It's getting tough out there. Feeling the pinch?

in_my_wellies

@LadOnTheHill
I agree with your comments, however, I'm on Economy 7 so use as much electric before it switches to daytime as possible. I measure and boil enough for tea and a flask on cheap electric. Everything is switched off before daytime units click in. 

Flugelhorn

LadOnTheHill said:

I put an energy monitor on my parent's kettle back when I lived with them, they used about a kW a day boiling it. They'd fill it up, boil it, use what they needed, then let the rest go cold. At today's prices, that's about £100. I nagged them to only boil what they needed, but when they saw the difference it was costing, they changed their habits.

I think some of this comes from when you had to at least "cover the element" in the old style kettles otherwise it overheated, shot the cable out of the socket and sulked for ages until it had cooled down. These days you do have to only boil what you need/

Slinky

in_my_wellies said:

@LadOnTheHill
I agree with your comments, however, I'm on Economy 7 so use as much electric before it switches to daytime as possible. I measure and boil enough for tea and a flask on cheap electric. Everything is switched off before daytime units click in. 

Same here.

Antoehr thing, I no longer have TV on in the background if I'm surfing the net, it's only on, largely, if I'm actually watching it.

Siebrie

And descale your kettle regularly, otherwise the electricity has to heat the scale first, before the scale passes the heat on to the water.

dreamyd

helensbiggestfan said:

A tip to reduce fridge running costs.  

Freeze a gel pack - the sort you use for picnics and put it in the fridge until defrosted.  Makes quite a difference, especially in hot weather when the fridge has to work harder.  

That's a really good idea.  Thanks for sharing.

EssexHebridean

pelirocco said:

littlemoney said:

From what I saw yesterday there is no shortage of money and everyone can afford the increasing price of fuel. I have reached this conclusion after two 20 mile journerys along a dual carriageway. I travelled at a steady 50 mph to increase fuel economy and many cars and lorries came zooming past me doing 60 - 70 mph. No car or lorry stayed behind me for long.

No lorry was zooming past  you doing 60 - 70 miles per hour ,they are limited  by law to 56 mphb( in reality  the limiters not allow them to reach that )

Not quite true - yes what we would once have called "Heavy good vehicles" are limited to 56mph - and these days the majority *should*  be fitted with untamperable limiters, however in reality there are still ways and means of drives/operators getting around that. They will also run over that level when running downhill - 60mph is far from unliely, and even a little higher - but often a little beyond if they drop revs while going uphill as it's frequently difficult for a driver of such a vehicle to get the revs back up again to a level to get back up through the range on the gearbox. (And this is why you may have seen a truck driver get REALLY hacked off with someone pulling out in front of them and making them brake on a uphill stretch!). I reported a truck that passed us on a motorway in Scotland a couple of years ago - we were doing 68mph at the time (verified by both speedo and independent satnav - so while not 100% accurate probably no more than a mile or two out at that speed) and he sailed past us (undertaking, as well) as though we were barely moving - it was actually quite scary to see. 

Slinky said:

Spendless, I've got 2 thermos flasks, one of which has been used a lot for coffee in the past so you can't get the smell out. OH has a flask on his desk and my flask with water only gets tipped into the kettle to reheat, minimum amount at a time, to make my tea. Can't stand stewed thermos tea. I also put a small amount of water into the kettle after boiling it to take the edge off with the rest of the heat from the boiled kettle.

ETA the reason for using flasks, for us, is we have economy 7 so I fill them at cheap rate.

This reminds me, I need to go and take the soup I made yesterday out of the fridge for lunch.

This is exactly what we do on days when we're at home - as long as the kettle can be boiled first thing on the cheap rate at least. The first boil of the day is a full kettle, transfer the balance to the flask then next lot of drinks get made straight from the flask for MrEH's coffee, and a cupful back into the kettle for my tea. (At which point I have to remember I'm doing it as it boils SO fast if I'm not ready with the tea-bag I end up having to wait until the kettle will let me reboil it yet again!)

(For those banging the "just fill your mug and use the exact amount of water" drum - this doesn't work in very high-limescale areas as it's impossible to keep the kettle free of it. I have a bit of an aversion to crunchy tea-dregs... ) 

Wednesday2000

Re: charging your mobile phone I am also going to get my husband to charge his at his work. Nothing to do with money saving, but I know a guy online who said he used to charge his phone overnight and his dog woke him up barking the other night as the cable had caught fire so that is another reason not to charge it overnight. I used to leave mine in the kitchen charging when I went to bed but I stopped doing it too!

I was just saying on another thread on here that the rising costs have really irritated me. We both worked hard to clear all our debt and then our mortgage when I was in my early 40s. Having to worry about money again due to external factors has annoyed me! I have no idea what other people are going to cope as many people I know like my in-laws have debt and big mortgages/high rents.

Saying that, it is a good idea to batch cook and use up the tinned food we have in the house and I have noticed that we have actually eaten better and more varied meals since I started doing that.:)

I am moving house soon and living quite near to an Aldi so that might be my new favourite supermarket. Bye bye to Ocado, lol.

Tahlullah.H

I may be awkward here, but I really do not feel it a great idea to have you and as some have suggested, your family charge things at work.  Especially if your employer is not a large organisation.  They have to pay the electricity bill too, and if their costs go up to a point they cannot sustain, then what usually happens is they lose staff via redundancy.  So, the extreme end is someone losing their livelihood because everyone/people decide to put the financial burden onto the employer.

An extreme example I know, but it could fundamentally be classed as theft.

OrkneyStar

Tahlullah.H said:

I may be awkward here, but I really do not feel it a great idea to have you and as some have suggested, your family charge things at work.  Especially if your employer is not a large organisation.  They have to pay the electricity bill too, and if their costs go up to a point they cannot sustain, then what usually happens is they lose staff via redundancy.  So, the extreme end is someone losing their livelihood because everyone/people decide to put the financial burden onto the employer.

An extreme example I know, but it could fundamentally be classed as theft.

I have been thinking the same while reading some of these posts. Charging your gadget anywhere than your own house isn't free, someone somewhere will have to pay for it.

Spendless

LadOnTheHill said:

You're financially better off not boiling too much water in the first place.

Putting boiling water in a thermos won't necessarily save money, unfortunately. A kettle uses all of the energy it draws from the mains to heat the water, so if you put a litre of water in, it'll use a litre's worth of energy to boil it. If you put a cupful of water in, it'll use a cupful's worth. An easy-ish way to see how much energy you're using is to time how long it takes the kettle to boil the water - if it takes longer, it uses more electricity. For reference, a 2kw electric kettle uses 166w every five minutes it's running.

If you fill your mug from the tap and put just that into the kettle, you get exactly the amount of boiling water you need.  The only way to save money using a kettle is to not boil more than you need. If you have excess water and let it go cold, that's energy going to waste. Putting the excess into a thermos stops it going cold, but it only saves you wasting energy, it doesn't actually cost you less. You would save a bit of time having already hot water to reheat, but then you're paying money out twice for the same cup of hot water.

I put an energy monitor on my parent's kettle back when I lived with them, they used about a kW a day boiling it. They'd fill it up, boil it, use what they needed, then let the rest go cold. At today's prices, that's about £100. I nagged them to only boil what they needed, but when they saw the difference it was costing, they changed their habits.

Ahhh ok. As I'm home all day, this was an attempt to just boil a full kettle once rather than boiling several times a day. Since this mornings post. I have drank a further  2 mugs of coffee plus a 3rd at my parent's house, that I've just visited. I need to gauge how long it takes to boil 1 cup full x how many times I'll have a hot drink versus how much it costs for a full kettle once then using a thermos for the rest of the day.

My Dad used his energy monitor to work out whether it was cheaper to just have the gas fire on all day (they're retired) or the CH on instead. He said the gas fire worked out cheaper, some of their rooms are open plan (and I've long thought I'd change it if it was mine), so they say they've put an extra layer on and closed as many doors as they can. 

Still on with emptying DD's belongings and we now have some additional shower gel and a small pack of t-bags (that I was almost out of) along with a money off coupon in the box to use