Excellent point. The initial intent of my squabble wasn’t trying to deny that counter-examples exist, just that when comparing 100 houses to 100 apartments, that there seemed to be losses in living space for the apartment (law of averages and whatnot).
I had made another comment on that /c/FuckCars thread that calculated that if all of the homes had 1-car garages (which is not uncommon for a lot of dense low-density suburbs), then the homes would be 1740 SqFt with the garage / 1500 SqFt Livable, and the apartments would be 1009 SqFt livable. So a 33% loss of livable space in the image with what I would consider a reasonable assumption.
Two things:
see if your power provider offers an “equal pay” plan, where your payments are normalized over 12 months. This provides consistency.
Budget Budget Budget! Keep track of your monthly income and expenses, and plug this equal pay into it.
Often times your power company will let you do equal pay before having 12 months of usage history.
The one thing is that if you use more than you’re paying for, you have to pay the overage at the end of the 12-month cycle, AND your payments increase. So, don’t get used to leaving all the lights on!
On the flip side, if you use less, you’ll either get a refund or accumulate credits which will lower your next year’s payments.