Useful Money Saving Tips from OzBargain Commenters
neil on 19/10/2013 at 5:25 pm, filed under OzBargain
Earlier this week, we ran a contest to find the most useful tips of 2013. Here is a selection of comments:
Tweeking Pizza hut codes to make them valid
Just change the last digit to 5,6.
Pizzahut is too lazy to design new code.
Sometimes ADLPP5,6 will work.
Using a proxy to get cheaper pricing for an NBA Pass
Go to a wesbite such as hidemyass.com/proxy-list, select a country, change the proxy settings on your internet browser to those on the site, then go to the NBA League Pass website. If you have changed your settings properly you should have pricing details for whichever country you are routing through. Please ensure that you don’t go via a country which has blackouts. Once you have signed up, change your internet proxy settings back to what they were and you are done!
Putting Kevin Rudds .05% bank levy into perspective
What the government is doing is essentially providing insurance, if something goes wrong they are going to have to pay out a lot of money. Name me a private company that gives out insurance for free.
Also good to keep in mind that this is just 5 basis points, that’s absolutely miniscule. Say you had $100,000 in a bank account at 3% interest. Over a year you would earn around $3000 in interest, and pay deposit guarantee levy of $50. $50 on $100,000 is nothing. Even if you had just $10,000, that’s only $5 in deposit guarantee.
And this isn’t going on your tax return by the way, the bank will do it. Who knows, it’s kinda competitive out there especially with the high interest accounts. It might end up being even less to you.
Plus I should add, the IMF, RBA and a lot of major finance organisations are saying this is the way to go, they are recommending all nations do this so that the banks can be bailed out with their own money should GFC mk 2 arrive.
So all in all, I’m not at all fussed about the bank levy, it’s like 5c in $100.00. I’m honestly more worried about the 1.5% tax on businesses Abbott is planning to impose on all businesses, or that Direct Action plan of his which Turnbull said would cost tens of billions of dollars on top of what has already been budgeted.
Some of the following are my money saving tips, though they might already be intuitive to some:
- be healthy, through healthy diet and exercise. This saves massively on medical costs and lost productivity in the long run
- on the same note as the above, I don’t drink soft drinks. I’m always drinking either plain old tap water or iced green tea
made by chilling a pitcher of freshly brewed green tea- don’t buy drinks when outside, as these can be costly – rather take your own (BPA free) container of tea/water (at times this might be difficult due to social constraints)
- limit the amount of takeaway and make your own, be creative and experiment, make up enough to last several serves in each batch
- as RFM has explained already at great length, shop around for the best specials each week
- switch off unused lights and appliances at home
- shop around to find the right financial product for you, whether this means your mobile phone provider, credit card, saving account, home loan, whatever
- don’t be afraid to use vouchers and coupons to your advantage, one thing I used to do was swap entertainment book vouchers for sushi sushi with others I didn’t want and that was my takeaway sorted too l. Just today I redeemed a box of cereal from Woolies for free using a coupon in the paper, took the best part of five minutes of my time
- buy in bulk whenever possible and feasible
- don’t buy new cars, after all their primary purpose is to get you from a to b safely, and new cars depreciate rapidly within the first few years of purchase
- check for bargains on ozbargain daily (although you have to be careful otherwise you actually waste more money buying unnecessary things)
- use vinegar and water as household cleaning solutions
- wash with full load of laundry, dry on a clothesline outside
- support and shop at op shops whenever possible
- GUMTREE IS YOUR FRIEND, many bargains and freebies can be found there many times due to the sad fact that people always want new things, things exactly matching their decor, changing their mind, etc. It’s not only an financial principle, we should all aim to reduce our consumption of new goods and re-use wherever possible. I got a very nice IKEA coffee table second hand off Gumtree for $40 when it cost $200 new – what a bargain!
- other similar sites are trading post, zilch and freecycle
- use the services of a good trusted financial advisor with no interests in the products they recommend to you
- for travel, compare flight prices extensively including sites such as adioso and skyscanner
- airbnb is a great site to find a place to stay on the cheap when travelling, plus you get to support the local economy and appreciate the local culture more
- practically everyone has a smartphone these days so go jump on google, eBay, whatever, to find the best price. Resist the urge to buy then and there, ask yourself if you really need the item in the first place
- fill up on the cheapest days of the fuel cycle. The accc website has an excellent section on which days to fill up based on your location
- booko.com.au for books, enough said
How to link to OzBargain comments
If you hover your mouse next to the time, which is to the right of the username a paragraph symbol appears.
E.G. AmericanDad 5 mins ago P
Using Telstra credit to buy Android apps
Sounds like half price Android apps to me. Activate the SIM with $30 credit, put it in your phone, then buy apps and choose to bill them to your service as the payment method.
Cheap games!
Saving an extra $10 by placing separate Julius Marlow orders
Next time do separate orders by making another account and save a further $10.
Why it’s not worth choosing an i5 over an i3 chip
Guys don’t get i5 3120m over i3 3230m the reasoning being it is not worth it as both CPU’s are dual cores with 4 threads, retail price of $225USD each, the only difference with the i5 is it is clocked 100MHz faster and has turbo that can boost from 2.6GHz to 3.2GHz, both on die GPU’s are clocked at the same speed.
Using the Tunlr VPN to watch Hulu videos
Tunlr is free and seemed to work well enough last time I tried it out. They only tunnel the Hulu website (not the actual videos) so the performance is quite good. This is also what UnblockUS does.
Using the Jetstar price guarantee to save 10% & credit card fees
Jetstar price beat guarantee and get 10% off? $9.00 flight? :)
Unlocking, rooting the Motorola Defy
Got this phone on Tuesday morning and had it rooted, CM9 flashed AND CARRIER UNLOCKED by the early hours of this morning. Was long and tiresome, but definitely worth it.
Those who want to have a shot at unlocking this bad boy can have a look at the following threads. It’s 4:30am and I’m too tired to write up a good tutorial right now…Rooting – http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1595013
CM9 – http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1618904
Unlocking – http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1483297The unlock needs to be done in the following order:
1. Root the device
2. Install CM9
3. Unlock the handset.
A comment from the MSY rep responding to a question if buying their gigagbit switch was worth it
Totally worth it :)
Using layby to lock in stock that will likely sell out
Hmmm by the sounds of it, they’ll be out of stock before the end of the day!
Lay by?
Using discarded receipts from Coles to get a fuel discount without the required Coles purchase
I walk around Coles, stare at the trolley and see if someone left a receipt in there with the fuel discount still intact…you’d be surprised how many people discard them. Hated Woolies when they started adding that to the Everyday Rewards card.
Not driving flashy cars to work
That’s nothing. I hate Bugatti Veyrons, so when I ride my bike it saves me $2.5 million.
Listing out codes for the KFC Snack app
here you go
“FreeNuggetBox”: “0917579463D94957A84CF8DF96F4835A”,
“FreeCrispyStripsBox”: “EFFE3124076B4EBE8A8A26EC164C1320”,
“FreeWingBox”: “D4C198DCEB344FD7BFF7B2E12DEA7937”,
“FreePopcornBox”: “6FE0B70191824C6AA55093F94176B53D”,
“FreeWickedWings”: “9F2A213ABBE74AAD9897952D5AD636E8”,
“FreeBaconRoll”: “F935260C4DE94A119F81AE45E546A001”,
“DollarKrusher”: “824AB5E162D4480FB04EF0DE40EF8915”,
“ExtraWing”: “9AB6E65474C04294BFBDBA948BD47891”,
“DollarDrink”: “83331728AFCE45D3B145821F00EE4881”,
“SecondBoxFree”: “AE0D4E5D70514C928B64EF9421BC5465”,
“SecondRollerFree”: “33DA6067D025400EB23AC68191E5C932”,
“KrusherWithBox”: “A310E0E85FA349A4A70211305ACD0241”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_Australia
Tightest and best thing I do is not pay a cent in fuel taxes (I take the bike).
* I don’t pay cigarette taxes (don’t smoke).
* I don’t pay alcohol taxes (don’t drink alcohol).
* I avoid nearly all foods attracting GST.
* I avoid eating out nearly always (your own prepared meals and snacks are so much better anyway, and GST-free).
* I boil several litres of water for tea and use just one small bit of loose-leaf tea (I don’t buy wasteful teabags in super-wasteful packaging for sky-high prices).
* I turn lights off always.
* I never buy toilet paper from supermarkets but cleaning supply stores.
* I nearly always rug up rather than turn the heat on.
* I never buy bread, I buy flour.
* I never buy drinks.
* I have something to say about just about every item on the supermarket shelves, usually negative, so I’m great company and cool to hang around with, naturally.
* I often pee in the backyard rather than the State-endorsed way. If I had my way, I’d buy a composting toilet pronto. I don’t want the State getting access to my poo, or paying for its disposal.
* I am thinking of seriously stockpiling any glass jars and stuff, and getting paid to have it recycled rather than hand it over freely to the State at rubbish collection time
* I often go out of my way to buy something overseas sometimes, often for savings but sometimes even not for that; sometimes it’s just to avoid giving local stores that I dislike any money (usually those with crap service or company policies).
* I avoid ebay as much as possible and try to contact sellers and deal with them directly for a discount
* I try to avoid buying with PayPal as much as possible, along with their poor exchange rates
* I grow some of my own food in the same garden I pee in.
Avoiding Qantas credit card/booking fees
Actually there’s away around the credit card fee (or the booking fee or whatever it’s called for not using BPAY)
Just buy a gift voucher in your own name and then use it. Saves you the $7.70 fee for domestic and $30 for international. They however won’t work for multi-city itineraries. Make sure to double check the terms and conditions of the gift voucher though, they may have changed since I last checked. They also have minior problems if you want to cancel or change flights, so I’ve been told by QF customer service.
Got any tips or spotted any great comments? Let us know.
Image © Spaceheater