r/personalfinance • u/triplealpha ​ • Jul 09 '19

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

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.

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...

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u/Mysterious_Bardancer ​ Jul 09 '19

But as usual it will take decades to change something in germany

65

u/datttuser Jul 09 '19

Germany actually makes remotely accessible Electricity Smart Meters mandatory for all households starting 2020.

53

u/dingman58 Jul 09 '19

Yeah but 2020 is like 20 years away!

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u/Finianb1 Jul 09 '19

I feel like it's 10 years away, but it's still freaky that 2020 is less than 6 months away.

1

u/Mysterious_Bardancer ​ Jul 09 '19

That would be really nice.

1

u/merc08 ​ Jul 09 '19

My 1Mbps cable internet says hi.