Doubling your utility bill payments to accrue more credit

I was flicking through Money Magazine this morning and found an interesting little tip from a reader that wrote a letter in.

Although the tip isn’t exactly what I would call smart, it was a strategy to save money none the less – though this time in a rather odd way.

The saving tip that reader submitted was increasing your automatic utility bill payments to accrue credit on your future bills, a forced style of savings.

Basically the reader decided that her bills were a constant burden and when it came time to pay them she was always out of cash. So in order to fix this, decided that her next bill she would pay double, thus leaving a credit on the account for the future bill.

Doing this the reader very quickly ended up with large amounts of credit on future bills.

My take on this

Although this was an interesting technique to save money, I personally find it a bit silly. I don’t think I could trust the utility company with all that money.

Also, the money she gave them could have earnt interest in a high interest account rather then lining the pockets of the company owners.

What happens if you switch utility companies?

The reader said the companies would just mail her a cheque should she ever switch, which is good – but once again, why not just put the money in a term deposit or Raboplus account?

Have you got any interesting strategies like this?

We would love you to share them with us by dropping a comment, no matter how silly they are!

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