You can keep track of your monthly electricity usage by reading your meter. There are various types of meters, but the two most common are digital and models with four or five dials and a revolving disk. The more power you use, the faster the disk spins. Digital meters are easily read. Those with dials take a little practice.

Digital meters
Reading a digital meter is easy. You simply read the meter like you would an odometer on a car.

Dial meters
Read a meter from left to right and write down the numbers the same way. When the pointer is between two numbers, always record the smaller number. Subtract last month's reading from this month's reading to get the number of kilowatt-hours you've used.

The dials above show a reading of 3156.

Note: Your reading will be different from the reading actually used to calculate your bill because your meter may be read on different days each month, or your bill may include more or fewer days in the billing period.