitely not a savings tip. LOL!

The other thing I thought of was to see about budget billing so you spread your bills out. We have never used it, but maybe one of the other readers can speak to it. If I think of anything else, I will let you know.

Thought of something else. Maybe have your utility company come and do an energy audit? Although I am guessing you are like us. We are in the top 19% of the same size houses. Hubby just told me this last week

Hi Chris,

They do not do free audits here. I will let you know what they say we are tomorrow. They do send that info but in Hubby’s e-mail which they don’t send for a few days after the bill. I don’t remember what it was last month. I will ler you know when we get it.

Hi Chris,

This bill actually showed that we were warmer than last month. We don’t have a water tank. We have a Rinnai tankless water heater. We don’t like budget billing. I worked for The Public Service Commission in NYS and I know all the problems it can create. We would rather pay for what we use as we use it. Besides except for a couple months of the year, our bills are always high because of our heating and air conditioning. Thanks for sharing all of your great tips!

My husband and I are also analyzing our utility bills. In California where I live, the cost of natural gas has gone up tremendously. We have added new weatherstripping and have rolled up towels along the doorways. We have lowered our heat by a few degrees and just use a space heater and blankets to keep warm. I am considering purchasing a toaster oven to avoid heating the large oven for small things or I really think about what else can I prep/cook at the same time the oven is on. For electricity, I have been unplugging all appliances when not in use and taking it room by room to unplug any unnecessary lights, nightlights, clock radios, etc. I’m hoping it makes a small difference.

Hi smhuh,+

We have those cloth snakes in front of our doors and have closed off two bedrooms. I am in NY and our rates are high here. The majority of the $50.+ increase has been the natural gas. I can try again to lower the heat in the daytime but Hubby freezes even with two layers. I use the toaster oven and air fryer a lot along with other small appliances. We even gave up using the electric blanket this year. Thank you for sharing all of your tips. Good luck with your bills.

We’re in a moderate climate, so take my input with that in mind.
-We prefer to sleep in a cooler temp, and keep the house at 65 during the winter. We keep large blankets on the sofas, and the kids know to wear slippers or fuzzy socks + hoodies in the winter. One wears pajama pants, and the other wears joggers around.
-Everyone works out, which helps bring up your body temperature. However, it also increases the laundry. We try to time the laundry with the less expensive part of the day, but with our work schedules, that doesn’t always happen. We do line dry a significant portion of our clothing.
-We have solar panels, and are about 1/2 way to payoff, given the increased cost of electrical. This is likely only a worthy investment if you plan to be in your house for 10 years, and have a house with the right positioning. We also live in a sunny state, which makes a big difference.
-We charge our car (for free) at work, saving the cost of charging at home.
-We try to be thoughtful about our dishwasher usage, skipping one cycle a week where we can.

I also have teens who take really long showers, if left unchecked, so our water bill is often more of a struggle than our power bill.

Hi HP,

We sleep at 64 degrees at night. Solar would not work here. We live in a very cold climate with tons of snow and very dreary days most of the winter. I am glad that it works for your family. I am wondering if washing and rinsing dishes in a dishpan would be cheaper than running the dishwasher. Before all the prices went up, I think it was cheaper to use the dishwasher but now with how high the prices have gotten I am not so sure. So I think I will wash by hand for this month and see if it makes a difference. Thank you for sharing all of your tips.

For us, the tradeoff in water cost would not be worth it (running the dishwasher saves water over washing by hand). We also have an energy efficient dishwasher, and it doesn’t require a pre-rinse of dishes, which saves some water as well. But, everyone has different costs & dish volume, so it’s worth trying out for sure!

Our home is heated with propane. Not oil. Propane much cheaper and more available. But still expensive. We burn around 1200 propane gallons a year (as per our provider) At $3.10 a gallon, that comes to $3720. Ouch. We used to be on a budget plan but the supplier wants his money all in full now, as per delivery. Double ouch. So after discussing it for many years, we put in a pellet stove. We only burn one ton of pellets per year at a (last year’s) cost of $275. This year it totaled $325. $3720 less the $325 means we are saving (in real money) $3395 per year. We still need a bit of propane to heat our hot water. The propane supplier, nasty MOFO that he is, then charged us $165 because our usage dropped below 1000 gallons per year. We only bought 350 propane gallons last year. DH spoke to customer service and got the fake penalty fee dropped to $64. A mere pittance to pay for saving so much money.
The pellet stove cost us $1200 to buy and another $1000 or so to install. DH and a neighbor did all the work. So, the pellet stove saved for itself in the first year. Inside temps reach around 72F. It’s nice and cozy. We have it installed in our living room and our total living square feet is 1120. The back bedrooms however can be a bit chillier than the rest of the house so I keep an electric heater (oil based) available if need be. We never go to sleep with the electric heaters on. But we do have an electric blanket over our queen sized bed. DH keeps it on #1. I keep it on #3. I like to be warm. I do NOT want to suffer one iota. When the inside temps reach 75 we shut down the pellet stove. It’s usually midnight by then and since our house is a modular, it holds the heat very well. All night in fact. So, that’s even more of a savings when the pellet stove is turned down for the evening. I do set the propane house boiler at 65F degrees anyway, just in case. So far, the house heat has never kicked on. When we wake up in the AM hubby starts up the pellet stove again. The house is warm and toasty by coffee time!
All our interior lights are LEDS but I usually just keep the night lights on in the evening for some light. We basically hunker down in one room, the bedroom to watch TV etc for the evening. We also bought a new stove and use the convection stove part, thus saving even more money on our electric bill. We’re on a budget plan at $127 a month BUT when I look over the bills we are only using around $90 a month in electricity which means we’ll get a credit at the end of the year. Maybe 1 or 2 months at no charge. We’re using much less electrify than the company estimated we would use.
PS: all our windows have energy saving curtains. We close them at night and open them in the morning to let the sunlight, sunshine in.

Hi Cindi! Thanks for sharing! Propane is very expensive, My son heats his home with it and he has told me how expensive it is. $3720. is a huge ouch! The pellet stove is a great idea. I am glad that it is saving you so much money.

We gave up the electric blanket this year and now it is being passed onto my son along with all the other bedding. WShen we used it, I would turn it on for about 1/2 hour before I went to bed. Then turn it off when we went to bed. I would stay warm all night.

We do the same with the LED’s in the evening but we only use the one in the room we are in. Convection ovens save about 25 of energy vs. the regular setting.

It seems to me that you are managing your energy very well. I haven’t seen sunshine much this winter.Send me some!

1/2022 – 34 days billing 3850KWH used 398.58 avg cost per day 11.72
1/2023 – 29 days billing 3338 KWH used 379.46 avg cost per day 13.08
12/2022 -29 days billing 3012 KWH used 346.23 avg cost per day 11.94
This is electric only, the garage/shop runs on Propane which landlord pays since she has propane appliances/fireplace etc but for consideration we do keep the garage at 55. We have in floor heat only, huge windows (w/insulated blinds) and it really only gets to 62-65, we also have a hot tub which hasn’t been used since hubs surgeries last month.
I have finally quit turning the heat up and I sit on the couch with a heating pad, blanket and cat. I also have a heating pad in bed. We get ice on the windows so I keep the blinds closed, don’t use the oven except batch cooking on the weekend. My wardrobe is minimal so laundry is done often, I figure if the DW is full that means we are not eating out.

Hi Patti,
Oh my! I remember when we had electric everything in our second home That was starting in 1978.The bills were horrid. Years later when the utility company ran natural gas down our street we had it installed and got a gas water heater and a gas furnace. It was a huge saving over electric.

Thanks for sharing your bills. The cat sounds like a great idea and so does the heating pad. We were getting ice on the windows too and we finally figured out that it was the humidifier on the furnace. It was too high. So Hubby turned it down each day until it was low enough that we had no more ice. But yet we are comfortable. I hate using the oven during heating season. During A/C season, we we use the grill. I am aiming for only using the oven and stove top a few times a year. You have to love batch cooking!

Thanks for sharing your tips!

Precious, we got our gas portion of the utility bill today and it was $125.22. Last month was $186.xx. I was happy. The really cold days around Christmas were on the $186.xx. I will report when we get the electric part of the bill. It will come in around 10 days.

Leave a Reply