How to Save Money on Bills in Australia in 2025: Joel Gibson’s Expert Tips

Want to save hundreds (or even thousands) each year? 💸 In this episode, Molly Benjamin sat down with Joel Gibson to break down the smartest ways to cut costs on everyday expenses, from grocery shopping and energy bills to negotiating better deals and unlocking government rebates you might not even know exist!

Joel shares practical, no-BS strategies to help you spend smarter, reduce financial stress, and keep more money in your pocket—without feeling like you're missing out. Whether you're looking to slash your electricity bill, maximise discounts, or uncover hidden savings opportunities, this chat is packed with simple, actionable steps you can start using today.

🔹 What you'll learn:
✔️ The biggest grocery shopping mistakes that are costing you money—fix them now!
✔️ How to negotiate your bills like a pro (yep, you can ask for a better deal!)
✔️ The best Aussie comparison tools to find cheaper energy, internet & insurance
✔️ How to optimise your streaming services and ditch sneaky subscription fees
✔️ Government rebates and discounts most people forget to claim

💡 Bonus: Joel also shares his top "quick wins"—easy tweaks you can make today to start seeing real savings instantly!

If you're ready to boost your savings, stress less, and make your money work harder, hit play now and start saving today! 🚀💰

Free scripts on how to best negotiate your bills in 2025.

Sign up for a FREE money budgeting app here.

This episode is brought to you by InvestorKit, Australia’s #1 Buyers Agency for 2023 and 2024. They specialise in helping investors find high-growth properties utilising industry leading AI and data driven research process across Australia. 70%+ of the properties they purchase are off-market and they have consistently outperformed national average capital growth rates by over 49%. Whether you’re looking to build your property portfolio or secure your first investment. Check them out here.

CHAPTERS

01:00 - The Cost of Living Crisis & Bill Hacking 101
02:00 - Meet Joel Gibson: Australia’s Leading Money-Saving Expert
03:00 - Why Most People Don’t Negotiate Their Bills (But Should!)
05:00 - Where to Get the Biggest Savings Right Now – Energy & Telco Quick Wins
07:00 - How to Save on Car Costs – Insurance, Petrol & Maintenance
09:00 - Grocery Savings Hacks – Cheating on Your Supermarket & Bulk Buying
11:00 - Are Costco & Aldi Really the Cheapest?
12:00 - Fuel Discounts & Petrol-Hacking Tips
13:00 - How to Negotiate Your Phone & Internet Bills Like a Pro
14:00 - Health Insurance – What’s Actually Worth Paying For?
16:00 - Streaming Services – The 'Pick a Winner' Rule to Save on Subscriptions
18:00 - How Much Can the Average Aussie Save by Negotiating?
19:00 - Black Friday & Sales Scams – Are Discounts Real or Fake?
21:00 - Secret Price Comparison Hacks – The Best Browser Tool for Deals
22:00 - Do Smart Meters Really Save You Money?
24:00 - Government Rebates & Grants – What You Could Be Claiming
26:00 - Finding Lost Money – The Hidden Cash You Might Be Owed
27:00 - The Big Switch – Using Group Buying Power to Slash Bills
28:00 - Final Tips for Becoming a Bill-Hacking Pro

LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

The Big Switch (negotiating group for cheaper deals): https://www.onebigswitch.com.au
Energy Made Easy (Govt. site for energy comparison) https://www.energymadeeasy.gov.au
Victorian Energy Compare (VIC residents only) https://compare.energy.vic.gov.au
WhistleOut (Mobile & Internet Plans) https://www.whistleout.com.au
7-Eleven Fuel Lock (Lock in fuel prices) https://www.7eleven.com.au/fuel
PetrolSpy (Find the cheapest fuel near you) https://petrolspy.com.au
Costco Australia (Bulk-buy savings) https://www.costco.com.au
Zip (ZYFT) – Online Price Comparison Tool https://zyft.com.au
Energy.gov.au – Lists energy bill assistance programs https://www.energy.gov.au/rebates
NSW Savings Finder (Check if you're eligible for government discounts) https://www.service.nsw.gov.au/campaign/savings-finder
ASIC’s Unclaimed Money database (Check if you’re owed any lost funds!) https://moneysmart.gov.au/find-unclaimed-money

CONNECT WITH JOEL GIBSON

Website: https://joelgibson.com.au/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joelkillsbills/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@joelkillsbills

CONNECT WITH LADIES FINANCE CLUB

Join our free Facebook group - Ladies Finance Club Money Chat
Website: https://www.ladiesfinanceclub.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ladiesfinanceclub/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ladies-finance-club/
Newsletter: https://www.ladiesfinanceclub.com/newsletter23

TAKEAWAYS

• Aldi is a cheaper option for groceries, often 10-30% less than major supermarkets.
• Shopping at multiple stores can maximize savings on groceries.
• Costco can be beneficial for bulk purchases if accessible.
• Using apps can help find the cheapest petrol prices.
• Negotiation is key; leverage better offers from competitors.
• Health insurance policies are mostly similar; focus on coverage level.
• Family plans for streaming services can save money.
• Smart meters can help track energy usage but may lead to higher bills if not monitored.
• Government rebates are available for various groups; check eligibility.
• Regularly switching providers can lead to significant savings on bills.
• There are very few experts focusing on bill reduction.
• Most people are unaware that they can negotiate their bills.
• Businesses often have better offers that are not advertised.
• Switching utilities can save hundreds of dollars quickly.
• Comparison sites can help find the best deals on utilities.
• Paying car insurance annually can save money.
• Insurance premiums are rising significantly.
• Limiting car insurance to certain drivers can lower premiums.
• Grocery shopping strategies can lead to significant savings.
• Being proactive in negotiating bills can lead to consistent savings.

SOUND BITES

"Aldi is at least 10% cheaper."
"Costco can be part of your strategy."
"Use apps to find the cheapest petrol."
"Negotiation is all about leverage."

TRANSCRIPT

Molly: [00:00:00] Hey, it's Molly here. Now, before we dive in, I want to give a shout out to our awesome sponsor, Investor Kit. At Ladies Finance Club, we are all about helping women crush financial independence and property investing is a really smart way to do this. But let's be real, figuring out the right location, avoiding costly mistakes.

and dealing with agents. It's a lot. That's where Investor Kit comes in. They've been named Australia's Buyer Agency of the Year in 2023 and 2024, and they're here to look after you, the property investor. They know the markets inside out, back every move with solid data, and take care of the tricky stuff like research, negotiation, and even connecting you with top property managers.

Whether it's your first investment property or you're building your portfolio, Investor Kit makes it. Simple and stress free. Big thanks to them for supporting this podcast. Visit investor kit.com au to learn more. I can't get over the cost of cheese at the moment, like you need a small mortgage [00:01:00] to afford a block of cheese.

So if you are feeling the pinch of rising costs, you are definitely not alone. Bill seemed to be getting higher, but the good news is there's actual ways that you can really cut back and save money. And today we have gone to the ultimate expert to guide us. We're joined by Joel Gibson, author of bestselling books, kill bills on one of Australia's leading money saving gurus.

As I say in the podcast, like I don't think there's anyone who knows. More about this topic than Joel his mission is to help everyday Aussies save more of their hard earned Cash by slashing their bills and I am all about that. So he's shared some really great tips with us I'm excited for you guys to listen to this now before we dive in don't forget to hit that subscribe button It helps us bring in the top notch guests like Joel and all the best money tips Plus it's free and it only takes a second and a heads up.

This episode is packed with practical advice, but it is not a financial advice. So if you need tailored support, reach out to us and we'll connect you with a female [00:02:00] financial advisor. We know love and trust. All right, let's get into today's episode. Joel, very excited to have you on the show, because I think that you would be probably literally the number one person in Australia who knows most about reducing bills and bill hacking.

Like literally name me someone else would know as much as you about. Bill Hacking .

JOEL: Yeah. Well look, that's very flattering, but you might be right. I think the weird thing about Bills is there are so many, many experts who talk about investing and wealth and other aspects of personal finance, but there's actually very few that talk specifically about bills and how to get them down.

And I've found that, and that's one of the reasons I've done more and more of it over the years is because it's a big hole there that needs to be filled for people. Yeah.

Molly: Yeah. So if you're listening, you are in good hands. We have Joel Gibson here. He is, as I mentioned in the intro, the author of kill bills and the expanded 2023 version of [00:03:00] easy money.

So we're going to be chatting all things. How do we reduce our bills? So I did a little survey on ladies finance club because I knew I was going to be chatting with you, doll. And I put up a survey and I said, how often do you negotiate your bills? Like once a year, um, you don't, or you don't know, you can even negotiate your bills.

And I was shocked to find that majority of people don't or didn't even know you can negotiate your bills , but is this something that you find?

JOEL: Yeah. I'm not surprised by that, I mean. Everything is negotiable. Uh, even a lot of big box retailers now will price beat or price match. So that's becoming a more common thing just in our society, in all sorts of areas.

But what I think most people don't know is that, you know, most businesses, whether it's an electricity company or it's an insurance company, they'll have the offer that they advertise to people and then they'll have the one they don't advertise and they only use that. to [00:04:00] retain people who are leaving or maybe they give it to certain kind of groups.

Uh, you know, I do some work with one big switch where we negotiate on behalf of a large group of people. So we get access to some of those sort of deals. Some of those motoring clubs get access to those sort of deals. So there are some areas where you can get them, but they're what I call under the table deals.

And most businesses will not give you the best offer unless they really have to. Which means you've got to be prepared to negotiate, which is a scary idea for some people.

Molly: Yeah, well, thanks to a couple of sessions we've done with you at Ladies Finance Club, I personally have gone in and negotiated a lot harder on all my bills.

And do you know what? I don't think there's ever been There was one insurance once where they were literally like, Look lady, you're on the best deal we can give you. Okay, but every other time I've always managed to negotiate some kind of discount. So what I thought for today, Joel, what if we kind of go through a couple of different areas from like car groceries, [00:05:00] insurances, maybe you can give us a couple of quick wins for each, but kicking off, like everyone is aware of the rising cost of living.

You know, it's in the media every second day. I literally just speaking on ABC radio about it. But I guess when it comes to the rising cost of living, where can people get some quick savings or some, some quick wins, or maybe a couple of strategies that they should just know in general about?

JOEL: I think I often tell people to start with what I call the utilities, telco bills and electricity bills.

For two reasons. One is that they are the easiest to switch. You can switch in minutes. Once you find a good deal on those bills, there's very little risk. There's no exit fees or anything like that from switching generally. And you can sometimes save hundreds of dollars in a matter of minutes. So I usually say start with the utilities and there are some fantastic comparison sites where you can see pretty much every single offer ranked in price order in a matter of minutes.

So if it's energy, for example, you can go to the government websites, [00:06:00] energy made easy. which covers most states and victoria there's one called victorian energy compare and they will rank for you all the current offers that are publicly available and tell you which ones are the cheapest and how they compare to your plan so quick and easy and when it comes to telco i tend to use whistle out i do some work with them too these days i think they're the best when it comes to your mobile and your internet kind of comparisons And again, you can get it in a matter of minutes and it can sometimes save you hundreds of dollars, especially if you're in a household that has multiple plans, you know, there's now four mobile plans in my household and an internet plan.

So people, we think of telco as being a small bill. But it's not when you add it all up.

Molly: Wow. Yeah, absolutely. So let's maybe start with car. So what are some tips we can do? I always liked the website that kind of searches for the best kind of petrol in your local area. It was started by my mate, Andre. But have you got any other kind of tips around a car, whether that [00:07:00] be car insurance, which is always a big little chunk every year, or if you're paying that monthly, and is it actually better to do the one off payment?

JOEL: Yeah, you know what, I'll charge you 15 percent more. So the privilege of paying monthly. So if you can pay annually, you'll save quite a bit of money on your car insurance. Now, don't be surprised if your car insurance has gone up really steeply in the past year. And if it does that again next year, because insurance premiums are going up by an average of about down sort of 15 percent at the moment, every year.

And it's been at that level for about 18 months. So this is just a really long. In fact, it's the number one driver of the inflation problem we have in Australia at the moment is insurance premium. I hear that about that as much as you should, I think. But car insurance is really expensive right now. So pay annually if you can is one tip.

If you don't drive a lot, make sure you let them know that you're only driving say 10, 000 kilometers a year, because that will lower your premium sometimes by hundreds of dollars. If you're, you know, limiting the car [00:08:00] to drivers over a certain age, that will help to limit the premium too. They don't love 20 something drivers.

They do love sort of 40 something drivers. They also don't love 80 something drivers. It's the ones in the middle that they want. So if that's what you, if you're in that middle, one of those middle groups, make sure you limit the car to drivers of that age. And, um, and then there's just things that you can play around with the excess.

You can increase the excess and that will reduce your premium. If you have to make a claim, of course, you'll have to pay more in excess, but you can make that gamble if it's something that you're prepared to do to try and get that premium down.

Molly: Yes, I made that gamble this year and then my car randomly caught on fire.

So, the good news was though, they just took it out of the money I got paid out for the car. But I was literally like, fire and theft? Who would ever need that? And then boom, me, I needed that.

JOEL: You are the first person I've ever spoken to whose car is caught on fire. So, that's pretty unusual.

Molly: Yes, I know it wasn't a Tesla for those listening, [00:09:00] but the lady was like caught on fire, like even the insurance lady was like, I've never heard of that happening before.

I was like, I don't know what happened. Like something in the motor did something, it was parked. It was so random. Anyway. Okay, cool. Cars. Groceries. Now I think when we spoke last, you mentioned that one of the cheapest supermarkets in Australia is in fact Audi. Is that still up to date?

JOEL: Yes, it is. It's at least 10 percent cheaper, as much as 25, even 30 percent cheaper, depending on which products to the major supermarkets, because of course they haven't all got the same products, so it's not apples for apples, and that's why the major supermarkets always complain when people say Aldi is cheaper, but, uh, it is.

It is a cheaper place to shop. If you were going to do your whole shop in one place, it should be Aldi. But ideally you don't do your whole shop in one place because the the best way to save on your groceries is actually to spread your love around a bit. I call it cheating on your supermarket. That means [00:10:00] shopping in Aldi, maybe making making the most of some of the big specials, weekly specials in one of the major As well, but also the new players in this space since we last spoke are the Amazons of the world and the Bunnings and the chemist warehouses who are really taking it to the big supermarkets when it comes to things like toiletries, cleaning products, non perishable pantry items.

You know, you can save money by shopping online and get it all popping in and doing a click and collect with those guys as well.

Molly: Wow. And what about like Costco? Is that still a thing? Cause I mean, I'm not in a, I don't have a Costco near me, but I was in Canberra the other day and I saw a massive Costco and I was so tempted to pop in and check it out.

JOEL: Yeah, absolutely. It's a thing. And I think it could be part of your strategy if you have access to one somewhere nearby. What some people do, obviously a lot of the items there are in go with a, you know, family member and they'll buy it. Buy something in bulk and between the family or they'll put some of it for what's not perishable.[00:11:00]

There is an annual fee to be a member of Costco, which you'll make that back in a visit or two based on the prices. And of course, you've got to fill your car up when you're at Costco and you can only get that if you're a member. So make sure you go to a Costco that has.

Molly: And people use like, I know when we spoke to ladies finance club, some people were using like the seven 11 app or the everyday rewards to also save on their petrol.

Are they also, is there one which is maybe better than the other?

JOEL: No, I think it's actually good. There's no cost to have, you know, all of those petrol schemes on your phone. Um, the main thing is that you use the apps to find the cheapest petrol on that day. And then when you get to that petrol station. If it's an Ampol and you can get, you know, like a, or it's a Shell one that's connected to Coles and you can get the supermarket discount on top of that, that's

Molly: a double

JOEL: win.

I think marketing is, shop based on price and then you can get extra discounts, get that too. A lot of companies now are offering extra petrol discounts because they've done deals with some of these petrol [00:12:00] retailers. So, Origin and AGL for example, I think have petrol discounts for their customers. Budget to rent car insurance has a petrol discount for their customers.

There's a whole bunch of them that have got these little extra.

Molly: Ah, great. So worth checking out what that actually gives you access to. And if we, I mean, we mentioned it before with our phone providers, and I guess I've got a few little scripts that I use and I can definitely put those in the show notes as well.

But do you have any strategies for when you do go negotiate on a phone or internet?

JOEL: Yes. People often are uncomfortable negotiating, but what I say is that you don't have to be an ace negotiator because the key to negotiation is leverage. And that means you just have to have another option, ideally a better offer than what they're offering you from someone else.

And then the pressure's on them to match it. So the first thing you should do is go to one of those other comparison sites I talked about, get another offer that's better. And then you can go in with that and say, I'd like you to match [00:13:00] it or beat it, otherwise I'm going to walk. Once they know those are the terms of the negotiation, you'll get a much better result than if you just go in there and say, Hey, would you do something for me?

Molly: Fantastic. And then health insurance. So we get a lot of questions from people being like, like, how do you compare health insurances? Cause they do like, some include something, some don't include others. Like, and I mean, it's obviously quite personal with like, what inclusions you want. Like if you want like Chinese medicine or if you want like all the other bells and whistles, but do you have any advice there for those people kind of going, I'm a bit confused with what I should actually be looking for within my health insurance.

JOEL: Yeah, I'd say just try not to get too tangled up in the weeds when it comes to a product like health insurance. As you say, it is a really complicated, complex product. And yes, they all look slightly different, but actually 80, 90 percent of each product is the same from health fund to health fund. And what they've done in the last few years really helpfully.

Is they've made them categorize every [00:14:00] hospital policy, for example, is gold or silver or bronze or basic. And at each of those levels, there are certain things that must be included in that policy. So you can be confident if you're looking at silver policies from different health funds, they're going to be mostly identical.

There might be a few little differences. They're going to be mostly identical. So don't, don't sweat the small things too much. Just work out whether you need gold, silver, bronze, or base for your hospital policy. If you're thinking of having a baby in the next year, for example, you're going to need either gold or what they call silver plus, which is in between silver and gold.

Molly: Those

JOEL: are the level you have to go to get a pregnancy cover.

Molly: Yeah.

JOEL: You know what you need. You can look for the right sort of cover. And then with the extras, which is all those things outside of a hospital like dental, optometry, physio, whatever. Yeah. Just work out what's important to you. Those free comparison services, they don't compare every single policy on the market, but they're a really good place to start.

They'll do a free comparison for you of about a dozen health funds,

Molly: they'll

JOEL: recommend a product, you don't have to take it through them if you don't want to, but [00:15:00] that's your starting point. So use them, I'd say they're free.

Molly: Yeah, absolutely. Love that. And then around the home as well, we're coming into summer.

It's going to be a hot summer. So, I mean, we've obviously got like streaming services now. Which I know some people gets very excited around the streaming services, but is there a deal where like, maybe like as a family, you should be getting together and being like, Hey guys, let's all just get the family plan and like pay X amount.

Or is there a way to like hack the home streaming services?

JOEL: Well, definitely with your music streaming, you should not be paying for more than one subscription in the same household, whether you're a share house or a family, um, definitely the family subscription. I think one of them even has a duo subscription, which is great for couples or housemates.

So that's a way of saving on your music streaming. You shouldn't be subscribing to more than one music streaming service, ideally, because they all have the same content, unlike the movie and TV ones, where Netflix has different content, Binge has different content. But Disney, [00:16:00] when it comes to the music streamers, are pretty much identical, so don't pay twice for the same content.

And we have a rule at our house, there's four of us here, we have a rule called the pick a winner rule. Each person gets to pick one streaming service at any given time. And if you want to sign up for another one, you've got to turn off the one that you're on now. So, that's how we keep a lid on it.

Because otherwise what happens is, if you're not careful, you end up subscribing to more than half a dozen of them. And then you're paying, you know, 100 plus a month. So, and you're probably not even using half.

Molly: Yeah, big time. Although my new hack with Spotify is they did this to me the other day. You pretend you leave and they cut the price.

Same with this service that we're using right now, Riverside. I went to cancel and they're like, we'll give it to you for 3. And I'm like, Oh yeah, great. So sometimes pretending to leave

JOEL: the table deal, just like we were talking about with energy plans before it happens so often. Yeah, mostly getting great offers from Apple music and others that I've left say come [00:17:00] back.

So if you can be bothered, you could actually kind of switch back and forth from time to time and take up all those freebies and probably pay about six months of the year.

Molly: Yeah, exactly. If you've got the time. So we had some questions from LFC ladies. They just had a couple here. So one. That lady just asked, well, I think we answered this one.

She wanted to know, like, should she switch energy providers and how does she know if she's on the best plan? But I think we spoke about that before by looking at those comparison sites and the energy made easy dot, was it dot gov?

JOEL: Dot gov dot au. Dot au. That site's so good now, you can even upload the last email bill you got and it'll automatically read all the data on it.

You don't have to punch it all in. And it will just do the comparison, it will tell you how your, your plan compares to the cheapest plans on the market at the moment. A lot of energy providers right now are getting really into this upfront credits thing, you can sometimes get 300, 400 plus dollars when you join,

Molly: so

JOEL: if you're a bit cunning you can switch regularly and keep getting more and more of those upfront credits [00:18:00] and basically, again, only pay six months of the year.

Molly: Absolutely. And these things all compound over time. So, you know, it might be 50 here, 20 there, a hundred dollars over here, but it all come back compounds. And I imagine you see lots of people with lots of savings. Do you know, kind of like one on average, if people negotiate on all the bills, like what they could save?

JOEL: So if you're somebody who's never done this before, and that's why my favorite people to help with their bills, slightly older people who've been with the same insurance company and the same energy company, the same telco for like, 30 years. Because they're almost certainly paying thousands of dollars more than they have to on their household bills.

Now if you do it regularly like I do,

Molly: it's

JOEL: harder to save big money every year because a year ago, you got onto the cheapest energy plan, you sort of negotiated for a cheaper insurance premium and so on. So it all depends. But, well definitely, I think, you know, probably half of households out there. Yep.

They're paying hundreds of dollars more than they have to on their household bills. And the cost of living has never been, [00:19:00] for most of us, as bad as it is right now, has been the last couple of years. Yeah. And price rises like this across the board.

Molly: I know, cheese is crazy. Cheese.

JOEL: Every dollar you can save is another dollar you've got.

Molly: Yeah, and it may as well be in your pocket, not their pockets. Another lady said, can you ask Joel, with Black Friday sales, do companies put up their prices only to bring them down to show that it's like, Oh my God, what a savings. She was really interested to find out your opinion.

JOEL: Yeah, I'm sure they do. I reckon they do.

The question is, it's not illegal to do that. What is illegal is, they say 30 percent off the recommended retail price, for example, on a product. If they've never sold it at the recommended retail price, that's illegal. If they have only put it up to the recommended retail price for a very short time before they discount it, that's illegal.

Yeah, there's some sort of gray areas there and the HBCC, the Consumer Watchdog has come out in the last week and said we're looking very closely at some of the Black Friday deals from this [00:20:00] year. I expect we'll hear more from them about this and a few companies might get pinned for fake discounts. But, what I also did myself this year after buying a few things in the Black Friday sales, I went back in the last week and just had a look at those products to see if they were still

Molly: as good

JOEL: as they were during the sales.

And in most cases they were slightly more expensive than I bought them and sometimes it was just a few dollars.

Molly: Yeah. And

JOEL: you can see that they have actually put the prices back up to something a bit more sustainable. So I do think most of the Black Friday deals are real deals.

Molly: Okay.

JOEL: No question it's dodgy.

Molly: Ah, excellent. Good to know. I'm

JOEL: actually working with this um, business as a brand ambassador now because I'm, I actually really believe in it. But this year I discovered a new app called Zip, Z Y F T. And it's an online price comparison thing. It sits on your browser. And when you're looking, I use this all through the sales for my own shopping and stuff.

When you're looking at a product, it scans [00:21:00] the internet to see what other retailers are charging. Seconds, it tells you what else is out there, and I bought a mountain bike helmet for my son. I was about to hit buy, and then I used this stiff thing, and it saved me 220.

Molly: Whoa.

JOEL: Yeah. It's actually really powerful stuff.

So get, get amongst it, get ahold of that if you can,

Molly: it's

JOEL: free, it works on the phone as well.

Molly: Yeah. And I'm amazed actually, when I buy things online, how often I'll just, I'll just check for a coupon code and there'll literally be a coupon code for it. And I'll save like 10, 15 or I'll save on shipping just from doing that quick little online search as well.

So it definitely, um, pays to do it. Another question we got from one of our ladies on Instagram. She said, can you ask Joel, do smart meters really help you save money on energy bills?

JOEL: Well, that's a really good question because smart meters on their own, I think can be really helpful because I now have a smart meter, for example, and when I look on the [00:22:00] app on my phone, I can see exactly how much energy I'm using on different days at different times a day.

That is really helpful if you're trying to use less energy and be more energy efficient, right? But, but, what's happening with all the rollout of smart meters is they're moving a lot of people onto new tariffs, where you don't pay the same rate throughout the day. They're not necessarily telling them that they're moving onto those new tariffs, and some people are getting bigger bills because they're paying more in peak time, and they might be paying less in, At in the middle of the night, but they're using all their power in peak time, so some people are getting caught out.

That's been a real problem in the last year or two. That is really something to watch out for if they put in a smart meter. Just check whether you're being moved onto a different tariff.

Molly: Yeah.

JOEL: While ask your retailer if you can go back to a single rate tariff, if you don't think that new, that new kind of what they call time of use tariff is gonna be a good thing for you.

It charges you different rates at different times of day.

Molly: Okay. And with [00:23:00] that. Are we better off, like, using our, like, if we have to put on the washing machine or the dishwasher, are there less peaky hours? Like, I imagine night, when everyone gets home from work, that would be a peak hour. In the morning, when everyone's getting ready, that would be a peak hour.

So maybe around avoiding those main times?

JOEL: Yeah, look, most of the things we do need, usually, in school, come from school finishes. through to mid evening and then if you put your dishwasher on when you go to bed at 9. 30, 10 o'clock and put your washing machine on when you go to bed, that's the best time to use your electricity at night.

Uh, if you've got an EV, that's when, that's, that's the best time to plug it in. You can get these EV plans now where you plug them in at night and it's really, really cheap energy because, uh, that's when there's a little demand in the system. So. Definitely worth, um, what they call shifting your usage to those cheaper times of day.

Molly: Awesome. And final question we got was, are there any government [00:24:00] rebates or grants that Australians should know about, or that can help me reduce my bills like that I can apply for? So, yeah, I know of one rebate, but it targets a very niche audience, but yeah, anything out there we should be aware of.

JOEL: Look, there are a heap of different rebates out there.

They're mostly targeted at um, concession card holders and at um, seniors and those sorts of groups. There are some that are available if you're getting family tax benefit A or family tax benefit B. The best place for energy rebates to look is a, is a website called Energy. It's a federal government website, but it pulls together all the different rebates from the different states in there as well, so you can look

Molly: at the rebate,

JOEL: you can see what's available and just make sure you're not missing out on anything.

A lot of these rebates are automatic, like everybody this year is getting 300 from the federal government on their energy bill. It's coming out in four instalments of 75. Should've got two already, there's two more to come, so [00:25:00] that one's automatic, but there are some that you actually have to apply for, so if you don't do that, you miss out on them, so that's worth,

Molly: um, Awesome.

And my very niche one is if you have gotten your eggs frozen in the last year or two, you can claim 250 from the government as well. It's just a simple form you need to fill out, but that's for New South Wales women. So again, very niche, but hey, if you fit into that category, go get your 250.

JOEL: You know, they actually do have these, these websites now called, um, in the states, they call them savings finder website.

So Service NSW and NSW has this thing called Savings Finder, asks you a bunch of questions about yourself and then suggests these might be the, um, the, you know, government assistance rebates or whatever that you can get. And so it's worth doing that in your state. And then at the federal level there's one, Centrelink has one called, I think it's called Centrelink Concessions Finder or something like that.

Yeah. Awesome. So doing the national one and the state based one just to make sure you're not missing out on some sort of, uh. [00:26:00]

Molly: Yeah, absolutely. And then the last one I'll just add in there too is lost money. So there's a lot of lost money in Australia. So I popped in all my different families names into the lost money government website, and I found about 400 from that was owed to one of my parents.

So I was like, guys, get on that. So definitely maybe check that one out. as well. Well, thank you so much, Joel. And Joel, I know you're a spokesperson for the big switch, but those who are listening, who might not know about it or they want to join, can you just kind of give us the one on one and where people can learn more?

JOEL: Yeah, sure. It's really simple. There's over 1. 3 million people who've joined up over about, uh, 11, 12 years now. And so we use that combined to the buying power to go and negotiate, um, special discounts. We've Energy providers, insurance companies, um, telcos, uh, any, any household bill that we can find. And then when you remember you get access to those deals and you can take them or leave them.

It's [00:27:00] up to you. So. It's a really clever idea, and um, I've been working it out for 12 years, I'm a lifer.

Molly: Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, and we have just scratched the surface in um, the knowledge of Joel, so definitely go check out his books. I'm gonna put the links in the show notes, and then you can really become a Bill Hacker.

Thank you so much, Joel, for sharing all the savings.

JOEL: For signing us. Thanks, Molly!

KEYWORDS

Aldi, Costco, health insurance, streaming services, energy savings, smart meters, government rebates, financial assistance, bill hacking, reduce bills, negotiate bills, utilities savings, car insurance tips, grocery shopping tips, cost of living, personal finance, savings strategies, financial literacy