Money is tight and there are plenty of Australian's feeling the pinch. Here is a list of 10 ways you can make you dollars go that little bit further for you.
· Carry Cash Instead of Cards – tapping cards these days is all too easy. Using cash will help you stick to your assigned budget and avoid the increasingly common surcharge for paying by card. As long as you are avoiding ATM fees to withdraw your cash, you will save a good chunk each year in extra tapping fees that all add up.
· High Interest Savings Accounts – we see too many people not taking advantage of high interest savings accounts and are still parking chunks of cash in accounts that pay little to no interest. Take stock of your accounts and what interest rates you are being paid and upgrade where you can. If the bank is offering it, why not take advantage?
· Fortnightly Mortgage Repayments – a little known hack for your mortgage is converting your payment to fortnightly instead of monthly. Your bank will automatically set them up as monthly repayments unless you tell them. As an example, for a $600k mortgage at 5.6% (no other fees), you will save around $90k in interest over the life of the loan and reduce the term by around 3 years if you pay fortnightly instead of monthly. The banks don’t want you to know this!
· Refinance Your Debt – short of talking to your bank directly, have a chat with a mortgage broker. This conversation may help you to get a better rate and lower mortgage repayments. Worth asking the question? If you need the details of a good broker, let me know!
· Cycle Through Streaming Services – do you have Netflix, Kayo, Amazon Prime, Disney and Stan? You would be surprised how many people do. A great way to decrease this expense is to cycle through each subscription every 3 months. Another trap is setting up a new service on a free trial but forgetting to cancel it prior to payment coming out – stay organised with your subscriptions.
· YouTube Gym or Yoga Classes – YouTube has an amazing amount of content available free (with a few ads) that you can learn just about any skill there is. If you are a casual user of the gym or occasionally go to yoga or Pilates, it might be worth using YouTube to find the class that suits you.
· Buy Imperfect Foods – did you know that close to 30% of produce is wasted and a large amount of this is purely due to the look of the produce. There are a few businesses that specialise in rescuing this imperfect food and sending it to you in bulk at prices much cheaper than you’ll see at the supermarket.
· Volume Per Unit – at the supermarket on every price label you will see how much the item costs per unit. As an example, at Coles, Masterfoods Tomato sauce is $0.76 per 100ml whilst the Coles Squeezy Sauce is $0.39 per 100ml. Every item on the shelf allows to you directly compare it to another to see if you are getting the best deal.
· Join a Library – many of us love reading books and more specifically, love holding books rather than reading an electronic version. Your local library can be a great source of books and other entertainment and most of the time it is free! You can order books to be delivered to your local library, read them and drop them back which means you won’t end up with a house full of books.
· Public Transport - I know many of you will already use public transport and with the price of petrol, this demand is only increasing. Using public transport also encourages more walking to and from bus stops and train stations, helping you get your daily steps up. Sounds like a win-win!
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