Living with little or without household energy??

mumtoomany

Just what i was about to ask. Do you shop around for all your insurances? Do you pay annually to save a few pounds? Do you also go through cash back sites when you pay?
On saving energy. Is your cellar insulated at all? In our seven bed victorian semi, several years ago, I filled the spaces between the joists/rafters on the cellar ceiling, under the ground floor floor, with loft insulation. I held it place with string and drawing pins, strung between the joists. used what we had. Made a difference to the heat loss through the floor.
mumtoomany.xx

comeandgo

If your other insurance is related to business then it should not be included in your personal SOA as it will be included in the business expenses.

Happy_Sloth

someone else asked for details of the Energy bills... this was from Octobers bill where we where still on the fixed rate. Lower usage due to the summer months.  Electric won't change much but gas does get higher in winter. 





We've done meter reading since..Looking at the figures i've calculated the current usage during winter. 

QrizB I did mistype the gas sorry... it's ... 121 not 2  

• Gas - 121.44 KWH per day,  which is 3,643 per month (At current fixed price this will cost £148 per month not including standing charges, in April this usage would cost £268 per month) 
  

• Electric - 24.69 per day, which is 740 per month (Current fixed price this is £154 per month,  At Aprils prices this would be £209.) 

I have tried to sort all this out on another thread and get the the bottom of the high usage and it all pretty much seems to be the PC computers.  We all have cut down our usage in the evenings for social etc but having 2 high powered machines on all day for work seems to be the main culprit. 

We recently replaced an old box freezer and that does seem to have helped, looking at the most recent meter readings it seems the changes we've made in the past month have bought it down by about £1.20 per day so thats about £36 a month which is great but no where near where i need it. 

Happy_Sloth

emmajones1976 said:

£120 in car insurance a MONTH?!

What are you driving?

We have 2 cars, insurance per car is around £700 per year. ironically not using either car much atm with Covid but i expect to spend more time travelling as my clients open up go back to the offices. 

Fingers crossed if i travel more i'll spend less time at home using my own electric. i'll use more petrol but that i can claim as a business expense via my company.  

Financially it's being at home thats killing me... the HMRC rules don't work for home workers using alot of electric. The HMRC allowance of £6 a week no where near covers the electric used at home, but the mileage allowance will cover extra petrol used. 

emmajones1976

£700 a year sounds an awful lot for car insurance. 
Can that not appear as a business expense at all?

comeandgo

Are these high powered machines what you use for your business?  

Happy_Sloth

comeandgo said:

If your other insurance is related to business then it should not be included in your personal SOA as it will be included in the business expenses.

It's personal insurance and therefore not claimable via the business... but it is sorta business related. I wouldn't need it if i was employed normally. 

in essence it's "Income protection insurance"  as the households main earner if i can't work,  my business doesn't earn and i therefore won't get paid.  

So if i get Sick or hit my a bus,  my family will have an income while I get back on my feet.  However I'm not able to put it through my company accounts as it's doesn't qualify as a business expense. 

So while it's not a typical household bill it is one that I need.  It's there to protect me and my family should i become to unwell to work.  

joedenise

Apart from the insurances which are incredibly high the thing that stuck out for me was the cost of your water!  That seems really high for 3 people.  I'm assuming that's based on the rateable value of the house.  I'm sure it would be cheaper if you had a water meter.  We pay £23.50 a month for 2 of us so less than £12 per person, on the same basis a meter could reduce your bill to £36 a month.

As others have said your car insurance is about half what we pay for a YEAR (our annual insurance is less than £250 with both of us driving).  We could get it cheaper with a company we've never heard of but would rather use a name we've heard of!

Happy_Sloth

emmajones1976 said:

£700 a year sounds an awful lot for car insurance. 
Can that not appear as a business expense at all?

Sadly not you get a mileage allowance as a claimable expense which is supposed to supplement running costs on a car. 

Sadly with all the WFH due to covid my car is sat on my drive moving very little atm.  So i can't re-coop any of those costs right now.  I'm instead running up an insane electric bill.   

Happy_Sloth

comeandgo said:

Are these high powered machines what you use for your business?  

We actually have quite a few PC's in the house, most arn't powered up very often.  we have 3 used regularly.   

• 1 is mine which i work on all day as a developer is reasonably high powered,  this is used for my business. (I also have 2 servers used for work, which are fired up as an when needed) 

• 1 is my sons who is a graduate has a Laptop for work, and sometimes uses his gaming PC for work when he's laptop can't cope with the coding.. he also plays alot of computer games in the evenings so it's online alot. 

• The final one is my husbands, using electric meters we found for some reason this PC uses obseen amounts of energy, he's out of work atm, not using it as much as he was now we know it's using alot of power. But he still uses it to check emails, look at the job sites etc. 

So in short ... 2 of the PC's that are used alot are used for the family to earn an income, but only 1 is related to my business.