You may have seen your utility bills rise recently. In Ohio, for instance, customers on the standard service offering plans from their local utilities typically saw their electric rates rise anywhere from 58% to 88% earlier this year. That's painful, especially for those of us who don't have unlimited funds.
As rough as it can be to pay utility bills these days, it's important to recognize that you really can't control the utilities. Despite that, you're not completely powerless in this situation. There are still actions you can take to help yourself deal with the pain of today's higher prices. Here are four steps you can take to do something about your utility bills.
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1. Seal up drafty doors and windows
Houses settle. Materials expand and contract as temperatures change. The reality is that unless you live in brand new construction, chances are pretty good that you have at least one drafty door or window that is causing you to pay more for your heating and cooling.
Weatherstripping, caulk, and other forms of airflow blocking can be really low-cost ways to improve the barrier between the inside and the outside of your home. That can help reduce the cost of cooling your house in the summer and heating it in the winter, cutting back on what you're sending to your utilities.
2. Install and use a programmable thermostat
Your home's heating and air conditioner systems serve two purposes: your comfort and protecting the home's contents from freezing or overheating. Chances are pretty good that your house can handle a wider range of temperatures than you comfortably can.
With a programmable thermostat, you can take advantage of that fact by turning the temperature up in the summer or down in the winter when you don't expect to be home. That way, your heater will run less in the winter and your air conditioner will run less in the summer, saving you money that you had been sending to the utility, without really affecting your comfort level.
3. Shift to LED lights from incandescent ones
LED lighting typically uses far less electricity to generate the same amount of light as traditional incandescent bulbs. It may take just 9 watts for a LED light to deliver the same illumination as a 60 watt incandescent bulb. Especially if your home has a lot of multi-bulb fixtures, that difference can easily add up.
For instance, the light fixture outside my front door can handle six 60-watt bulbs. With incandescent lighting, keeping that switch on for eight hours a night would use 86.4 kWh per month. With LEDs, it instead would use 13 kWh. At a national average cost of $0.23 per kWh, using LEDs in that one fixture alone would save nearly $17 in utility costs every month.
Sure, there's a higher up-front cost per bulb, but with a much lower operating cost and far longer expected life span, the LED bulbs are expected to be cheaper over time.
4. If you can't beat them, buy them
In the U.S., many large utilities are publicly traded companies, which means you can buy their shares on the stock market. Even better, there are low-cost ETFs that let you buy an entire basket of utilities with one purchase.
One such ETF is the Utilities Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLU -1.09%). With a 0.1% expense ratio, investors get nearly all the returns of the underlying stocks in that fund. Plus, with a yield of around 3.5%, investors can feel like they're getting a little something back from all the money they're sending to their utility companies.
The Utilities Select Sector SPDR Fund attempts to track an index that encompasses electric, water, and natural gas utilities, including both renewable energy and independent power providers. That broad coverage means that even if your specific utility providers aren't in the index (the underlying index is based on companies in the S&P 500), chances are that similar ones are in it.
Get started now
As winter weather starts to set in across much of North America, utility bills will likely start to rise from seasonal lows since more people will likely switch on their heaters for longer periods each day. The sooner you get started with some or all of these four steps, the sooner you can get the benefits they provide.
