Are your bills normal? Electricity, gas, water and the rest, benchmarked to your home
| Utility | Expected range | The lever |
|---|
Utility bills are the classic unaudited spend — paid monthly for decades, compared against nothing. The benchmarks are knowable: US households average ~$140–170/mo electricity, $60–80 gas, $50–70 water/sewer, scaled predictably by home size, occupants and region. This estimator builds your expected stack, flags the out-of-line total, and maps each bill to its highest-yield lever.
| Bill | US average | The 80/20 levers |
|---|---|---|
| Electricity | $145/mo (16¢/kWh avg — 11¢ WA to 40¢+ HI) | HVAC is half the bill: each degree of thermostat ≈ 2–3%; then water heating, then the second fridge in the garage ($15–25/mo by itself) |
| Natural gas | $65/mo (winter-weighted) | Heating schedule + water heater at 120°F + duct/attic sealing |
| Water/sewer | $55–70/mo | Irrigation (up to half of summer use); one running toilet wastes 200 gal/day silently — the food-dye-in-tank test takes 10 minutes |
| Internet | $72/mo | Promo expiry — the loyalty tax; an annual retention call or plan rightsizing saves $15–30/mo (see the Speed Test tool for what you actually need) |
Always-on loads: HVAC cycling to an aggressive setpoint, water heater losses, old refrigerators/freezers, pool pumps on 24/7 schedules, and the 10-15% 'phantom' baseline of idle electronics. The 12-month graph plus a plug meter names the culprit in an evening.
Yes, modestly and reliably: 8-12% of heating/cooling in studies — mostly by enforcing the schedule you'd forget. The bigger win is the schedule itself (setbacks when away/asleep), which a $25 programmable does too.
No — that's the most persistent utility myth. Setbacks always save: heat loss scales with the indoor-outdoor gap, so 8 hours at a lower setpoint burns less, period. 'Recovery' costs less than what the setback saved.
HVAC (~45% of energy), water heater (~18%), then laundry/fridge/dishwasher. A pre-2010 fridge costs $10-20/mo more than a new one; a second garage fridge for beverages is the classic $200/yr luxury nobody prices.
Dye-test the toilets (leaks are silent and huge), shorten irrigation runtimes (or add a $30 rain sensor), and low-flow showerheads (also cuts water-HEATING). Sewer charges often key off winter water use — fixing leaks in January pays all year in some cities.
They smooth cash flow (same payment monthly, trued up yearly) without changing totals — useful for budgeting, dangerous only if the flat payment hides a growing leak. Keep reading the actual-usage line.
Yes — every figure computes locally in your browser.
Benchmark once, pull the 12-month graph, and fix the top lever per bill — utilities reward the single evening of attention with savings that repeat every month, forever, without willpower.