The rising cost of living

[foreveryoung]

10 minutes ago, Genie said:

Not if you’re on a fixed tariff  

Mines just finished, must have saved about £1500 over the past 18 months. Probably pay it back now though. 

[chrisp65]

10 minutes ago, Genie said:

Not if you’re on a fixed tariff  

Yep, fixed a while back when the offer was do you want to fix at the same rate as standard.

Looked like a weird deal but I clicked yes.

 

Also, signed up for this half price Sundays thing with British Gas. 

[Genie]

18 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Yep, fixed a while back when the offer was do you want to fix at the same rate as standard.

Looked like a weird deal but I clicked yes.

 

Also, signed up for this half price Sundays thing with British Gas. 

Same and same here.

I noticed yesterday that BG have a 22 month fixed deal which is a smidge below the current price. I’m tempted to lock it in for peace of mind. British Gas allow moving to another of their fixed rate deals penalty free so in the (unlikely) scenario prices plummet I could get on a different fixed deal.

All we need is the troubles in the middle east to spill over and it’ll be soaring prices again.

Edited November 23, 2023 by Genie

[MakemineVanilla]

16 hours ago, VillaJ100 said:

Honestly all the tradesmen I know are absolutely raking it in. There's the inherent danger of getting hurt or sick or otherwise unable to work but none of them will get out of bed for less than £250 a day. It's also increasingly hard to find someone to do small jobs. 

Sadly as well literally all of them bar one aren't declaring earnings properly, often earning double or triple what they claim and paying next to sod all tax which is all claimed back anyway. I don't have any idea what can be done about it either. The one guy who is declaring properly is only doing so to get a mortgage.

Do you have any idea what they do with the money?

There have been various studies done over the years on the spending habits of "affluent workers", which revealed that they mostly squander it on gambling or buying consumer durables.

This proved to be the case whenever Metro-Cammell won a big contract and were hiring back in the day,  and the sky was the limit when it came to overtime which was paid at a very enviable rate.

 

[Genie]

47 minutes ago, Genie said:

Same and same here.

I noticed yesterday that BG have a 22 month fixed deal which is a smidge below the current price. I’m tempted to lock it in for peace of mind. British Gas allow moving to another of their fixed rate deals penalty free so in the (unlikely) scenario prices plummet I could get on a different fixed deal.

All we need is the troubles in the middle east to spill over and it’ll be soaring prices again.

Quoted myself to say I went for the 22 month tariff. It means I’m covered at around todays price through this winter, and next winter and 75% of 2025. 

 

[VillaJ100]

2 hours ago, MakemineVanilla said:

Do you have any idea what they do with the money?

There have been various studies done over the years on the spending habits of "affluent workers", which revealed that they mostly squander it on gambling or buying consumer durables.

This proved to be the case whenever Metro-Cammell won a big contract and were hiring back in the day,  and the sky was the limit when it came to overtime which was paid at a very enviable rate.

 

Yeah, mostly spend it in the pub, gambling, overpriced designer t-shirts, on video games, cars, gadgets, sometimes holidays/days out or home improvements. Generally just standard basic millennial man shite.

EDIT - As they were working through COVID as well and getting the furlough money they literally didn't know what to do with it so about 10 of them built spare room/back garden bars. Only two of them still use it as far as I know.

Edited November 23, 2023 by VillaJ100

[Genie]

 

[Xann]

[chrisp65]

A British Gas peaksave thing is being run tomorrow, for what I think is the first time.

Use 1kwh less than you usually would between 5:00pm and 6:30pm and they’ll credit your account with £4.

Make any sort of reduction on your usual Wednesday evening electric consumption and get a quid.

It’s not going to make anyone rich, but its an interesting concept, getting a bunch of people willing to cut their electric use at peak times in return for a cash reward if and when they receive a text or email. It feels slightly like a potential tool in preventing shortages in the depths of winter should we get an energy crisis.

[Demitri_C]

24 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

A British Gas peaksave thing is being run tomorrow, for what I think is the first time.

Use 1kwh less than you usually would between 5:00pm and 6:30pm and they’ll credit your account with £4.

Make any sort of reduction on your usual Wednesday evening electric consumption and get a quid.

It’s not going to make anyone rich, but its an interesting concept, getting a bunch of people willing to cut their electric use at peak times in return for a cash reward if and when they receive a text or email. It feels slightly like a potential tool in preventing shortages in the depths of winter should we get an energy crisis.

Thanks for this im with them so gonna turn everything off from the fuse tomorrow

[chrisp65]

4 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

Thanks for this im with them so gonna turn everything off from the fuse tomorrow

You’ve got to be signed up to the scheme, but that takes about 10 seconds.

[sidcow]

31 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

A British Gas peaksave thing is being run tomorrow, for what I think is the first time.

Use 1kwh less than you usually would between 5:00pm and 6:30pm and they’ll credit your account with £4.

Make any sort of reduction on your usual Wednesday evening electric consumption and get a quid.

It’s not going to make anyone rich, but its an interesting concept, getting a bunch of people willing to cut their electric use at peak times in return for a cash reward if and when they receive a text or email. It feels slightly like a potential tool in preventing shortages in the depths of winter should we get an energy crisis.

There is going to be a lot of this to help balance the grid in future. 

A very major one is going to be to allow EV owners to allocate a % of their battery capacity to sell back to the grid. 

Charge it up cheap as chips off peak and sell your allocated capacity back at peak rates. 

It will collectively be the biggest battery that will ever exist. 

Edited November 28, 2023 by sidcow

[Genie]

1 hour ago, chrisp65 said:

A British Gas peaksave thing is being run tomorrow, for what I think is the first time.

Use 1kwh less than you usually would between 5:00pm and 6:30pm and they’ll credit your account with £4.

Make any sort of reduction on your usual Wednesday evening electric consumption and get a quid.

It’s not going to make anyone rich, but its an interesting concept, getting a bunch of people willing to cut their electric use at peak times in return for a cash reward if and when they receive a text or email. It feels slightly like a potential tool in preventing shortages in the depths of winter should we get an energy crisis.

British Gas do the half price Sundays thing too. As you say, it’s not a fortune but it’s a few quid to make a small adjustment. 

We now do the washing, drying and vacuuming in a Sunday and get a couple of quid credited to the account each week.

Its probably much cheaper for the energy company to do this than pay through the nose for energy from Europe when we run out.

Edited November 28, 2023 by Genie

[chrisp65]

4 minutes ago, Genie said:

British Gas do the half price Sundays thing too. As you say, it’s not a fortune but it’s a few quid to make a small adjustment. 

We now do the washing, drying and vacuuming in a Sunday and get a couple of quid credited to the account each week.

Its probably much cheaper for the energy company to do this than pay through the nose for energy from Europe when we run out.

Yep, we’ve changed our routine to do all the domestic stuff on a Sunday.

 

[chrisp65]

 

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National Grid ESO on Tuesday said it would activate its voluntary “demand flexibility service” between 5pm and 6.30pm on November 29 as it warned electricity supply margins were “expected to be tighter than normal”. 

 

[Demitri_C]

11 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

You’ve got to be signed up to the scheme, but that takes about 10 seconds.

I was reading you have to have a smart metre. I dont have one of those so i dont quality unfortunately 

[sidcow]

4 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

I was reading you have to have a smart metre. I dont have one of those so i dont quality unfortunately 

I keep my smart metre in my underpants. 

[bickster]

Oh in other news, fuel prices should be dropping. The two non-staffed places by me are at £1.37.9 for petrol and £1.44.9 for diesel and have been for a week. The only sign I’ve seen of prices dropping elsewhere is the local big Tesco which has diesel at £1.49.9 everywhere else is pretty much 10-13p a litre over

[dubbs]

2 hours ago, Demitri_C said:

I was reading you have to have a smart metre. I dont have one of those so i dont quality unfortunately 

Our "smart" meter display only shows us our gas usage which is kinda pointless.  Told the supplier numerous times but all the advice they offered was useless.

On the subject of displays, does anyone else think they make you a little paranoid about the amount of gas/electric you use. I know before we had a display the heating would have been on a lot more recently than it had been.  The house feels cold , we're over £1000 in credit on the account and it's still not in half the time it used to be.  

[MakemineVanilla]

16 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

A British Gas peaksave thing is being run tomorrow, for what I think is the first time.

Use 1kwh less than you usually would between 5:00pm and 6:30pm and they’ll credit your account with £4.

Make any sort of reduction on your usual Wednesday evening electric consumption and get a quid.

It’s not going to make anyone rich, but its an interesting concept, getting a bunch of people willing to cut their electric use at peak times in return for a cash reward if and when they receive a text or email. It feels slightly like a potential tool in preventing shortages in the depths of winter should we get an energy crisis.

That's when people are getting home and putting on the kettle and starting to cook their evening meal.

Its sounds like the infrastructure is lagging behind the demand, as per effing usual.