The cost of being cold
With her first winter for 20 years in full swing, Kate Birch discovers the high price Brits pay to keep warm
“Two thousand pounds!” exclaimed my husband
loudly last week after receiving a credit card statement. “You spent £2,000 (Dh12,000) on a new winter wardrobe!”
To be fair, it wasn’t just my wardrobe. There was a soup maker, two heated cat beds, three 15-tog duvets, four microwavable hand-warmers, five hotwater bottles and six candles. Oh, and a clever plug-in foot-warming pod, which promises to keep your toes toasty.
OK, so maybe I went a bit overboard on my hibernation homework; took my cold-season strategy just a tad too seriously. But the thing is, I’m scared; petrified, even.
It’s my first full winter for two decades, and while being continuously cold for six months is a concern, it’s also the least of my winter worries. I mean, what if I slip on black ice and break my back? What if my car breaks down on a country road and I freeze to death? What if the prolonged darkness – it gets dark at 4pm now – leaves me so depressed, I turn to Prozac?
Here in bone-chilling Brrr-itain, these winter worries are not just plausible they are pricey. Living in a cold country costs… And not just money, but your health, your sanity and even your figure.
Little surprise then that the world’s most expensive city, according to UBS AG’s 2013 report, is also one of the coldest: arctic Oslo in nippy Norway. Though limb-numbing London isn’t too far behind at number seven.
As if brain-freezing temperatures for six months every year isn’t enough to endure, we Brits then have the pleasure of paying through our continually red noses for it.
First up, there’s the excruciating expense of heating our homes. Research from the Institute of Physics suggests living in a cold country is three-and-a-half-times more energy demanding than a warm one (think on that next time you’re moaning about your A/C bill). And energy companies in the UK recently announced a 10 per cent price increase, making it cheaper to spend the night in a hotel than in your own heated home.
Then there’s the staggering cost of the cold-weather wardrobe. According to a recent survey by www. promotionalcodes.org.uk, the average British woman will spend £36,000 in her lifetime on a basic winter wardrobe and by basic, we mean Primark, not Prada; cotton, not cashmere; one coat per season, not three.
This doesn’t include lambswool luxuries either, or having to kit out every occasion (a winter wedding, cold-weather jogging) or for every family member – think husband, three kids, two cats, one rabbit.
What if the prolonged darkness leaves me so depressed I turn to Prozac?
Then there’s the other costs. The endless supply of lotions needed to soften our chapped skin, the 25 per cent higher grocery bills because the colder we are, the hungrier we get, not to mention the multiple bottles of overpriced pills we need to stay healthy and happy.
Oh, and the two-week luxury holiday in Dubai you booked at the last minute because you simply can’t take another dark or dismal day.
And I haven’t even started on the multiple money-draining, bad weatherbattling products we purchase online that not only feed our freezing-todeath fears with their promises to keep us hot, happy, healthy, but financially fleece us in the process.
Just this week, I forked out a fortune on a USB-powered knee rug, a ‘slanket’ (hybrid of a blanket and dressing gown), a cup warmer, vitamin C pills and heated insoles.
Warm-climate dwellers could argue that us frigid folk don’t dole out so much on socialising because it’s simply too cold to go out, though I assure you that we more than make up for it with the pricey purchases of multiple DVD box sets, stacks of firewood and comforting Chinese takeaways.
And it’s the latter expenditure that costs us our figures. According to a recent study, Brits gain an average of 1-2kg during winter. Not only does melatonin, the hormone triggered by darkness that makes us feel sleepy, increase in winter, thereby boosting our hunger, but we spend more time on our sofas watching TV because it’s too windy and wet to go out – leading to even more consumption, adding extra pounds to both our bodies and our bills.
This increase in weight also means more credit card polishing come spring, when you either have to invest in a one-size bigger, all-seasons wardrobe, or sign up (yet again) to that pricey gym or online diet programme.
That’s if you manage to beat the blues, of course, because being cold also costs us our sanity, with sadness reigning supreme in winter. The cold and lack of light trigger a depression known as seasonal affective disorder (SAD), which not only sets you back on the money front (Prozac doesn’t come cheap) but can also cost you your long-term emotional health.
But despite all the gloom and doom, there is some good news at the end of the dark, damp and dismal tunnel… People who live in cold climates have one very strong advantage over those living in warmer climates – we tend to live longer. Hah!
Which means we can look forward to being obese, broke and bitterly cold for an even longer time!