How to Save Money on Your Electricity Bill – The best tips, tricks and ideas to save money on your electric bill every month. Small changes really add up and can make a big difference in your monthly budget. Learn easy ways to save now!
Who else is sick of their high electric bill ruining their monthly budget?! *everyone raises hands*
We’ve all been there before. You don’t think you’ve been too bad with your electric usage… it shouldn’t be that bad… right? And then you get that bill in the mail… and you were WAY over budget!
If you’re at all like me, you look at your house and wonder where on earth that bill came from?
That’s where I come in! I’m here to help you get control of your bills and show you how to save money on your electricity bill every month by changing up these small steps.
And, no… none of them involve unplugging everything and living in darkness with candles! 😉
But before we get to the good stuff, here are some other places that will help you find money to save:
- 11 Expenses to Stop Spending Money On
- How to Save Money When You Live Paycheck-to-Paycheck
- How to Live on One Low Income
- Money Saving Tips That Helped Us Save Every Year!
- Top Laundry Hacks for Frugal Families on a Budget
- 10 Habits of Highly Frugal People
- 8 Ways to Stop Spending Money You Don’t Have
- 10 Things to Say Instead of “I’m Broke”
How to Save Money on Your Electricity Bill
Put your lights on a timer
I forget to turn my lights out all the time. This eats up electricity and it makes the house hotter. By setting lights on a timer (these are the ones I have), you can make sure that you’re never leaving lights on overnight or turning them on too early in the day.
This is especially helpful in kids’ rooms. My sons forget to turn their lights out in the morning, and when we go into their rooms at bedtime, their lights have been on all day!
Keep your thermostat set at 72 or 68
If you really want to see a drop in your monthly expenses, set your AC to 76 or even 78. I know, it’s hot outside. But for me, the $300 electric bill isn’t worth keeping the AC at 68 all summer! Even if you can bring your AC
Even if you can bring your AC up to 72 degrees, you’ll see a difference in your energy bill quickly. You could be looking at a 10% or more savings on your bill!
Give it a try. Increase your thermostat by 2 degrees and see how it affects your bill, but also your comfort level!
And don’t forget to set the AC higher when you leave the house and at night! Getting a programmable thermostat makes keeping track of your house’s temperature easy. It’s absolutely worth the small investment to save a lot of money on your energy bills in both summer and winter.
Do NOT lower or raise your thermostat too much, though!
I was talking to my electrician about what the best home temperature is for the lowest electric bill. We got our programmable thermostat and my initial thought was that during the day when we weren’t home, to just crank it down as low as we could get it.
As it turns out, that is NOT how to save money on your electricity bill! In fact, that would make it worse!
The system has to work twice as hard to get the temperature back up to where is should be after your drop it dramatically. So it’s best to keep everything within 4 degrees in either direction.
So if you have your daily thermostat set to 72, if shouldn’t go below 68 or above 76. That way, you can still adjust the temperature to save some money while you aren’t there, but you won’t overwork your system and wind up costing yourself even more.
Wash your clothes ONLY in cold water
Seriously, washing clothes in cold water is a game changer for your bills. It saves so much to wash them on the cold cycle instead of hot.
If you have stubborn stains or funky smells you need to get out, check the next point!
(Not to mention that you can use this super-easy 2-ingredient detergent that works well in cold water to save even more. )
Use the sun instead of the dryer, hot water, and bleach!
Did you know that the sun is an incredible resource that you can use all year instead of spending money on expensive cleaners, bleaches, or even the hot water in the washing machine!
Yup! When we were using cloth diapers and they started to get… dingy? All I had to do was put the cloth diapers on the drying rack outside in the sun for a few hours and the stains were gone and they smelled clean again!
If you have clothes with stubborn stains or that have a funky odor (lookin’ at you, towels that sat in the washer for 2 days because I forgot about you!), then just put them outside in the sun for a few hours.
When you DO use the dryer, use wool dryer balls!
I initially got these wool dryer balls because they were supposed to cut down on static cling and replace dryer sheets. But then I heard that they also cut the dryer time down significantly!
I’ve had the same set of 6 for more than a year now (and we’re a big family!) and they’re still working. Instead of having to run the dryer for a full 90 minutes, I can now safely cut it down to 60… even for a full load of laundry!
Related: Top Laundry Hacks for Frugal Families on a Budget
Black out the sun
We started using blackout curtains in our house and we’ve never gone back. The difference in the room’s temperature without the curtains never ceases to amaze me.
Closing the curtains and using the blackout curtains on all of the windows in the house has been so helpful in keeping our home cooler in the summer (and warmer in the winter).
Use a programmable thermostat to schedule lower energy use
If you haven’t yet, you should buy a programmable thermostat for your house. Depending on all of the bells and whistles that you want (you can even get some that you can set from your phone), you can get one for around $50.
When you get a programmable thermostat, you can set the temperature to exactly what you want it to be at different times during the day. That way, you never have to worry about forgetting to set it to a lower (or higher) temperature when you go to sleep or when the house is empty during the day. It will automatically change the temperature for you.
Don’t leave things plugged in if you aren’t using them
Any thing that eats electricity without you even thinking about them being used, these are “vampire electronics,” and they suck energy like nobody’s business. These are things like your internet router, oven, microwave, laptop charger, microwave, everything that it’s being used actively but stays plugged in is a vampire appliance.
By getting a power strip with an on/off switch, and plugging these appliances into it, you can make sure that you’re turning off their power when you’re not using them. It’s easy enough to turn off your wifi when you sleep and then flip the switch back on when you get up. By the time that you’ve made your coffee, the internet is up and running without you ever knowing it was off.
Check your fridge temperature
If you have stuff in the back of your fridge that is icing over, chances are good that you’ve got it set too cool in there. Change the temperature so that it’s between 35 and 38 degrees.
This is the ideal temperature for both keeping your food fresh and so that you’re saving electricity. This is an easy check for you to do to make sure that you’re not freezing your produce or wasting electricity.
Only run cycles when they’re full
This goes for both the dishwasher AND the washing machine. Don’t run them if you don’t have a full load.
That’s not to say to overload your dishwasher or washing machine (because that makes them virtually useless and you’ll have to run another cycle if they aren’t clean, which defeats the purpose here). But make sure that you have a full load of dishes or laundry before you start.
Be careful of appliances that make summers even hotter
In the summer, I avoid using my oven altogether. It just makes the house even hotter and then the air conditioning needs to work twice as hard to cool it. The same can be said for the crockpot and other kitchen appliances.
Sure most things won’t put off as much heat as the stove or the oven, but any heat at all can really make summers much more difficult to handle.
There are plenty of ways for you to learn how to save money on your electricity bill and these are just the big ones!
There are plenty of other ways to save lots of money!
What ways are you saving money this on electricity?
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