Put away your purse & become debt-averse

EssexHebridean

Sounds as though your neighbour is looking at the £2500 "cap" and assuming that's as much as they will pay, to me. If their bills last winter were £2300 or so, that would equate to them thinking "not much of a rise" wouldn't it - and as we are seeing on the energy board, a terrifyingly large number of people think it's an all-you-can-eat buffet! 

I spoke too soon on our front room temperature by the way - got home last night and it was 17.8C in there! Thankfully didn't take long to improve once we were home. 

foxgloves

Thanks everyone for your comments. Yes, it was interesting to hear my neighbour's comments about price rises not making much of a difference in our type of houses. Always good to ponder an alternative view, (& yes, it's possibly from assumptions about the price cap, @EssexHebridean), but I think I'm sticking with my view, which is that if last year's bills for our house came to £££ & the price pretty much doubles, unless we cut down our energy use significantly, then this year we can expect to be paying broadly £££ x 2. 
@Cheerydaff - I do hope that boiler can soon be sorted. Those are grim temperatures.
We changed the overnight temp on the thermostat to 10° last night. It was showing 13.5 first thing when we got up at 6am, but no problem with that as the boiler swings into action then & it didn't take very long to reach 18°. The bedroom wasn't cold - both of us sleep better in a cool room anyway, but they key thing from a money saving point of view was that the smart monitor figures showed v clearly that the heating hadn't come on in the night. That's better than being greeted with the news that it's only 5.48am but we've already spaffed £2.43 on gas.
F x

foxgloves

It's been a day of two halves today. Positive things happened such as piano tuner coming & sorting out an ever so slight honkytonkness in one of the lower octaves (he said it's due to the heatwave) & I enjoyed getting some Christmas baking done - Delia's little cheesy rolls, as planned. I'll be boxing them for the freezer shortly. Have also got a sourdough in the oven as I knew it was already going to be on.

milann

Mmmmm tasty 👍

foxgloves

The other half of the day was a bit frustrating. I'd scheduled my mid-month budget check-in & while most things looked fine, it soon became very clear that I was £90-70 short of what I expected us to have left at this point. I rechecked the maths - all correct, then looked for any possible errors in my original December budget, made sure nothing had been accidentally deleted from the bills spreadsheet &.....well, you know what it's like, I just couldn't find the issue......& the more I couldn't see it, the more I was determined to find it.
Eventually I DID find it. I decided to examine transactions from the 'Twilight Zone' on our bank statement .......this is what I call that period between payday (27th) when I set the budget & the 1st of the month. I checked every one & found a discrepancy. I'd transferred a sum of money (v close to the missing amount) from the Presents Pot into our current account, then paid it across to my credit card. I did both of these things on Nov 25th. My credit card account shows the payment arriving that day. 
However, I paid this transaction by visa debit & that part of the transaction didn't appear on my current account bank statement until 28th. Very unusual for there to be a 3 day difference. I set December's budget on 28th Nov.....& having checked my credit card transactions/balance as part of my initial gathering of relevant figures, I'd seen that the payment in question was showing as a credit (not 'pending') so had obviously assumed the whole transaction was done & dusted. The visa debit part of it didn't turn up until afterwards, meaning that the c.£90 I'd transferred from the Presents Pot was still sitting there & making up part of the total balance of available funds.......despite it showing as having been received as a credit to my CC 3 days earlier!!
So lessons here are Beware of the Twilight Zone......& one for me personally, is that I must set up my CC as a regular BACS payee, which is how I preferred to pay with my previous CC account.
The upshot is that the extra buffer zone I left in place to absorb any bits & bobs of December overspend is now depleted by the unicorn £90.70 which I never actually had, so there had better not be any overspending! With that wretched transaction showing as all cleared on my CC, I completely failed to see that it was still outstanding at the bank account end. If I'd spotted it & budgeted from an accurate figure, I'd have bumped the piano tuning until next month, but never mind, 'tis done & I did feel so relieved when I spotted it, as I thought I was losing the plot! I couldn't bring myself just to leave it as I kept thinking I would never drop £90 in the street & not bother picking it up.
So I've spent half the day baking & half with steam coming out of the calculator.
Ready for some pasta & a couple of chapters of my book.
F x

Cheery_Daff

Oh, that is indeed annoying - and quite similar to what happened to me earlier in the week 🙄 How annoying it is to track your finances sometimes 😂

Paspatur

foxgloves said:

We changed the overnight temp on the thermostat to 10° last night. It was showing 13.5 first thing when we got up at 6am, but no problem with that as the boiler swings into action then & it didn't take very long to reach 18°. 

I am going the opposite way tonight
Last night set at 10 fine in bed as I like my bedroom cool
This morning at 5:45 it was 12
Turned up to 18 and took most of the day to get to 18, current cost 12 hours later is £7.25 for gas includes standing charge but not the VAT
Doors and windows are under 5 years old, boiler 2 years old, house is insulated
2 bedroom house
Big difference may be outside temperature
Was minus 10 here overnight and still only minus 7 at 10am, got up to zero but now minus 6
House gets zero sunshine at this time of year (on the few occasions it comes out)
I am going to bed early with a book and a hot water bottle
Turning it down to 14 tonight but with the TRVs off upstairs
Luckily I am a low electricity user, currently £1.21 including standing charge but not VAT
Add the overnight useage for fridge freezer and VAT and we are talking £10 for the day to not even feel very warm for most of it
Ok the government is paying £3 a day if I count the £400 plus £150 council tax rebate
Still a chunk of change on an income of £18k
I have no mortgage or debt so can afford it but how can people with kids do it?
Stay warm everyone

Makingabobor2

Ours always goes off at about 8pm and we have it on timer to come back on at 6am. Wondering if its best to keep it on low, as it does a take ages to get to temperature. Only time we ever had heat on over night was when I had pneumonia years ago and just couldn't stop coughing in the night where it was cold. 

Onebrokelady

QueenJess said:

Onebrokelady said:

I'm kind of in denial about the energy prices 😬 I did put my heating on later in the year than normal and when it first went on I was very careful thanks to a very mild November but this last week it's been on nearly all the time during the day because I'm just too cold otherwise and of course I've been off work so the heating has been on when it would normally be switched off for three days a week. My house is really cold and is a right pain to warm up if it gets too cold and I can't be cold. It's not on at all overnight, this week must be costing me a fortune but I'm trying  not to think about it and will just have to try and catch up in the summer 😟

I don't blame you; being cold is utterly miserable.  I am useless in the cold (and in the heat).  Once I am properly cold I find it really hard to warm up again.  I have to have the heating on - layers/blankets only do so much.  My hands and feet suffer the most.

I'm the same, I find it really hard to warm up once I've got too cold. It's my hands and my nose that were feeling the cold, I can wear gloves but I can't warm my nose up and not was actually hurting from being cold. I can't function if I'm cold, it's like my brain won't work 😀

Onebrokelady

Cheery_Daff said:

Well we have had our thermostat choices temporarily removed - the boiler's got a fault 🙄 Plumber came out tonight to check, as we'd managed to reset it and it was working this morning, but after a service the damn thing wouldn't turn back on. Thermostat currently at 8.5 degrees and dropping. 🥶🥶

Oh dear ,I hope they sort it out for you ASAP, I had no boiler for three weeks last January and it was horrendous