Get familiar with your utility bills and pay attention to trends – they can save you TENS of thousands of dollars!

by triplealpha

Like a lot of people every month I get a water bill, electricity bill, internet, you get the idea. Most months I open my mail, verify that the bill looks roughly similar to last month and let autopay take care of the rest.

But since last year I have started an excel spreadsheet documenting what my bills are each month, how many thousands of gallons of water I’m using, kWh used, the whole shebang, in an attempt to be a more financially responsible and understand where my money is going and how I can save.

We are primarily funded by readers. Please subscribe and donate to support us!

The last 3 months I noticed my water bill hiking up. My home uses between 2-4k of freshwater monthly but it’s gone from 5, to 8, then 8 again. I noticed the trend, but didn’t really understand why it increased – I’m not a plumber and there were no leaks in the house I was sure.

Fast forward to last evening and I’m out with a group of acquaintances and someone’s plumbing problem gets brought up, one of my friends is an awesome plumber and I manage to ask him at the tail end of the conversation about what I noticed on my bill. He seemed immediately alarmed and asked him if I noticed any water accumulation in my front yard. Actually, yeah, it’s been raining a lot lately but I do have a few persistent pockets left over on my yard. How did he know? This morning he actually brought his crew out to my house and found out there’s a crack in my water main – I was losing hundreds of gallons a day and it was on the verge of rupturing completely. He replaced the line for a nominal fee and said how glad he was I said something – my area is really prone to sinkholes and nothing attracts them like pooling or leaking water. I likely saved tens of thousands of dollars in damage to my house and my neighbors house by bringing it up! Not to mention the savings in my monthly bill…

Views:

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.