Saving on your energy bill

When we started our savings adventure, we quickly agreed on one thing: we wanted to do something about our energy costs. And then not only for costs, but also from an environmental point of view. After 2 years, our costs are nicely reduced. - How? You read it here.

The initial situation
Our energy bill has never been extremely high, because we have always had quite modern houses with reasonable insulation. But then every month we lost about €152, - for gas and energy. We were with 2 adults and 2 small children, we showered every day, had the heating at 19.5 or 20 and were not very good at closing doors. So there were quite a few points to work on.

Solar panels
We decided first to go deeper into solar panels. Because what exactly did that cost? At that time, the government had just opened up the possibility to sign up for a sustainability loan. A small loan you paid 1.6% interest on. We started math once. What do solar panels provide us with? And what does it cost us in the month of interest? The cost of the loan was not in line with the cost savings on energy that we would achieve. With 13 solar panels, our monthly fee could be reduced by €62, - while it cost us €21, - in the month for the loan. Less, if we pay him faster. In short: we were over.

Lifestyle Adjustment
Well, so then we had solar panels. So much that we would play quite and therefore would not pay any energy costs. Good. That was ticked off. Then we could now look at our gas consumption. That was a little more difficult to solve, because consuming less gas could only be if we changed our lifestyle. We started very simply: the heating went down half a degree. So not at 19.5, but at 19. That was a little getting used to, but after about 3 weeks, we didn't feel it anymore. Meanwhile (2 years later) the heating is only at 18 degrees and we also find that pleasantly warm now. The first weeks it was a bit of a change, but with an extra cardigan that was fine to do. Then we were used to it.

Another adaptation had to be made by necessity, because our daughter turned out to have severe eczema and could not take more than once a week in the shower. That already saved 6 showerings per week. Also our son and I took less showers, because I saw that my daughter was just as clean from a washcloth as from a shower. And that saved a lot of dryness in the skin, because we too had some problems with that.