Heating Bill !!!!!!

elliemom

elliemom

Cathlete
Has anyone gotten a ridiculous gas and electric bill this year??? I live in NJ and so far we have not had a cold winter. A few really cold days but nothing like Minnesota or Alaska. No snow or ice yet. I got my bill for December and it was $532.00

And I am a miser. I keep the curtains open during the day for natural sunlight to heat up the rooms. I close them at night. I keep the heat at 68 during the day (sometimes lower depending on my hot flashes) and 65 at night. I turn all lights off and have even unplugged things i don't use every single day!!!

Regular gas prices are $1.37 here so I am having a hard time figuring out why the HUGE increase. I am not an economist, but didn't the price of oil and everything drop about 2 months ago. And does this even matter to natural gas and electricity costs????

At this point it would be cheaper to drive around all day in my car to keep warm!!!!!

ellie
 
$532! :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

I would have a heart attack on the spot and keel over if I saw my heating bill was that high!

I am so sorry!
 
Hey, Ellie. Is that your electric or gas, or both combined? Just a thought, too. Do you change your air filter for your electric often??? There was one month, about 5 years ago, when my electric bill (everything in my home is electric, btw) was HUGE like yours, and I realized I hadn't changed my filter and the pump was working OT just to get air thru my home.

Gayle
 
Ours was high here in Chicago too, but we doubled the space we heat when we moved earlier this year. Ours was $244 at the last bill, and we went on the monthly average system that People's has. Basically they take your bills and average them over the course of the year. Of course, that means that we'll be paying $150ish in gas bills even in the summer, when we don't use the gas. But it hurts a lot less right now.

$532 is ridiculous!!! There's no error somewhere in there? Or "back bills" that the gas companies like to magically come up with - usually in complete error?

I read in the paper recently that some woman in the burbs here got a bill for several thousands of dollars in "back bills", claiming that the bill was never paid for a time when the house was sitting dormant. No gas was being used, the heat was literally shut off. But since the company couldn't get in to read the meter, they just "averaged" what the bill should be each month based on historical use.
What's ridiculous is that despite this story, this woman had to hire attourneys and all of that to get the bill wiped out.
Such a complete racket!
 
Sorry to have to say this, but my electric bills actually go DOWN during the winter months, but are high during the summer (which there is more of here in the desert!) so while yours is high now, mine was under $100 for December, but for the 2 of us in August, it was almoust $300 :)

Have you thought about covering your windows with some sort of thermol plastic or something to keep the cold out while the drapes are open? when I was in Alaska, I had some plastic that you would literally 'shrinkwrap' to your windows so that you could open windows for what little light there was in the winter and at night I had a thermol 'blanket' type that would go down over the windows to keep out the 'really cold' winter nights...

You could become the neiborhood shut in and keep all your drapes closed!

and how do you manage to get gas at $1.37??? It's at least $.30 more here too!


darn work is getting in the way... gotta go!
 
Ellie--Call the gas company to make sure this isn't a mistake. They screwed up my account over the summer TWICE. The first time they told me I owed them 76 and the bill turned out to be an "oopsie" and I got a $35 adjustment.

Another time they told me there weren't enough "meter readers" to go around so another high bill was an "estimate" and they ended up crediting me on that one, too. (This one really made me mad, but that's another story.)

Moral of the story is call to be sure this isn't a mistake!!!
 
I have an all electric house and also discovered that my utiliity bill goes up if we do not regularly change the filter. Also my utility company does a free energy audit on my home every other year. Maybe your utility company offer the same plan. When we made some of the changes that they suggested we really saved money on our utility bill.

Denise
 
I haven't looked at mine. I'm afraid to. I just send them money...lol. But I keep my heat at 60 during the day when I'm not home, and 65 when I am. Back down to 60 at night. Maybe you need to check the efficiency of your windows? How old are they? I just replaced my last old windows in September. It is making a huge difference in how cold my house feels to me.
 
Have tou ever tried to read this gas and electric bill. I feel like I'm back in Physics class with a statistics professor!!!!!

It is gas and electric combined. But still, the gas portion says (and I quote)

Distribution charge-182.767 therms @ $0.3439352
Balancing charge-166.966 therms @ 0.09594770
BGSS commodity charge 182.767 therms @ $1.185607090

Which means- we can charge you whatever we want because you don't understand on stinkin' thing on this page.

Oh, oh wait------- there's an E next to the number on page 5, and if you go back to page 3 section 6, paragraph 4, that means it's ESTIMATED!!!!!

Now why the hell couldn't they just put that in big bold letters on the front! Ellie, DO NOT freak out, this bill is estimated because we were too lazy and figured you were too dumb to actually read your meter!!!

Thanks
ellie
 
Ellie I feel your pain.
I opened mine the other day and it was $420! I have never paid over $350 in the coldest months and we are in upstate NY. I called because I just about had a heart attack and the woman said we doubled our gas usage which I don't understand how when it is the same people in the house doing the same things. I don't even want to see next month's bill that will reflect the 2 weeks we had company from Florida! More showers, washer/dryer, fireplace and heat! Calgon take me away:) Oh and mine wasn't estimated, they read the meter. I guess they are allowed to charge whatever they want. No big deal, I have a money tree out back, just ask my kids:)
 
elliemom said:
Have tou ever tried to read this gas and electric bill. I feel like I'm back in Physics class with a statistics professor!!!!!

It is gas and electric combined. But still, the gas portion says (and I quote)

Distribution charge-182.767 therms @ $0.3439352
Balancing charge-166.966 therms @ 0.09594770
BGSS commodity charge 182.767 therms @ $1.185607090

Which means- we can charge you whatever we want because you don't understand on stinkin' thing on this page.

Oh, oh wait------- there's an E next to the number on page 5, and if you go back to page 3 section 6, paragraph 4, that means it's ESTIMATED!!!!!

Now why the hell couldn't they just put that in big bold letters on the front! Ellie, DO NOT freak out, this bill is estimated because we were too lazy and figured you were too dumb to actually read your meter!!!

Thanks
ellie
Click to expand...

Ellie, I am so glad you can have a sense of humor about this. I would just cry. So does estimated mean it might not be that high?!?! How can they do that?
 
I have moved out of a near 3000 sq ft house - the house is totally empty and the heat set at 56 and it cost me $217 to heat it. Ouch. I hope I will be able to sell it in 2009. Values have slipped near 100k.
 
Ellie, you might want to contact the company and have them double check the reading. We had a bill last fall that seemed way out of line with last year and when DH looked into it, it turned out to be wrong and the correct amount was nowhere near as high. Mistakes do happen.
 
Ellie we pay 470.00 a month all year round. We are on what is called a budget billing. We also have the most expense gas/elctric company in the country except for Hawaii.:eek:
 
Ours was $585 this month. We live in Central New York and the really cold weather is just starting. In fact we had a couple of 60 degree days in there and it was still high. Our bills are always real high this time of year. We keep the house at 68 all the time because we have two babies. Our house does not have good insulation but it does have newer windows. I am sure that this month it will top 600 (it did last year) because we are supposed to get another cold spell and my kids were throwing up for a week so I was constantly doing laundry in hot water. We plan on building a new house in a couple of years and we are looking for green and energy efficient utilities for that.

ETA: Also, our bills are not estiamtes.
 
Not here...

Mine was only $97. I have a budget plan, where you pay the same amount every month and they raise (or lower, which I never thought I'd see) occasionally to adjust to the amount that you've actually used.

I live in the South, but it hasn't been an especially mild winter ... I can't explain it, but sorry to hear about your heating bills. That's about what my electric bill is, though. (Air conditioning!)
 
We live in a terrible old house with no insulation, gaps around the front door where all the heat leaks out, most of the rooms do not have doors so you cannot keep heat in and we just paid $137 for actual gas usage for heating in Michigan for month of December. It has been freezing in Michigan for 2 months now, and this is about the most we ever pay for heating in Winter. We consider this too much as it is.

Our heating never goes on until the girls come home from school at about 3.30pm. My husband and I are here, we get cold but we layer up and endure. That's what thick sweaters and socks are for. The heating goes off each night, down to 50 degrees. We have never ever had pipes freeze. Can I ask why you need to heat your house during the night when you are asleep?

We are British. No-one in the UK has their heating on during the night. And kids and babies can wear layers just like adults, so they don't need over-heated premises either. When we lived in PA and our kids were babies, we often had no power at all in the Winter due to snow storms taking down power lines. We lived in the house, just wore our coats inside! Sorry, but, this over-heating of houses is a very US phenomenon. If you are wearing shorts and a t shirt inside and are warm enough in Winter, then your house is over-heated. Again, this is a very US thing...

I would say, invest in insulation, invest in sweaters and jeans, put more blankets on the bed and save on the heating bill.

Clare
 
Clare,

I always thought that it cost more to turn it off at night and then try to reheat it in the am. When I am here during the day, I do layer up and put hot packs in the microwave. At night I guess I just thought it was too cold to turn it down to 50.

I know lots of Americans over heat and over cool. Ever been in a department store with a coat on- you could melt!!! Maybe I need to re think the daytime temp when no one is home.

On my first trip to Ireland I swear I thought i was going to freeze to death.

Thanks
ellie
 
Ellie,
I would certainly call and ask! it might be that you have a gas leak somewhere and that is why it is so much!

Our power rates increased about 40% last year, and will increase another 13% this month. I can't afford it :(
 
Programmable thermostats

I love mine -- I can have the house very low when where not here, and warmer when we are. We have zone heating, so we can adjust different parts of the house, too. Many can be set for weekdays and weekends, so you don't have the same schedule running constantly.

That may help you save some money on heating bills. I like to keep my house colder (66); DH likes it warmer (70s) ... I always tell him to put on another layer or two -- it's free!
 
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