Crying over my power bill

Yep got ours yesterday- $330. I almost cried. I can't believe how much they charge when the majority of NZers live in poorly insulated homes. We are in a rental property and our landlord is too cheap to properly insulate the house so we have heaters and a dehumidifier running 24/7. Time to move

ours this month is $220!!! this is one of our biggest BUT we have loads of power guzzling things - dishwasher once a day, washing machine 3 times a day, 42" plasma on all day from 8am - 11pm most days, laptop, little column heater on all night in astins room (his room is always the coldest), big column heater on in hallway all night, small fan heater on most of day and from 5pm - 11pm, the normal fridge, chest freezer etc and DH had been using the welder ALOT last month!! and the obvious oven once a night etc!

Id say ours is going to be this much or scarier for this winter! especially with new baby![:s]

oh and our house is fully insulated and is a very sunny house.

Meh, I like to pretend we don't have a power bill so I use the dryer, dishwasher, oil fin heaters in lil miss and Maya's rooms, convector heater in the lounge and electric blanket on our bed as and when I feel like it.

Sucks when we do get a bill tho

We got one today for $340 which wasn't too bad, we had some over $400 last winter.

We got our first power bill yesterday since moving into our new house a month ago and it was $246 ($222 with the discount). That's the highest bill we've had. The highest before that was around $180 and that was at our previous house which we rented, which was smaller and colder, but did have a fireplace which we used alot during winter. If it didn't have the fireplace we probably would've used the heaters more and had higher power bills.

Our new house though has a heat pump which is a novelty for us. We don't use it during the day though. It' usually on from about 5pm then we set it to night mode when we go to bed, then I turn it off in the mornings because the house stays pretty warm without it during the day. We do run the oil column heater in DD's room during the night, and occassionally run a second oil column heater in our room for a bit before we go to bed. Have hardly used the electic blankets though this winter so far. I do however do lots of washing, esp with DDs cloth nappies which probably use a lot of hot water. And when we have had really frosty nights and end up with condensation the next morning I run the dehumidifier during the day. I guess I really have to wait until the next bill to compare our power usage and I certainly hope it doesn't get to the $300s!! DH is an electrician though and he plans to do a few things around the house to make it a bit more energy efficient so hopefully that helps.

Ours came on Firday and was $280, I knew it was going to be big cause we have the DVS going and a fin heater in Ryan's room from 7 - 7.

Last winter when we bought Ryan home our bill was $500. I cried when I saw it. but it was an estimate. THis latest one wasn't . So I don't want to see next months czuse it's going to be huge for an estimate.

Ours went from $170 last month to $320 this month and there is just the two of us in a new home

Okay you guys are now literally scaring me with all these bills. Specially seeing that last month I used the dryer a lot for our clothes due to weather and me being to tired to run out each time and put clothes on and off.

Ours just came today and with the discount already taken off it was still $630. Scary stuff. The house is 4 bedrooms and I'm using the dryer a lot but still thats an awful amount of money going out the door every month.