Each month, the utility bills for your home fluctuate depending on your amount of use. This is one area of the budget that needs to be reigned-in to stay on target.
The power bill is one of the major utility bills for most households, and can be several hundred dollars depending on how many people are in your household and how they use the power. For instance, if you have children and they are using various electronics all day long your bill will be much higher than someone who lives alone and reads during their free time.
In any case, your power bill is where you can have a big influence on the amount of the bill by being cautious of your habits and those of your family members. This is especially important to be cautious of as we move out of the cold weather and into the warmer months of spring and summer.
Thankfully, there are some things that you can do to make sure that you and your family are being energy-efficient this pre-spring time before the warm weather officially arrives and the power bill starts to get higher:
- Consider having some ceiling fans installed in your home if you don’t already have some, or if you have too few. Ceiling fans are a great way to circulate the air that comes from your air conditioner and, in the evening hours, ceiling fans can make it so that you don’t need to use your air conditioner as much.
- Use these few months going into the spring and summer to be shopping for UV curtains. These are especially helpful in the rooms surrounding your thermostat. If those rooms heat up because of the sunlight, it could cause your thermostat to work overtime and keep your air conditioner running unnecessarily.
- Make sure that all of your outdoor lighting is using energy-efficient light bulbs. While the summer nights mean a lot more sunlight, they also mean more activity into the evening hours and spending time outdoors past sundown. Extra outdoor lighting can make your yard safe to spend time in after the sun goes down, but you want to make sure your light bulbs aren’t using more energy than necessary.
During the warm weather months, it is not unusual for the power bill to be higher than during the winter. While we see a spike in the bill due to running the heating system, the summer months are when we are much more active so the power bill can climb. Follow these tips for keeping your power bill manageable.