My wife and I were SHOCKED at how high our bill climbed! Well, we took another look at our place. We don't waste power, but we do have two little ones. We know the house is a southern facing house, so it costs more. However, we couldn't figure out what was going on... why $120???

We heard of 'Phantom Power' years ago... (the ability for appliances, entertainment centers, game consoles, microwaves, etc... to be drawing and using power even when OFF) but did not really pay attention to it. Well, my wife out of no where was like let's do this... let's unplug anything not in use and make sure that if we leave the room the lights are off.

Our power company has a 'projected' amount on their online site. We were projected to be over $120... then we implemented all of these things, even placed the big things (entertainment center, wii, etc...) all on a power strip, that way with one click they all were off. Then, we took (had to save up for this) several plastic bread ties and wrote on them, Vitam,ix, microwave, tv, xbox, etc... and simply placed them on the corresponding cords, thus making it easier to KNOW what we're unplugging or plugging back in.

Well, after two months, we dropped our bill to $35! The LOWEST it has been, ever! We're so excited!

I'm sharing this information with you as we've been using coupons and saving money like mad, however we always felt like we were tossing out money out the window, literally in regards to electricity. Now, we don't. And we wanted to share this with all those here at WUCs as we now pay 50% less than we were paying. It is like getting half off and now, we're able to put that money into savings! More importantly, my wife and I both feel like our efforts to save money just jumped way up!

Way to go!!! I am big on saving energy at my house too.

Omg I am impressed will try to implement it in my house... Thanks for sharing

Is there a way to do this for the stove (220)? Mine has a clock so aI know that it pull phantom power also.

working my magic on very little money

I wish we could get our electricity so low. , we turn off all lights and we also do the powerstrips, but our house is so old it has power surges which apparently eats electricity , and also the meter box was so old it caught my house on fire. My light bill doubled that month, but the electric company wouldn't. Admit fault. They even had the nerve to end my power (due to the new box) and wasn't even going to tell us they weren't turning jt back on, then they charged us tp have it turned back on an we had a perfect record.

I started to unplug my coffee pot and toaster about a year ago and noticed a nice 5- 10 change in my bill. Although if I leave the computer on it seems to eat a lot of power and I am not sure if completely unplugging it is a good idea.

I have also tried this but some things are just hard to keep unplugged. I do keep our washer unplugged and few other things. That does remind to go unplug the wii we havent used it in months.

Hi my name is Andrea and I'm addicted to Best Buy Pinterest and travel.

I never thought about the coffee pot and microwave burning power when not using them. We also keep our computer on all night due to the wireless, but we can save a lot of money by shutting it down.
I am going to make this weekend a save electric weekend and shut down a bunch of stuff. I know my husband has stuff plugged in out in the pole bar that probably burns a lot of electric.

That's amazing! I might go invest in some power strips!!

This is interesting. I've always heard that ANYTHING plugged in will pull power whether you are using it or not, and it makes sense. I have a NEW house, and when we moved in last summer my light bill was under $300 a month (there are 6 of us and my home is a decent size). I was happy with that seeing how the place we lived in before something was going on and my light bills were OVER $400 a month.

During the colder months, when my electricity bill always seems to be lower, it almost DOUBLED. So I've been very conscientious about turning lights off when we leave the room and making sure the kids have TVs off and things like that. I do believe I'm going to start unplugging everything not in use at that moment (minus stove, washer, and dryer) and see what happens with the bill. If I could just lower it by $100 I'd be happy! Will have to get everyone on board with it and I'm sure it will take a while for them to get used to doing it.

Question about powering down computer every night. Years ago I was told by a computer tech that it wasn't good to reboot your computer a lot, that it pulled on the processor and was best to leave it on all the time unless it HAD to be rebooted. Is that still the general rule, or is it better now to shut it off every night? You know, kind of like they used to say if you were low on gas to leave the car running if you had a short stop to make because it took more gas to start it back up than to leave it running for a few minutes and now they say that's no longer true, it's better to shut it off when you stop.