I Was Happy… Until I Received My Energy Bill of £1,192.36.

What you can learn from my mistake.

Photo by Julian Hochgesang on Unsplash

Yesterday, Friday, 4th of February, I received an email from my energy provider saying that I owe them £1,192.36. Well, this is a lot of money. I was trying to understand how this happened because I checked my energy account on Monday and had over £200 in credit.

For the past months, I have been watching the news about people not being able to afford energy in the UK, people not being able to use the heaters in the cold winter because they don’t have money. I felt sorry for them, but in my mind, this only happened to “poor people” or the elderly that relied on public pensions. To my surprise, I am one of them. I can’t afford heat anymore. Simple like that.

I have a full-time job, and I can’t afford my life anymore. And I live a pretty “basic” life. I rarely shop for what is unnecessary (only buying food, personal hygiene and cleaning products), and I don’t eat out (or go out). I learned how to live frugal because I wanted to build my Emergency Fund, which I did. But when I thought things would get more accessible, as one thinks: “the more you do something, the easier it gets”, the external factors of life are simply crushing me like I am an abandoned banana on the pavement.

In my head, we had a “controlled energy bill” that a capped tariff would cover us. How naive. I still don’t know what happened with my energy consumption because I have been keeping track, and my account said I was consuming less than I was paying (this was what I thought). But what matters is that I need to pay this bill (I am not paying alone, I am sharing with my partner). This is not going to go away. And one thing I can guarantee to you, I am not a person to hide from problems anymore so that I will pay, crying, but I will.

What upsets me the most is the struggle. Once again, here I am struggling. I have been financially struggling for almost two years now. I have spreadsheets, I am organised, I don’t spend more than I make, but the truth is I just don’t make enough money. Now that my energy bill is going to go up, as everyone’s else in the country, I will need to cut back something else.