One month's free electricity

Electricity is one of those bills that just keeps coming. Or is it?

We've just received our first $0 monthly bill. So how did we do it?

Low usage and good prices

Even as a couple we use a bit less than the average 1-person household. Also we're with Powershop who have pretty good prices. This month would have been $80, except...

Special offer

When we signed up, the offer included a few monthly $25 discounts. This one took our bill down to $55.

Extra bonuses

Instead of spending big money on TV ads, Powershop gets new customers by offering sign-up discounts. When someone signs up through our special link they get $75 of credit and so do we.

Last month my cousin took up this great offer. $75 for her, $75 for us. That took our bill to zero, with some extra credits left over to reduce next month's bill.

Comments

What to do with 128 pens?

I never need buy a pen again. Ever. The pen round-up. I searched the house for pens and gathered them up. We had 128. Woah - that's more than I expected. Then it was test-time. (You can get a lot done watching summer sport ;). Good ones went on the table. Broken ones in the box. Pen operations I saved a few 'broken' pens, by taking working insides and matching them with functional outsides. Particularly much-loved pens, for sentimental reasons, were given a life-extending 'ink transplant'. Final Tally We ended up with 67 broken pens and 61 good ones. And about 10 pencils. What to do with 67 broken pens? In my city Biome recycles pens . It's as easy as taking them into the store and dropping them into the giant collection box. Decluttering and recycling together - I love it. A lifetime of pens An average pen writes 45,000 words. So that dedicated shopping list pen on the fridge could write a 20-word shopping list for 43 years. Our 61 pens repre...

The real cost of owning a car

It's been about 10 years since I've owned a car. My wife doesn't own one either. "You must save a lot in petrol" That's one of the frequent reactions when someone discovers we don't own a car. "Of course, but it's just the tip of the iceberg" is the usual theme of my reply. Many people I've talked to just aren't fully aware of the real cost of owning a car. Or even that there are six different costs of owning a car. Six? Really? Yes. Occasionally a work colleague or friend will boast their car only costs $X per week. Of course it turns out only some factors have been counted. Sometimes it's just petrol alone. To some people, that feels like the only cost they pay each week. Why does this matter? You might be questioning the need for a second car in the household (or even having one at all). Or you might just be choosing which car to get next. Either way, to make an informed decision we need proper information. So let's look at...

How to waste a year's wages

A friend recently asked me why it is that so many people (on good incomes) are struggling to save. Often the big three money areas are housing, transport and food. In one sense these are necessary items. But what we spend on them is often way more than necessary. I crunched some numbers on how much extra my wife and I could spend on these things - if for some reason we wanted to burn our money. 1. Housing Our apartment is fairly nice, but also cost-effective. I've mentioned how choosing it saves us $1,800 per year , compared to a similar one we saw. The high end of 2-bedroom apartments in our suburb is $305 per week more than our apartment. Not $305 per week. $305 per week more than ours is. I cannot get over that. Sure it's new and modern-looking, but that's a lot of money. It's an extra $15,860 per year above what we pay. 2. Transport The Australian Automobile Association lists the costs of owning and running a car. It includes many often-overlooked c...

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