Bills, Bills, Bills

I prefer the bills these gals warble about..

NO, not some whimsical post about the back catalogue of Destiny's Child (although, to be fair, I could write a few tomes about my mis-spent youth and dancefloor bogling to these fine ladies), more an exasperated mini-rant about bills of the 'drain your bank account' kind.

There's a definite load of assumptions made about living in Dubai, the tax-free salary, the savings we must all be making. That's a separate post. But I'd be very interested to know what people cough up in the UK on monthly basis for utilities. You know, electricity, water, the kinda stuff you'd struggle to live without these days. Because my tax-free salary is disappearing into my meters!

From memory my Manchester bills never crossed the 150 GBP mark per month, absolute max. I had a large two bedroomed apartment, and Manchester is COLD most of the year round, you hear me. I wasn't skimping on the (electric heaters). 

Dubai is HOT for most of the year which means the reverse is needed - from May until November our air con is on pretty much 24 hours a day. To be honest, I can't sleep without it now, and it's only April. This means our monthly bills average the $600 mark. That's about 400 quid. Call me old-fashioned, but that's a lot of money, no? 

And it can be even more when you hit the 'think you might die if you're outside for more than 5 minutes without a white wine spritzer/gallon of water' death-months of July and August. Oh for the days of apartment living when my monthly bills were so small they were less than a bag of groceries from Spinney's.

Tell me, UK chums, am I way out of touch with the price of fish back home? 

Dubai chums, how does this compare to your monthly outgoings - and any tips to reduce them? I'd love to hear from you...