How to Make $500 Without Even Trying

Recently my editor emailed me a request:

Editor: “Can you give us your top tips for saving on power bills?”

Barefoot: “Okay. How about ‘turn off your bloody lights!’.”

Editor: “Errr … do you have anything else?”

Barefoot: … (No reply)

Truth is, I don’t do money-saving tips:

“If Jenny uses her Hills Hoist instead of her clothes dryer, she could save $384 a year on her power bill!”

Seriously? Jenny didn’t twig that the giant golden ball in the sky could dry her clothes … for free?

Yet I get it, power prices are insane. This week we learned that Australians are paying the highest power costs in the world … twice as much as the Yanks! (Hang on, aren’t we basically a giant coal pit?)

And a report by the Australian Energy Market Commission found that almost half of households haven’t switched their plan or retailer in the past five years … a ‘lazy tax’ that costs on average an extra $507 a year on power and $285 on gas.

So this week I decided I’d buck the trend.

I typed ‘cheap power’ into Google and started dutifully scrolling through the 136,000,000 results it served up.

The top pages were power comparison sites, and they reminded me of walking through a market in Bali:

“Hey Mister! You want free power?”*

“$2 gas for you!”*

(*Just sign up for a horribly confusing bait-and-switch plan that will see you rolling over and being charged an average $278 more for power the year after your deal expires.)

Thankfully, I came across a government website that makes it really simple:

https://www.energymadeeasy.gov.au

It may not be sexy, but with a copy of my last power bill, and a few clicks, I saved $540 a year. (And then I put a note in my calendar to remind myself to go back to the site next year.)

Power to you!

Tread Your Own Path!