My gas and electricity bill gets cheaper every time.

We used to use, what we thought was, a reasonably priced energy supplier and then, as prices kept increasing, we became increasingly judicious about suppliers, tariffs and how we paid. You will always get a cheaper deal if you 1. pay by direct debit 2. Read the meter yourself and submit the reading online 3. Usually, use a duel fuel tariff. However, you need to be vigilant and be aware of price rises and be ready to switch suppliers if you can get a better deal.

We also, didn't count the cost of energy, why should we have? as it used to be cheap and then, from 2007 onwards energy costs just went up and up. Each quarter, our energy bill would creep up by a few pounds until, by 2009, the energy costs had doubled since 2007. (Sorry about the nerdiness, but I have spreadsheets of all the bills for the last five years!) Enough was enough, in the end, we were paying almost £150 a month for gas and electric. We took, what was to us then, drastic action. We don't have the water and heating (gas combi boiler) on a timer and now only put it on when we really feel we need it. We use electric showers and have five minutes, we only wash clothes when they are dirty, we make our bath towels last all week, we boil the kettle to wash dishes, we heat the one room we are in (we keep asking the lodger if he wants the heating on and he's sat there bare foot, in a t-shirt, looking at us as if we are mad because he never seems to be cold), we use our slow cooker and mini-oven, we batch cook and then re-heat in the microwave, we sold the tumble drier and large washing machine and bought an 'eco-washer', we air dry all our clothes and we have managed to halve our energy costs.

Our first bill/reading,  which was in May and for the previous quarter left us in credit so they reduced our bill from £150 per month to £115 per month. The next quarterly bill/reading also left us in credit so they've reduced out monthly payment to £75ish per month. We add the money we save to a monthly debt repayment to increase the size of our snowballing!

I've copied part of the bills below as I'm so proud of the savings we make. To do what I do and to save the money I have saved, just live like your granny. Don't leave anything on stand by, don't leave any lights on, wear more clothes and save yourself money. I'm painfully conscious of my environmental impact and I'm always trying to reduce it and I can quite happily say that I'm doing my bit.

My most recent combined energy bill, with the much reduced monthly direct debit and money in credit (I wonder why they can't just give it back to me??)

My previous energy bill from May this year for the previous quarter, I was so delighted that we had significantly reduced our bill and I'm even happier that we've reduced it again.