Grow a garden and start canning.
Not only are many of us already doing that, what is the cost of gas or electricity to can or even to dehydrate?
I only dehydrate and I see it on the electric bill every Fall.
We need electricity and propane for our businesses. We are using 1/3 less than we were 3 years ago and paying the same amount. Last month, we used $89 of electric power and the bill, with facility fees, taxes, donation to the electric bills of the poor, we paid was $129. The less propane I use, the higher the amount I am charged. When I do negotiate a cut by taking the company up on their promise to meet anyone’s price, suddenly, my budget payment amount increases.
We get 36mpg and my husband drives 45 miles one way 3x week in order to make enough money to live and pay insurance and property taxes. The Focus is paid off in 10 months and we will drive it into the ground before replacing it. It will take us 2-3 years to save enough for a down payment on a new car, anyway, because everything has gone up and we cannot raise our prices as much.
This needs to end. Everyone was ok with cutting back _some_. They sold it by promising lower bills. Then, they raise the rates and add on more fees and taxes. We don’t pay enough taxes to use all the deductions we already have, let alone be seduced by tax credits. We are too old and lack the capital to retrofit our 100-year-old house to some modern alternative, even if it would work or their would be a payback. In -30F winters, those alternatives don’t work, either.
They are just pushing, pushing, pushing.