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When I opened my household's electricity bill, I was shocked by how much it cost.
Between Aug. 15 and Sept. 15, the bill for my family's three-bedroom, two-bath home just outside of Cincinnati, Ohio, reached $405.03. In the months prior, I paid between $200 and $300.
I blame high summer temperatures that called for air conditioning, along with the addition of an electric vehicle to our household, for some of the increase. However, higher electricity costs also contributed.
In Ohio, the average cost of electricity per kilowatt-hour for residential customers has increased 57.9% between August 2026 and the same month in 2020, from $0.1227 per kilowatt-hour to $0.1938 per kilowatt-hour, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
This is also happening nationally: The same data showed that residential energy prices rose 36.9% during the same time frame. While Ohio's energy prices outpaced the national costs, these bills can be burdensome to anyone, especially if you're not expecting such an increase.
After feeling upset that things had gotten this expensive — and unplugging a few electronics around the house — I decided I needed to be proactive.
I made a plan to make sure these bills don't become something we can't handle in the future — and find ways to make them less painful. These are the moves I made.
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I've been using 2% cash-back credit cards to pay my bills and bulk up my retirement savings with the earnings. For a while, I'd been using the Fidelity® Rewards Visa Signature® Card. You earn an unlimited 2% cash back when you deposit the funds into an eligible Fidelity account, and there's no annual fee. That meant that I could get cash back on my household bills and put those funds in an IRA to work toward my contribution goals for the year.
2% cash back on every eligible net purchase (when deposited into an eligible Fidelity account)
16.49% to 26.49% based on your creditworthiness
Either 5% of the amount of each transfer or $5 minimum, whichever is greater
When thinking about the best credit card for this strategy, I also considered that my husband and I had some house projects planned that would require a few months of higher-than-typical spending. This put us in a position to earn a credit card welcome bonus by opening a new card.
I chose the Bilt Palladium Card (see rates and fees) because it earns 2X points on eligible everyday purchases. You can also earn up to 1.25X points on housing payments, in lieu of Bilt Cash— a big plus since our mortgage is our largest monthly expense.
The Bilt Palladium Card offers consumers a way to earns up to 1.25X points for rent and mortgage payments with no transaction fee, and earns 2X points on everyday spend, without having to track categories
Earn 50,000 points, Gold elite status and $300 Bilt Cash if approved
See rates/fees and rewards/benefits. Terms apply.
The Bilt Palladium Card earns 2X Bilt Points on everyday purchases, and your choice of up to 1.25X on rent and mortgage payments
Highlights shown here are provided by the issuer and have not been reviewed by CNBC Select's editorial staff.
While the card has a $495 annual fee (see rates and fees), I like that the points are flexible — they can be used for travel or a down payment on a future property purchase.
However, paying bills with your credit card may not be the best strategy for everyone. Before you do, check to make sure you can pay your bill in full to avoid it snowballing with high credit card interest rates. Then, check whether your utility companies require any fees to use a card, as percentage-based fees might negate any rewards you'd ultimately earn.
Having a cash safety net is one of my family's financial priorities. We try to keep a few months of expenses in a separate cash fund that we only touch in case of emergencies. Now that our expenses have risen significantly, we've done two things.
First, we've prioritized making deposits into our high-yield savings account over other standard savings accounts. While high-yield savings accounts aren't much different from traditional savings accounts, the interest rates are often higher.
We use Betterment's Cash Reserve account, which works similarly to a high-yield savings account. We like that we can easily automate deposits, sort savings into categories and take advantage of interest rates that tend to be higher than we'd earn with a standard savings account.
Second, we prioritized growing this account. After all, we want to keep a few months' worth of expenses in this account. With our monthly expenses rising, we need to bulk this fund up.
To do this, I started making automatic $25 deposits each week. That may sound small, but it helps build the savings by at least $100 a month without being too big of a strain on our budget. Then, I make larger deposits manually when there's extra cash.
While we eventually hope to save for things that could ultimately help reduce our energy use overall, like solar panels, we're doing what we can to make these bills more bearable and less worrisome now.
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