Watch The Bills

Phone charges, internet costs, pay TV subscriptions; the bills can add up, and the starting costs aren’t always indicative of how much your bill might be one year in. So you have a phone plan- the chances are you will start exceeding it within a couple of months. Or your pay TV subscription, which is a super deal when you sign up and gets very sticky once you’re addicted to Friends. According to the MSN article, all of these things are built into the business model of companies- we hate to change, we hate the little inconveniences of change, and so we put up with mounting costs or inferior products in order to avert the need to shake things up a little. Stay vigilant on your bills, and get in touch with your company as soon as things start to rise, and you might save yourself a lot over a couple of months.

The Things You Don’t Need

If you’ve bought a new television, you will have no need for a set-top box. You have no obligation to buy any of the extra things that get thrown in front of your face as temptation- just because you’ve bought a computer with a company doesn’t mean you have to buy their router, any one should work. The same goes for a DVD player or recorder. If you can’t decide, tell them to hold off for a couple of days and think it through. The excitement of spending might have calmed down by then.

Installation Costs

Always ask for your new technology to be installed for free, usually it’s part of the deal that the company has offered. And Lis Weston suggests keeping an eye on your bill afterwards, as companies might try the sneaky and work the installation fee in a bit later. If it’s not on offer as part of the deal, why not ask that they include it? As a big company, it’s more likely than not they’ll be willing to make a concession.

Early Exit Costs

With the cost of exiting a phone plan early, you could have bought an iPhone and had money left over to go the movies. It can be enormous, so when you sign your contract, make sure you know the ins and outs of what costs you will be liable for should you say sayonara sooner than anticipated. This practice is now no longer limited to cell phone providers; apparently Pay TV providers have jumped on the bandwagon and wireless providers have been on the band wagon for quite some time already. If you are not in a situation where you can guarantee costs for 12 or 24 months, consider finding a company that doesn’t include early exit fees.

Turn Down The Thermostat

They say you save 3% off your heating bill for every degree you turn down your thermostat. So maybe you need to wear a jumper, and set it at 19 degrees as opposed to the tropical 21. Think about it, that’s 6% off your heating costs right there. And if you turn it way down while you’re at work and asleep, you’ve just made a big saving already.

Time It

I just bought a beautiful heater and the lady at the store tried to convince me to spend a 100 dollars extra to buy one with a timer. If I had a timer on it, I’d save the 100 dollars back in a second right? Wrong. You can buy $10 timers from Kmart that plug into the electricity socket. They’re easy to use and can be set for the 24 hour period. So you can set it for when you’re going to get up, return for work and go to sleep. You’ll save big chunks off your electricity bill, and an upfront cost when buying the appliance.

Keep The Space Warm

Simple stuff can save you a huge amount of money. Keep doors closed and heat small spaces. Use curtains and close blinds at night to stop the heat escaping. Don’t have a fire damper open, as it will suck all the heat out. Keep your heating vents clear so the hot air actually circulates. If you’ve bought a convection heater, think about turning your ceiling fan on low- it will help disperse the heat around the room and stop the heat from layering somewhere around the ceiling and nowhere near you.

Stop The Leak

According to MSN Money (who got this word on the street from Earthworks), the gaps surrounding windows and doors in the average house amount to a 9 square foot hole in the wall. That is crazy talk. If there were a nine foot hole in the wall, we’d all be rushing to fix it, so plug all the gaps and you’ll plug your hemorrhaging heating costs as well.

A BIt Of TLC

Giving your water heater and pipes a bit of loving care could give your heating costs a kiss too- if you swaddle your heater and pipes (especially in uninsulated areas) the water they carry won’t lose as much heat and you’ll be able to cut your heating costs. The same goes for ducted air- it can lose huge amounts of heat before it gets anywhere near you if it’s poorly connected or uninsulated. So you’ll be pumping the heating with very little benefit. Get a little savvy and try and check all the obvious places- if any ducting has come undone, you’ll do yourself a huge favour by getting it fixed up.

So is the landline worth the expense, or is it time to let it go?

Declining Rates

According to Allison Tait’s great article in Ninemsn Money, landlines are in serious decline. Telstra CEO reported that the decline in landline rates contributed to the company’s 3.3 percent fall in first-half profit. Around 10% of Australian homes have decided they no longer need a landline. Chances are your grandmother has one, your nephew, or bestie or kids are probably not so keen.

Why The Decline?

Older people are more likely to stick to pre-paid mobile phones, if they have one at all. They, as a generalisation, prefer to talk on the landline, though I know of several Grey Techhies who are accomplished Skype addicts as well. Mobile communication just isn’t as important. Young people, on the other hand, are likely to have huge capped plans on their mobile that they can’t reach.

They aren’t home all that often so the $30 a month on line rental alone seems a big inconvenience.

So Should You Take The Plunge?

Certainly, landlines can be seen as an unnecessary cost. But only when a couple of other considerations have been taken into account. Are you confident in some other form of phone technology? It doesn’t have to be a mobile phone, it can be VOIP or Skype, but you need to think about what would happen in an emergency. Be sure that you’ll be pkay to call 000 because the advantage of landlines is they generally don’t move too far, whereas mobile phones can be anywhere.

The other problem is, of course, if you convert to solely mobile phone, then you’ve lost all telecommunications in one hit if you happen to lose it.

What Works Best For You

If you convert to mobile phone only, think seriously about what plan you are going on because mobile phones can cost you the earth and make you rue the day you ever let go of the landline, where at least you could keep track of costs. Get a plan, or a pre-paid card, with big bonus credit allowances and check out Skype for overseas or interstate calls. The quality of online telecommunications is now so high that it makes it an appealing and very cost-effective alternative.

Be rigorous in checking out all the details of the alternative plans you sign up to, because telecommunication companies can write themselves a killer contract and lock you into a 24-month lease.

To Bundle Or Not To Bundle

The same is true if you decide to stick with your landline. Bundling looks like a great offer, working in your Internet and landline costs, but the contracts are usually very long and impossible to buy your way out of. Keep your eye out for good details, spend some time on comparisons and make sure that you go through that contract with a fine-toothed comb.

Sometimes, sticking with the old-fashioned, no add-ons phone deal can be your best and cheapest approach.

If you’re like me, Dough Rollar has come to our rescue. Here are some easy ways to keep your mobile phone bills down.

Stay under your minutes

If you have an allotted amount of time free, use it and not extra. The phone companies offer it for a reason, and that is in the hope that you will go over your limit and have to spend some exorbitant amount of money.

Prepay

Prepaid mobile phones are fantastic, and stop you from ever over-extending yourself. You stay aware of how much money you have spent at all times, which is a wonderful budgeting tool.

Insurance

I have never insured a phone. The only reason I would consider it would be that I would hate to be caught on a 24 month plan, without a phone. But if you can afford to replace your phone, then don’t bother insuring it. It’s too much hassle and costs too much.

Examine your phone bill

Never relax and never surrender. Phone bills are the peskiest and sneakiest of bills, so go through yours with a finetooth comb. Chances are there’ll be some expense on there you had no idea that you had to pay for, so make sure you keep an eye on it and know what you’re being charged for.

Switch and switch about

If your phone breaks while you’re on contract, you could have to pay for a replacement phone unless you can find one with the same carrier and put the SIM in that phone. Ask around and see if anyone has an old phone you could use. It’ll save you a lot of money in the long run.

Renegotiate

If your contract expires, negotiate for a new, cheaper version. After all, you’ve stayed loyal for a long time and they want you to commit for even more time, so use your consumer strength to earn yourself a better deal.

Ringtones

I have never really understood the appeal, especially when it comes to some peoples’ taste in music and its oppressive presence on their mobile phones. Be careful of any ringtone deal or love quizzes that require your number and credit card detail, because those kind of things are never one-offs.

Know your usage

If you use your phone for emergencies only, it’s unlikely you’re going to need to pay for an incredibly expensive unlimited plan. Know your usage and buy a plan that matches it best.

Never cancel

Ask around if anyone wants to take up your phone contract, or go online and see If anyone needs it. Usually there will be someone who would love a 7 month contract as opposed to having to commit to a whole 24 month period.

Combine plans

The more lines you have on the same plan, the cheaper the plan gets, Be warned however, there’s only so much you want to tether your child’s phone bill to your own as their phone costs seem to have a life of their own.

What tips do you have to save on mobile phone costs?

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!

There’s no time you want to hear their voice more than the silly season, so here are a few suggestions as to how to get and stay in touch cheaply.

Skype

Skype has its flaws. Connections can drop out, the quality can be poor and planes interfere with your calls. It can be a frustrating experience, but if you want cheap communications, then nothing I’ve used ever tops it. A computer based communications system, installing it is free. Once installed, set up your account to find everyone else you know who uses Skype and you can call them for free.

Skype also offers significantly reduced rates of calls to landlines or mobile numbers. It’s pretty simple, you put a bit of credit on your account and can call internationally for peanuts. I traveled for two months and probably only spent a 5 euros on calls home.

I’ve been told that if you have a couple of dollars credit, your call quality will generally be higher. Tip: The person with the best Internet connection should be the one to call, as that improves your chance of a good connection.

VOIP

VOIP is similar to Skype, with Internet based calls. I’ve had a much more positive experience with VOIP, with the call quality being very good. However, it’s a new technology and set to improve so I expect it to get much better.

The benefit over Skype is that, for an initial outlay of capital, you actually have a handset. From then on, it’s 1,000 free calls anywhere per month with some VOIP plans.

Engin is Australia’s number 1 VOIP provider and offer VOIP rates that are rather good.

Chat

Internet chat doesn’t have the same kind of intimacy as a call, but it is cheap and easy. Some instant messaging services are better than others, Facebook chat being notably bad. MSN Messenger is still good, and the Skype chat is fantastic. Working on a virtual office, Skype chat proved a crucial tool for communicating with other staff members.

Ping

If you’re an iPhone user, and I am an evangelical convert to the iPhone cause, then you need Ping. It’s an iPhone application that allows you to text free to other Ping users, which arrives on their phone just like an SMS. If you’ve got teenagers, it may be a cost-effective measure to buy them all iPhones and set them up with Ping. The money you’ll save on bailing them out of an enormous phone bill will make it very worth it.

Another important element is to understand how you use communication tools. If you can’t have a SMS conversation shorter than 6 texts just to arrange dinner, maybe you should consider calling instead. If you waste time on the phone organising something that could be said in one sentence, maybe you should alter your behaviors to SMS more often. Whatever your communication style, shop around for the provider that has a good deal for your style of use.

The Internet has made communications significantly cheaper, from the online-based calls through to social media as an easy way to stay in touch. A world without email is unfathomable and while people may yearn for a simpler snail-mail-and-landline days, it is also a very cheap way to stay in touch.

How do you stay in touch cheaply?

Do you use VOIP?

They have decided that it is not economically viable and are pushing the public to opt for solar hot water instead.

The cost of energy is also rapidly increasing, making solar panels for heating your water a much cheaper option – potentially saving you up $700 a year in energy costs – simply by switching how you heat your water. In fact, over 10 years – your household could save around $11,500 based on our figures below.

$4000 in rebates to save you money

To introduce this new scheme, the Government and Modern Solar are offering up to $4000 in rebates to subsidize the cost of installing solar hot water heating. Considering that electric hot water systems account for around 28% of home energy use, I will definitely be moving to solar hot water in the coming months.

How much will this save you?

Electricity and energy costs are increasing year on year. The potential saving for 2010 is around $700 and assuming that year on year electricity prices go up by $100, over the course of 10 years you will have saved around $11,500 on electricity costs. Definitely worth 30 seconds of your time to submit a request.

Why use Modern Solar?

A number of readers have submitted tips around using Modern Solar to reduce electricity bills, in fact – last week alone we had a number of readers tell us that they were halving their electricity bills by switching.

Modern Solar also offer hot water systems that cater to all budgets, small too big. Everyone should find a figure they are happy with I am told.

Check out Modern Solar.

If we could just cut the costs of our mobile bills, without even trying we would be saving thousands of dollars per year by simply making sure we had the best possible deal available.

My mobile phone would easily be my biggest expense on any given month – normally totaling at least $100 in spending.

Now, this is where the consumer revenge comes in – we will be telling you the best possible mobile phone deals so that you can save yourself the time of searching.

The cheapest mobile plan

After having a search around, we strongly believe that the Dodo $29.90 Mobile Phone Cap offers the best possible value for cheap mobile phone plans.

Imagine how much money you could save if you knew your mobile would only ever cost you $29.90 per month instead of upwards of $100? That is a saving of $760 per year!

Why do we like Dodo?

They use the Optus infrastructure (meaning they have fantastic reception) and they are a relatively medium size business – meaning they can pass the savings on directly to you unlike some of the other bigger providers.

What do you get on the Dodo $29.90 Mobile Phone Cap?

$29.90 will give you $320 worth of calls & texts (that’s heaps!).

It includes: National calls, mobile calls, MMS messages, SMS messages, voicemail

Dodo $29.90 Mobile Phone Cap rates

• SMS rates: $0.25 per text.
• National and mobile calls: $0.75 p/min
• National and mobile flag fall: $0.45

Bonus offer

Sign up to the Dodo $29.90 Mobile Phone Cap and you will receive access to ‘Optus Yes Time’ letting you chat for free every night between 8pm and midnight, for 20 minutes to any Dodo or Optus mobile on the Optus network.

Potential saving?

Given that we at Savings Guide spend around $100 to $150 per month on mobile phone bills, the savings that could be made by switching to Dodo $29.90 Mobile Phone Cap would be around $70 to $120 per month, per person. This works out to be over $1200 in savings a year. Not bad!

It’s easy, amidst the fuss, to forget about what the whole uproar is about, namely saving the environment and our dollars. It’s also pretty easy, while watching the Parliament have a schoolyard scrap over the issue, to forget what the options are for each individual and how you can save money and save the planet all at the same time.

The Original Renewable

Before we even get onto the new fandangle technologies, design is one of the most important aspects of energy and money saving. A house that takes advantage of the sun in winter and manages to avoid it in summer will save you a lot of money on heating and air-conditioning. Passive solar energy (the new term for sunshine apparently) is the best thing around, and it’s totally free.

Learn how to store it

Making your home energy efficient is the first step to saving a significant amount of money. Insulation and double glazing are the be all and all when it comes to saving money on heating costs. It’s an initial outlay to buy the insulation and employ someone to install it, but the savings will become apparent over time. There are lots of home sustainability assessors floating around the place, happy to tell you the best to make your home efficient.

Green Loans can even show you what the savings are http://www.environment.gov.au/greenloans/ . High energy rated appliances help as well, despite the higher cost initially.

Think about the source

Lots of people are starting to buy energy produced from a renewable source. It doesn’t actually cost much more, and will relieve your guilty conscience (which saves money on retail therapy and psychologists).

The more people that use renewable energy electricity companies, the cheaper it will eventually get. With electricity prices only heading in one direction- up- it’s a long-term saving measure to think about.

Forget getting PC, get PV

Photovoltaic cells (solar cells) are trendy. With Green Loans, they’re also affordable. It is a large initial outlay of capital. You may not earn back the initial outlay for decades. However, consider this. In the current climate, electricity prices are going to go up. If you buy solar cells, the price of electricity will stay static forever. While everyone else is at the mercy of electricity companies, environment and potential privatisation, you’re sitting on a deck, enjoying the sunshine and thinking about installing a spa.

DIY

All hail the age of the Internet, where it really can solve all your problems. This nifty little website http://www.earth4energy.com/ has videos and instructions, as well as kits, on how to build your own solar panels and wind turbines. It all went over my head a little, but if you’re handy or are at least willing to give it a go, then I suggest you head here. After all, DIY solar panels would be the best cost-saver in town. These guys claim you can get 50- 80% off your electricity bills with their products. I haven’t tested it myself, but I’m trying to find somewhere I can sign on a dotted line.

Would you invest in renewable energy to save yourself money?

Saving water will reduce your water bills, it will also help the environment – if you are like me, the idea of saving the environment comes across as a rather big task, yet the idea of wanting to save money is much more digestible.

So with that said, lets look at some products that can be used to help save water around the house;

Water saving shower heads

A water saving shower head uses about 9 litres a minute as opposed to the standard shower head which uses around 25 litres per minute. That is a saving of around 16 litres every minute, or for a five minute shower 78 litres. That will save you a lot of money on water just there!

Dual flush toilet systems

When you were a kid, were you ever told to vary which flush button you pressed depending on the present you delivered to the toilet? We were, and it will easily save you many litres of water per day. Give it a try, half flush for number 1’s – full flush for number 2’s.

Rain water tanks

A little birdy from the rain water industry told me that although it is an enviro friendly method of storing water, it does not really save you a lot of money per year. Disregarding this, it is a great way to have water on demand to enable you to water your garden, wash your car or even hose concrete – things that are becoming much harder to do with everyday tap water.

Washing Machines

I am not quite sure of the numbers, but the other day my washing machine decided to draw its last breath – it wasn’t until I was hunting for a new one did I realise that my 10 year old washing machine was churning through water with every wash compared to that of the energy efficient new models. It might be worthwhile swapping your machine for a new one – it will use less water, lower your water bill and if your machine is like my old one, stop tearing your nice new clothes.

Shower timers and buckets

Using a timer in the shower is designed to do one thing, cut the time of each shower down. Doing this will save you money and allow you to limit yourself to smaller showers that are recommended by the water authorities. I suggest using a sand hour glass that sticks to the window of the shower, it will take around 2-5 minutes to empty depending on the size you buy. I suggest 3 minute showers, so get in there and get busy!
Another great way of conserving water in the shower is by having a bucket in the corner, this will collect any unused water and allow you to use it for watering your plants or garden.

Share your water saving tips

We would be interested to hear your water saving tips – do you have any unknown little examples that could help reduce the water usage around the house?