elastic-ip

I have given a limited access to a AWS account. I already created an EC2 instance but when I try to associate an elastic ip, I got the error below: An error occurred while attempting to associate the address Network vpc-(security id) is not attached to any internet gateway You are using the new Amazon Virtual Private Cloud instead of the EC2 Classic. The cloud you are using lacks the internet gateway virtual component that is necessary for the cloud to be reachable from the public internet. You need to add an internet gateway to your private cloud for it to be able to connect to internet; with

I had 2 elastic IPs assigned to my account for use with 2 different instances. For some reason, I had to take down my instance(terminate) which unassigned the IP assigned to it and made it free on my account but not automatically released (as mentioned in the docs). I'm wondering whether this unassigned Elastic IP will cost me even if i don't re-assign it to any instance. I know there is no harm in releasing the IP(which I did) but this is a topic I couldn't find an answer. There are few posts I found on google that do talk about reducing AWS bills and a mention of pro-rata charges for >1