066: 7 Steps To Save Thousands On Household Bills

Life Admin Life Hacks

With the cost of living on the rise, a key way to save money is to comparison shop your major household bills. In this ep we’ll help you get an understanding of the payoff to a methodical approach, seven steps to make your choices straightforward and point you to the best comparison websites.

We start this episode talking about why you need to make the effort to comparison shop - not only to save money but also to give peace of mind that your product or service fits with your needs. We also chat about the frustration that most providers offer the best discounts and deals for new customers. This means you need to accept that you'll need to do the work if you want to save money.

We also talk about the challenges of finding the time and the complexity of comparison shopping:

• We have more products that we need to choose due to the privatisation of services like utilities
• It can be complex to choose between the hundreds or thousands of products out there
• 'Satisficing' - achieving a good result as fast as possible by choosing something sufficient that satisfies you - will yield a better result than trying to find the best possible deal.

We also talk about the elephant in the room: making the time to get the comparison shopping done. We recommend you set up a regular Hour of Power in your schedule to get more complex life admin tasks done, including comparison shopping.

We talk through the seven steps that make choosing a better deal efficient and effective:

1. Take stock

• Jump onto your online account or review recent statements – to gain an understanding of your current plan, assess your usage and sense of value
• If it's a product you're not that familiar with, listen to one of our podcast eps or dive into the relevant book chapter, where we break down the jargon and the typical product features
• Then think about what will make you happy. Is it saving $100 a year or $500? Is it getting more convenient service in some way? Or simply peace of mind that you have the right product for your needs? Decide on the goalposts upfront so that you know when you’ve scored.

1. Set up your comparison table

• The next step is to create a table to set out the criteria you need to compare
• A comparison table makes it much simpler to pick the best offer, rather than tirelessly going through the features of each, one at a time
• You can use one of the downloadable checklists from our website or set up your own table.

1. Compare three

• We recommend that you compare three options: your current provider and two others
• There are diminishing returns if you compare beyond a handful of alternatives, and the more options you compare, the more confused and dissatisfied you will be
• The key thing is to use the best comparison website to find the three offers to compare
• Where possible, you want to use the government websites, so for PHI and energy that is usually your best bet
• Choice, Canstar, Finder and Whistelout are the comparison sites we recommend the most but in our book we recommend which sites are best for which service.

1. Make the 'keep me' call

• Sometimes your current provider can offer you a better deal. When you’re armed with the details of what competitors are selling, calling your current provider may b