TIFU by trying to save a few cents on my electric bill, costing me $4500

This happened a few months ago, I'm just wrapping up my final billing with insurance so I now know the damage...

I bought a house last year. It's an old house (per Midwest USA standards) with a long skinny unfinished basement. The only thing down there is the water heater because it's kinda damp and scary down there. I don't even like to go there during tornados. The old owner of the house told me that the light has to stay on because it's connected to the sump pump. I had the light on for about 6 months and then we had a dry spell. I shut the light off, thinking that I would save a little bit on the electric bill and I could just turn it back on if it rained.

Cue about a month later, I wake up to my roommate knocking on my door. I opened the door and he says "hey, you might want to come look at the basement." I'm like "why? It's 2am. Why would I possibly want to come look at the basement?" My roommate is an alcoholic and has woken me up in the middle of the night for stupid shit that could have waited so I was already annoyed. He ever so slowly explains that he went to the bathroom and heard water rushing into the basement so he checked it out. He then repeated that I need to come see it. I go to look... Oh boy. The basement is almost completely full of water. There is maybe one and half feet of air between the surface of the water and the ceiling of the basement. It's steadily rising and only a few steps away from flooding into my home. I rushed to call somebody, anybody. The fire department wouldn't come at first because they thought it was rain water but I said I was pretty sure it was a pipe and they came to shut off the water main. A man had to come pump out the water which took all day.

After everything was cleared up, I could see what happened. The rain came in but the sump pump couldn't kick on. The rain got too high and made the water heater shift. The shifting made the water intake pipe break. The broken pipe then flooded the rest of my basement. My insurance claims that the pipe broke due to wear and tear so they barely covered anything. I'm stuck with about $4000 that I have to pay all because I wanted to save a few bucks over the period of a year. My water bill was about $500 for the cost of filling my basement up. $2000 bill to empty the basement out. $2000 for the plumber to fix the pipe and replace the water heater. I'm just a single mom with a mortgage, all I want to do is save money. Nope...

Tl;Dr: shut off the basement light to save on electricity bill, but the switch also runs the sump pump. Rain water came in and knocked over hot water heater, breaking the water pipe and flooded my basement. Bills are about $4.5k.