The cost of living... what can we do?

I'm just going to wait and see what happens. From what I can work out there is very little if anything we can do to change the situation.

 

We will just pay the bill when it comes in. it will still be cheaper than heating the flat we were in before last summer. 40-year-old storage radiators, single glazing (acres of it in the living room) and no insulation other than what was sprayed on the original outside wall.

 

We have not been hit so hard here, from 16c to 25c kw/h and 40c a day about 14p to 22p per kw/h and 35p a day. We are basically all electric except we have 3 gas burns on the cooker, one electric we have never used and electric oven which we don't use much, mostly the dry air fryer. We have two fridge/freezers and an ice machine that runs 24/7 (I could cut this down to one and 12/7).

We use gas bottles for hot water, one on the South side of the house in the kitchen and one on the North side for the bathrooms. They are "instant hot water" esquentadors. When you turn water on, the pilot light ignites then goes off when you turn the water off. We use about 10 of those a year at 30 Euros each.

We won't need wood for our open fire this year as we have our 30 sq/m deck, railings and stairs that was removed and chopped up.

T'other Half doesn't concern himself with cost, same as petrol, if you need it you buy it. He estimates c2,000 Euros per year but could go as high as 2,500 if we use the a/c combo heat unit a lot.

 

Our water rates are about 12 Euros a month in the winter and 23-25 a month in the summer like this summer.. This includes rubbish collection from a point at the top of our lane. We have glass/paper/other collection bins frequently placed everywhere in the country.

Our property taxes are 50 Euros a year, 25 each as we jointly own the property. It is low as it is a "casa antiqa", a house built before 1952.

Seeing on the news what France is doing to save electricity, Portugal has always done this. When we first came here in 1984, most stores did not have lights on. It was difficult reading food product labels in the dark in a foreign language. I remember when we first bought a property here in 1988. It came fully furnished and the next year we went to buy a new 3 piece suite. The small store was in total darkness, light only from the windows. We wandered in, were greeted by the owner and we immediately saw something we liked. It was a sofabed and was pulled open and we were told to test it out! It was comfortable ... but I had to take a cushion outside to make sure of the colour! And the best bit ... it was delivered the same day! When we bought the sofabed we have in the guest room now, the owner of the store followed us home (about 40 minutes) to deliver it then and there (and even stopped with us at a Cashpoint to get the money to pay for it) and then insisted on helping T'other Half shift all the furniture when we got here.

To this day, small shops still don't put the lights on in summer. Bars and restaurants can be the same in the country.

And people ask us why we like it here ...

 

Do you consume more electric in the summer months compared to the cooler months?

In Thailand, none of my in laws have stand alone freezers, I think only one has a small capacity fridge/freezer with most just having a small fridge, mainly for drinking water and fresh fruit. When you go to a large supermarket chain like the, Big C, there is hardly any freezer food at all, no need when non of the Thais have the appliances to store them. My Mother in Law (88) does not even have an electric shower, Thai showers only in her house hold. They have a water tank on the roof, which warms up, so it's drown yourself using a scoop. The most energy consuming appliance is the A/C, again my mother in law does not have one, just fans, she had never heard of a tumble dryer prior to meeting me. I know when I first went to Thailand, I stayed on the island of Koh Samui, no A/C and no electric shower, it sure was an eye opener of what I take for granted back in the UK.

 

Probably not. We don't put the a/c on till it is 30c outside. We are in an old house with 60cm walls of clay and stone so cool in the heat and cold in the winter, We are open plan and have 5 meter ceilings in all but the kitchen and bathrooms. We also have ceiling fans which in the summer run non stop in the lounge daytime then bedroom at night.. We don't have heat/air on at night, nothing between say 11pm and 7am. Also there is a lot of the year where we have nothing on. We don't put lights on unless it is essential and then we have sensors for the lounge and kitchen/diner that come on when you enter and go off after a few minutes ... the cats are good for turning them on!

 

If it does fall in price it will be interesting to see how long it is before we feel the benefits.

 

In theory, with the UK having limited storage capacity for gas, then we should be the first to benefit if prices drop. Down side, the GBP has nose dived against the USD, so there is one excuse, but a valid one.

Unleaded is now £1.569 round our area, comparing year on year a barrel of oil is slightly more but we have seen a 20% drop in GBP to USD. Going by my receipts, I was paying on average round the £1.35 mark last September, if we were still getting the same exchange rate as last September then I would of expected to have been paying £1.40 to £1.45.

This is the time of year I would be starting to place orders for coir, bamboo canes, rattan hanging baskets etc etc, which are all imported. With the exchange rate as it is I have already placed orders with some UK stockists as it is working out cheaper due to the goods already in the UK due to surplus stock.

 

The pound versus the dollar is another one of those mechanisms where the price goes up due to a weak pound but rarely comes back down again when things improve.

 

In the event of a bidding war though, the gas producers get to make a decision. And it is a purely financial decision.

Let's say we have a contract at a good price, then before we've called off that contract, someone else bids for the gas that is contracted to us. In that event, the decision is, is it more profitable to sell the gas that is promised to us, to the higher bidder, and then pay us any contractual penalties for breaching the contract, or is it more profitable to tell the higher bidder to go elsewhere.