Cost of Living - Spending Insights

[Farmer Saint]

7 hours ago, Turkish said:

Has anyone got or looked into solar panels? I keep hearing how good it is but the cost of installation seems crazy high to make it worth doing. 

Yep, got 16kw and 20kw batteries. Cost about £28k 4 years ago. Currently saved £16k over those timelines with my tracker (it also helps that we're on economy 7 and so in Winter fill the batteries full every night with 13p/KW energy). 

[Farmer Saint]

3 hours ago, spyinthesky said:

Presumably the Range Rover has the Ingenium engine which is common in JLR models.
If so, you will be lucky to avoid expensive engine problems along the way and a lot of Used Car Dealers wont be interested if you try to trade in for something else. Shame really as the vehicles are OK otherwise but cost of repairs soon become a bitter pill to swallow.

No, got a slightly older one to avoid the Ingenium. Got the 4.4 V8 diesel - not the most reliable, but better than the Ingenium shit in everything else.

[Farmer Saint]

3 hours ago, Gloucester Saint said:

More on the Ingenium engine mess - I did fancy a Jaguar but I think I’ll stick to my Honda Civics https://www.apexengines.co.uk/blog/land-rover-ingenium-engine-problems-you-should-never-ignore/

Just go with the 2.0 petrol.

[Turkish]

So the ceasefire has led to a sharp drop in the cost of fuel, but it wont impact us straight away. Unlike when there was a sharp hike in the cost of fuel which hit us immediately. Yeah, it's not profiteering at all is it.

[Lord Duckhunter]

19 hours ago, Turkish said:

How much have you saved moving to an EV? 

I was genuinely surprised, so much so that the snap dragon traded her patrol in for an EV as well. We’re on octopus  IOG and it’s  5p a KW overnight (was 7). Switched everything we can to overnight, dishwasher, washing machine  to get that rate. The other great thing about Octopus you plug in and it charges whenever energy is cheapest (not just overnight) and  you get 5p kWh for the whole house, not just the EV. After a while you can work out when they’ll  charge it in the day (it’s sunny, or windy) and you can time it right around your consumption.  I plugged it in about 2pm Sunday & set it  to be ready at 4am ( the earliest it lets you). Exactly what I hoped would happen, happened,the 5p rate kicked in for the snap dragon cooking Sunday afternoon and re heating the hot tub after some maintenance stuff. 
 

In short we’ve basically managed to shift so much stuff to 5p that our energy bills have stayed static & we are not buying petrol. Obviously, the charger cost us 1k, but I spent a lot more a year on fuel than that, and once you’ve saved the 1k , happy days. It probably helps that the kids have all gone, so it’s easier to control the electric use, but the answer to your question is, we’ve basically saved the entire petrol bill of 2 cars, less a one off 1k payment. It’s a couple of quid for about 170 miles of driving, but we save that by running appliances overnight. 
 

Octopus are great, despite being lefties, but their service is second to none. 

Edited 8 hours ago by Lord Duckhunter

[Turkish]

1 hour ago, Lord Duckhunter said:

I was genuinely surprised, so much so that the snap dragon traded her patrol in for an EV as well. We’re on octopus  IOG and it’s  5p a KW overnight (was 7). Switched everything we can to overnight, dishwasher, washing machine  to get that rate. The other great thing about Octopus you plug in and it charges whenever energy is cheapest (not just overnight) and  you get 5p kWh for the whole house, not just the EV. After a while you can work out when they’ll  charge it in the day (it’s sunny, or windy) and you can time it right around your consumption.  I plugged it in about 2pm Sunday & set it  to be ready at 4am ( the earliest it lets you). Exactly what I hoped would happen, happened,the 5p rate kicked in for the snap dragon cooking Sunday afternoon and re heating the hot tub after some maintenance stuff. 
 

In short we’ve basically managed to shift so much stuff to 5p that our energy bills have stayed static & we are not buying petrol. Obviously, the charger cost us 1k, but I spent a lot more a year on fuel than that, and once you’ve saved the 1k , happy days. It probably helps that the kids have all gone, so it’s easier to control the electric use, but the answer to your question is, we’ve basically saved the entire petrol bill of 2 cars, less a one off 1k payment. It’s a couple of quid for about 170 miles of driving, but we save that by running appliances overnight. 
 

Octopus are great, despite being lefties, but their service is second to none. 

Cheers, we moved into a new build which already came with an EV charger so dont even need to pay for that. Im definitely going to look into it. Sounds like a no brainer, most of my mileage is around town these days maybe one long drive of about 300 miles every 2-3 months for work but thats it.

[egg]

8 hours ago, Turkish said:

So the ceasefire has led to a sharp drop in the cost of fuel, but it wont impact us straight away. Unlike when there was a sharp hike in the cost of fuel which hit us immediately. Yeah, it's not profiteering at all is it.

Oil prices doubled at the peak, and are still over 50% up on the pre war levels. If the full increase in crude was passed on, we'd be seeing much more than the 25 pence or so per litre increase that we've seen on petrol. Diesel on the other hand is 196 round here.