Cost of Utilities

[north]

Hello,

I'm quite familiar with the cost of food, eating out etc but would appreciate some guidance on what I can expect to pay for utilities, heating, aircon, electric, gas, internet, phone etc for an average 4 bedroom house for a family of three.

Would appreciate all comments.

Thanks,

Rich

 

[soo_the_panda]

Hi, I'm in a two bed apartment not a four bed house so my costs will differ. I would suggest about $60/month for a standard 'unlimited' internet plan. Most of these will include voice over internet calls, so there really isn't a need for a landline. Most mobile providers will include overseas minutes - I use Amaysim (on the Optus network) and for $45/month that includes unlimited calls and texts worldwide. 

 

Hopefully someone else can advise on gas and electricity. 

[snifter]

Not sure really. We are a family of 3 in a 3 bed house, 2 living space style house but we have solar panels and a really good tariff. Plus solar hot water. 

Aircon will depend on your use and the sort of system you have as to how much its going to rack up on the electric bill. Heating also if you use the reverse cycle or some such and not gas. 

Internet, check out suppliers and see what packages they offer. It won't matter if you live in a unit or a house. It will come down to what plan you opt for. We don't have a landline. As above we use Skype for calls (can buy credit if don't want to use the free set up) and call overseas etc that way. Plus we have a great pay up front deal for out mobiles with 16GB of data per month each. So we use that lots also. 

Things like council rates are going to be dependant on council and so on and so you need to check with them the costs.

TBH you really just need to shop around suppliers to find the best deals on all the things and then work out costs from there. 

 

 

[llessur]

Difficult one to answer really, as stated above it will depend on a number of factors such as your usage and the companies you sign up with.

However, as a very approximate guide, we’re a family of 3 (two adults, one baby) in a 3 bedroom house with modern reverse cycle split system a/c units in most rooms for cooling & heating (a fairly unusual setup but it’s what we ended up with for a couple of reasons), full garden irrigation with 100m2 of lawn (all gets watered every 3 days during summer, plus a little extra on really hot days), gas hot water and hob, electric oven, extra beer fridge in the garage (always on, of course), no solar, no pool, double brick house with standard glass fibre roof insulation.

We pay approximately per quarter:

• Council Rates: $275
• Gas: $125

• Electricity: $300 (winter) - $450 (summer)

• Water: $225 (winter) - $350 (summer)

 

Internet is $60 per month with unlimited data, includes landline (but no call credit).

Then there’s car insurance and rego, home and contents insurance, ambo cover (and health insurance if you don’t believe it’s a massive scam) etc.

In all, we’ve found cost of living to be a little higher than back in the UK but we also found that the increase in wages for comparative jobs here compared to the UK by far outweighed that cost. We may have been lucky of course.

Our electricity bill has gone up significantly since we had a baby, mainly because we now have a/c running in multiple rooms – when it was just the wife and I we’d just do one room at a time. Quite easy to keep costs down that way. You could easily save on your water bill compared to mine if you’re not obsessed with keeping your lawn green and your fruit trees irrigated. On the flip side, expect to pay more if you’ve got a pool. I presume the bills will rise a bit more as our little one grows up but I wouldn’t expect too much difference – I know the bulk of my water bill is from the garden irrigation for example.

[Philip_Green]

Troublesome one to answer really , as expressed above it will rely upon various factors, for example, your use and the organizations you join with.

[Ephraim Beltran]

Hey, all costs depends from your necessaries and how you use gas and electricity, if you have some solar panels that will save a lot of money and winter you will pay without internet like 900-950$ so you need to spend rationally and if you can economy some money, why you shouldn't do it?