No, don’t worry, no one was hurt! At least not yet, not until I get around to paying my bills and then my bank balance would hurt.
Our latest electricity bill came in today. Wasn’t impressed to start with, given this house is fully insulated and we haven’t been using the heating as much.
$800 seemed a bit too much until Les and I remembered to subtract the 12.5% hike in charges. That brought it back to about $700. Not too bad considering it was over $1000 for the same time last year.
Even better is the fact that they have been slow in reading the metre and the bill is for 4 months supply, not 3. So for 3 months, it should have been $525!!!
Taking the bill at face value, it looks like we have used way more electricity than we should have, but taking into account the amount of time the bill is for and the HUGE charges increase, it works out that we have effectively halved our electricity usage!!!
I’m not saying I’m looking forward to paying the bill at all. I despise being forced into paying way too much for essentials. Being a low income family, it is hard to save at all, though I do my best, and most of this bill is already paid for.
Smart me says pay half now and the other half next pay to avoid having to restrict our already tight grocery budget. It just means I don’t have any money for my fortnightly shopping, so will have to make do with the garden pots I have for another month.
Life is hard enough without our electricity companies jacking up their charges on us. Pretty soon, our family will be back to the dark ages the way they keep raising the charges. Oh well, what environmental impact would we have then? Only the car and household rubbish!
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