How to Save Hundreds on Your Household Bills in 2026 | Energy, Insurance & Grocery Savings Ft Joel Gibson 

Still paying the same bills you were five years ago? It might be time to do something about that. Molly sits down with consumer advocate, bestselling author, and Today Show money expert Joel Gibson for their annual bill audit and this one is packed with practical tips you can action this weekend.

Whether you've never touched your energy plan, haven't looked at your insurance in years, or just feel overwhelmed by where to even start, Joel breaks it all down in plain English so you can stop overpaying and start keeping more of your money.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why 80% of Australians are not on the cheapest energy plan available to them and how to fix it in minutes
• The sneaky "loyalty tax" your insurance company is quietly charging you (and how to beat it)
• The single most important bill to tackle first if you're a complete beginner
• Which grocery apps and websites can save you hundreds on your weekly shop
• How to find unclaimed government money that might literally have your name on it
• What's actually happening with energy prices in July 2026 and what to do before the letters start arriving
• Joel's top winter money-saving hacks, including the one heating tweak that could save you $100+ this season
• Why solar and batteries might be worth it even if you don't have upfront cash
• What One Big Switch is and how to use it to negotiate better deals on your household bills

Perfect for: any Australian woman who knows she should probably be doing more with her bills but hasn't gotten around to it yet, this episode is your sign.

The biggest takeaway? You don't have to overhaul your whole life to save money. You just have to make a few calls. 💸🎧

CHAPTERS

00:00 - Introduction: The Household Bills That Are Quietly Costing Australian Women Thousands
01:10 - Meet Joel Gibson: Australia's Annual Bill Audit Expert Returns to Get Rich
01:32 - The Cost of Living Crisis in 2026: Why Aussies Are Feeling Less Financially Free
03:06 - The 2026 Federal Budget Hot Take: What It Really Means for First Home Buyers in Australia
04:08 - What AI Could Mean for Saving Money on Your Bills in the Future
05:01 - Where to Start Your Bill Audit: The Single Most Important Bill to Tackle First
06:13 - The Sneaky Money Leaks Australians Are Paying Without Realising: Subscriptions vs Insurance
06:39 - Price Walking: The Illegal UK Practice That's Still Happening to Australian Insurance Customers
07:20 - How Molly Saved $350 by Cancelling and Rebuying Her Own Insurance Policy
08:29 - How to Do a Bill Audit: The Simple Step-by-Step Process That Takes Under 20 Minutes
09:52 - Is Aldi Still the Cheapest Supermarket in Australia in 2026?
10:48 - How to Save 24% on Your Grocery Bill by Shopping Across Multiple Retailers
11:25 - The Best Grocery Apps to Save Money in Australia: Half Price, Grocerize, PlatePlan & Zift
12:14 - Free Websites to Compare Energy and Telco Bills in Australia: Energy Made Easy & WhistleOut
12:23 - Unclaimed Government Money: How to Find Out If Australia Owes You Money Right Now
13:55 - Government Energy Rebates in 2026: Who's Still Eligible and What's Changed
14:27 - Energy Bills Going Down in July 2026: What Every Australian Household Needs to Know
15:06 - Three Free Hours of Power (SolarShare): Is This Energy Plan Worth It for You?
16:00 - Winter Money-Saving Hacks: How Every Degree on Your Thermostat Costs You $100
16:55 - The Cheapest Way to Heat Your Home in Australia: Reverse Cycle Air Con vs Gas vs Electric
17:23 - Molly's Heated Blanket Tip: Save Hundreds on Winter Heating for as Little as $10
17:52 - Why Australian Homes Are Glorified Tents (And How Door Snakes Can Cut Your Power Bill by 20%)
18:20 - Solar and Batteries in Australia: Is It Worth It and How Do You Pay for It?
19:24 - Joel Gibson on the Today Show, Kill Bills & What's Next
20:31 - What Is One Big Switch and How Can It Save You Money on Household Bills?
21:08 - Wrap Up: Take Action on Your Bills This Weekend

RESOURCES FROM THE EPISODE

Bill Comparison & Switching
Energy Made Easy (energy bill comparison, most states) — https://www.energymadeeasy.gov.au/
Whistleout (telco/mobile plan comparison) — https://www.whistleout.com.au/
One Big Switch (member discounts on energy, insurance, health & telco) — https://onebigswitch.com.au/

Unclaimed Money
ASIC Unclaimed Money (federal) — Find unclaimed money - Moneysmart.gov.au
Each state government also holds its own unclaimed money — search "[your state] unclaimed money"

CONNECT WITH JOEL GIBSON

One Big Switch — https://onebigswitch.com.au/
Book: Kill Bills — available wherever books are sold
Today Show — Tuesday to Friday, money segment at approx. 8:20am
Website: http://www.joelgibson.com.au/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@joelkillsbills
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joel-gibson-29939354/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joelkillsbills

CONNECT WITH LADIES FINANCE CLUB

Buying a property? Need Financial Advice? Time to sort the Will? Let us help connect you with an awesome woman in finance! https://directory.ladiesfinanceclub.com/
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Newsletter: https://www.ladiesfinanceclub.com/newsletter23

TAKEAWAYS

SOUND BITES

"We've had three real cost of living crises in a decade."

"Loyalty tax is a huge money leak."

"Adjust your thermostat by just a few degrees to save hundreds."

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of Get Rich. I'm your host, Molly Benjamin, founder of Ladies Finance Club. Now, have you ever stopped to think about how much money leaves your bank account each month without you even questioning it? Not because you chose to spend it, but because you simply got busy. Your energy bill renews, your insurance rolls over, your phone plan stays the same, and before you know it, you've been paying more than you need to for years and years.

[00:00:27] The strange thing is, a lot of us, and I'm guilty of this as well, we could spend hours researching a holiday, the restaurants, uh, we can watch 1,000 TikToks on the location we're going, but almost no time looking at the bills that are quietly costing us thousands. So what if saving money wasn't about earning more?

[00:00:46] What if it was simply about paying attention to the money that's already leaving your account? That's why on this week's Get Rich episode, I wanted to get Joel Gibson back on and do our annual bill audit. Now, we've been getting Joel on the show, like, once a year for the last, like, four, five years. So we're gonna unpack the simple changes that could save you hundreds or even thousands each year without changing your lifestyle.

[00:01:10] If you've been meaning to sort out your bills one day, consider this your friendly little yearly reminder. So let's jump into it Joel, welcome back to another episode of Get Rich. I think we've had you on every single year since we actually started the podcast, so we love our little annual catch-up with Joel.

[00:01:29] I'm racking up the frequent flyer miles, I think.

[00:01:32] Yeah, the LFC miles. So we're in an interesting time, and I feel like every time we speak we're always talking about cost of living, but again, like, we just haven't really gotten out of this cost of living, um, crisis. And I know, you know, you speak to thousands and thousands of Aussies about bills rising and how to reduce bills.

[00:01:51] I guess what do you think the bill rising situation we're in at the moment, what is that doing to people's emotions right now?

[00:01:57] Oh, look, I think it's making people feel a lot less free, I suppose, to live their lives the way they wanna live. I mean, what I would like to point out is that it's not a coincidence that you and I have had this conversation a number of times, because what has actually happened in the past decade is highly unusual.

[00:02:12] We've had probably... This'd be the third real kind of cost of living crisis within that decade. First of all, we had the... We had COVID, where everybody was sort of sent home, a lot of people lost income. Exactly. And then in couple years after COVID, we had the war in the Ukraine kick off, had a global energy crisis.

[00:02:29] That drove up the price of electricity, uh, all around the world, and that drove up the price of everything else. And so we had inflation at almost 8% at one point. Yeah. And now here we are again. Inflation's predicted to push

[00:02:41] 5%

[00:02:41] this year. Mm. We've got another war on. As we speak there's talk of a deal, so we might be closer to the end of that than the beginning, I hope.

[00:02:48] Yeah. But it is highly unusual for us to have had these three kind of big or, you know, two big spikes in inflation and one kind of global pandemic in the space of a decade. So yeah, it's weird. It's a weird time to be alive.

[00:02:59] Well, let's hope if we speak next year there's not another war- ... 'cause there'll be some kind of big crisis happening when we have a chat.

[00:03:06] Yeah, that'd be nice. I know. And I'd just love to

[00:03:08] know, before we jump straight in the budget, what was your hot take? Did you like it or hate it?

[00:03:14] I liked it because I think... You know, I've got two teenage kids and I think we've locked our kids out of the property market, and I think unless you've got parents who can help you out at the moment, it's very, very hard to get on the bottom rung of that ladder.

[00:03:25] And so I think we need to do anything we can to, to fix that problem. I don't think they've nailed it necessarily. There are some aspects where I think they're probably, it's gonna have some impacts that they didn't expect or some- Yeah ... some perverse impacts, and so they're still, you know, I think they're still going through the finer detail of that.

[00:03:41] I'd like to, like to see a few things, a few rough edges knocked off. But the, in terms of, you know, what it means for first home buyers, I think it had to be done.

[00:03:48] Yeah, absolutely, and I speak to women all day every day, and exactly as you said, we couldn't keep going the way we were going, 'cause unless you got, like, the bank of mom and dad, it's, like, impossible, and it shouldn't be easier for property investors to buy their 20th property as opposed to a first home buyer trying to get onto the property ladder.

[00:04:08] And then I guess after years of investigating bills, pricing, consumer behavior, what's something you know that the average Australian doesn't? I mean, you know a lot that the average Australian doesn't when it comes to this topic, but, like, what would be kind of a main thing you come across?

[00:04:23] Maybe at the moment I think I'm just starting to get a sense of, of how much AI is going to transform this space for people like us and, and for anybody who wants to save.

[00:04:32] Obviously, it's transforming all sorts of spaces left, right, and center, but I'm sort of focusing really clearly on what it's gonna be able to do for the average person who wants to save on their mortgage, on their energy bills, on their insurance, and that sort of thing. And I'm starting to see some really exciting developments there and some exciting possibilities.

[00:04:50] So it'll take time. It's, you know, it's probably five years away before the average person will be using AI on a daily basis to save money.

[00:04:57] Yeah.

[00:04:57] But already we're seeing the first kind of green shoots

[00:05:01] Yeah. Awesome. And so if we're getting into bills, so for someone who's never audited their bills before, and we see them all the time and we welcome them to the conversation, but what is the single most important bill to tackle first and why do you think?

[00:05:14] Yeah, I think people who haven't done this before, they're my favorite people to help because the, the data says if you haven't done this before, if you've been with the same providers for years, you're gonna save more than the next person because you're paying a loyalty tax probably across multiple different household bills.

[00:05:28] And I always suggest people start with the utilities, energy and telco bills because we've all got them, and also they're really easy to switch. You can do it in a matter of minutes if you want to, if you wanna do it as fast as possible. And sometimes the data says that 80% of us are not on the cheapest energy plan we could be, for example.

[00:05:46] So vast majority of people can save money and the average potential saving I think for an energy bill is around $2-300 if you haven't done this before. So big possibilities, easy to switch, you know, low barrier of entry. That's where I'd start.

[00:05:59] I do get excited when someone says they haven't negotiated on their private health insurance for 20 years and I'm like, "Well, there's an immediate money saver you can generally find."

[00:06:07] Um-

[00:06:08] Yeah, it's a massive bill too, isn't it, private

[00:06:09] health insurance? A huge one, and it's getting bigger and bigger

[00:06:12] every year. Yeah.

[00:06:13] What's the most common money leak you see Aussies paying for without even realizing it? Is it the sneaky subscriptions? What is it?

[00:06:19] I think subscriptions are a good example because- Yeah

[00:06:21] they are one of those things, and I have to make a confession right now. If you asked me which streaming services we're subscribed to in this house- Yeah ... I would have trouble telling you definitively which ones we are not signed up to at the moment because we constantly, I try to cancel them when we're not using them.

[00:06:34] Yeah. But you know, it's like sort of holding water in your hands when you've got a, a household of four.

[00:06:39] Yeah.

[00:06:39] But I will say this, I think the biggest one here is probably something like insurance where the loyalty tax can be so huge.

[00:06:47] Mm.

[00:06:47] Because if you forget about a couple of subscriptions, it might cost you an extra 20 bucks a month or something.

[00:06:52] Yeah. But if you haven't switched your insurance in the past five years or something-

[00:06:57] Yeah ... every year

[00:06:58] they put it up by as much as they can get away with. They even allegedly have these algorithms that kind of guess how much they can put the price up by before you will leave. They use those to maximize what they're getting out of you.

[00:07:09] So it's called price walking. It's actually banned in the UK now.

[00:07:13] Wow.

[00:07:13] In Australia it still happens. It's really common and they just sort of- Yeah ... uh, they will basically punish the most loyal customers for not switching.

[00:07:20] Which is so wrong. So guys, do not show loyalty to your suppliers because they do not show loyalty to you.

[00:07:27] And this made me laugh the other day. I was negotiating on my insurance for one of my investment properties and with the same insurer, I said, "Okay, I found a really good deal online. Can I have that deal?" Mm. And they said, "No, you would have to cancel your policy and then rebuy it if you wanted the online deal."

[00:07:47] And I said Okay, well I will do that then. Yeah. So I'm like, "Can you cancel me? Okay, I'm back, I'm gonna resubscribe." I couldn't believe it, $350 like that.

[00:07:55] I've done the same thing before. You know, I was with one provider, they put up my insurance by 25% one year. I went online and got a quote using the same details and it was, you know, 25% cheaper or something.

[00:08:06] And so I called them up and I said, "What's going on?" They said, "Oh, well, what we could do is we could cancel your current policy and we could open a new one and have a different policy number. Who cares?"

[00:08:15] Yeah.

[00:08:15] But otherwise it'll be identical, and so we did that. And it's crazy that you have to do that to get the new customer price.

[00:08:21] Yeah.

[00:08:21] But it just goes to show how much less new customers pay. And if you can be a new customer as often as possible, that's how you save thousands over time.

[00:08:29] Absolutely. And I always say to people when they're looking at their bills, you know, get a piece of paper, write out who your suppliers are, then, you know, you wanna look for who's got the best rate.

[00:08:40] They might even have the best rate. Look who's got the best rate, and then just m- start making those calls. And it doesn't take that much time, does it, Joel? Like, realistically, what is it, like a 15, 20-minute conversation sometimes?

[00:08:52] When it comes to those ones I said that, that I usually start with, energy bills and telco- Yeah

[00:08:57] you know, mobile and NBN, those ones, like you can do those in a matter of minutes because there are websites that are comprehensive and compare every single energy plan. There are government websites like Energy Made Easy, which works in most states, compares every single energy plan. You can just upload the PDF of your last bill if you want, and it will automatically read it and, and estimate the cheapest plan for you.

[00:09:16] Yeah.

[00:09:17] And there's also some telco ones that are pretty comprehensive and have just about every plan on the market. Like, I used to do some work with WhistleOut. I don't anymore, but I still use it all the time because- Yeah ... it's such a, a good resource. And you can jump on there in a, in a minute and find sometimes a mobile plan that's $200 or $300 cheaper with the same amount of data on the same network.

[00:09:35] So-

[00:09:36] Wow ...

[00:09:36] yeah, that's where I'd start. Insurance is a little bit trickier, and there's a reason behind that, which is that the insurance industry has, is determined not to let it be easy for you. But, uh, I'd start with those utilities and then when you, when you get a bit of momentum, a bit of confidence, then tackle insurance

[00:09:51] Awesome.

[00:09:52] And I remember we had this conversation last year, and we were talking about groceries. Now, groceries are, like, a big piece in the household budget. You mentioned last year that making sure you always make Aldi your main, I think it was your main place that you shop, and then you can always shop at the other places for the other bits and pieces.

[00:10:12] Is that still the same? Is Aldi still the cheapest place to get your groceries from this year? Aldi

[00:10:16] is still the cheapest across the board if you kinda compare similar baskets. 'Cause obviously it's hard to make like-for-like comparisons with- Yeah ... groceries because Aldi has a lot of home brands-

[00:10:25] Yeah ...

[00:10:26] and they don't exist necessarily in the other supermarkets, and so it's always a bit tricky.

[00:10:30] But Aldi, on the whole, is cheaper. That's a fact. It's been, you know, in every sort of review or, or experiment I've ever seen whi- which has compared grocery prices, Aldi comes out cheapest. But I think even if you did the whole shop at Aldi, you'd probably spend more than if you shopped at Aldi and then take- took advantage of some of the specials elsewhere as well.

[00:10:48] Whether it's 50% off specials at Coles and Woolies each week- Yeah ... whether it's a local fruit and veg market where you can get- Yeah ... sometimes, you know, fruit and veg for half the price of the supermarkets if you buy enough of it. Yeah. Or it's Costco once a month, doing a Costco run with your friend or family.

[00:11:01] Yeah. If you do some combination of those, that's how you save the maximum amount. In fact, I once took our family grocery shop here.

[00:11:09] Mm.

[00:11:09] And I said, "What if I bought everything on this list at the cheapest retailer out of six different retailers?"

[00:11:14] Yeah.

[00:11:16] And I saved 24% by doing that- Wow ... if I was

[00:11:18] to be bothered Yeah.

[00:11:19] If you were bothered to do it.

[00:11:19] Of course I'm not gonna do it. Yeah. But just as an experiment, 24% by doing that. So that's where the savings are.

[00:11:25] And I've recently heard about a new, um, website, or, uh, sorry, an app, and it's half price. So you can find half-price items at Coles and Woolworths. What's on, what's on half price?

[00:11:35] Yeah. They scan each week. They scan the catalogs, and they'll show you which ones are half price. There's actually, there's quite a few really good grocery apps popping up here and there. I've had a look at Grocerize recently. PlatePlan is another one I've been looking at. Half Price has been around for a while.

[00:11:50] I do some work with a price comparison app called Zift, which is really handy for comparing. If you're in the aisle, you can actually scan the barcode of a product. It'll tell you what everyone else online is charging for the same product. Or if you're online, it'll tell you on your laptop while you're online shopping if it's cheaper somewhere else as well.

[00:12:07] So technology's getting better. It's catching up, and it's making- Yeah ... it easier for us to find the cheapest price for everything on our, on our shopping list.

[00:12:14] I love that. So we were talking about WhistleOut for telco, Energy Made Easy for energy. Are there any other hot websites or apps you've come across recently?

[00:12:23] Yeah, there's heaps. Look, there's one that I always suggest people check out if they haven't yet, and it's called Unclaimed Money. Because the state and federal governments all together are holding billions of dollars worth of our money that's been unclaimed. It's, you know, for example, you might have moved house and someone sent a check to your old address or something, and it was never cashed.

[00:12:42] Eventually, that money goes into government coffers, and it's held for you in perpetuity until you come and claim it, or not. So I've had people jumped on there and in a, in, you know, under five minutes they've found themselves 1,000 or $2,000 that they didn't know belonged to them. So check it out. ASIC Unclaimed Money is the federal government one, and then each state government has their own one as well.

[00:13:03] Oh, wow. So check, make sure you search in your state. And if you've lived in other states, go and search in those states as well. It takes no time at all. And yeah, sometimes there's just some cash down the back of the couch, so to speak.

[00:13:13] Love that. I actually got all my family to look up their... Well, I looked up their names for them.

[00:13:17] I found some money for my mum and my dad. But when I was doing that, some people had, like, $20,000 next to their name. I was like, "Someone should really tell Bill he's got $20,000

[00:13:27] waiting for him." I assume they're either people who have more money than they know what to do with- Yeah ... or maybe they've passed away or something- Yeah

[00:13:34] and their estate doesn't know that that money is there. Yeah. Um, there's any number of different possible explanations for it, but there are some really large sums of money in there. And, um, as you said, it's a really good idea to search for your friends and family as well. Yeah. 'Cause you can do that. You can put any name in you like.

[00:13:48] You can search for celebrities if you want.

[00:13:50] Yeah.

[00:13:50] And you'll find out, find out what they're owed. But yeah, that one's a real no-brainer.

[00:13:55] Great. And are there any government rebates or discounts at the moment that we should know about?

[00:14:00] Look, the energy rebates have dried up to some extent. If you're a pensioner or concession card holder, you can still get state-based rebates and concessions.

[00:14:08] Some low-income households in some states can still get state-based rebates. But those federal government ones that everyone was getting at, you know, towards the end, toward the end of last year, they finished on the 31st of December unfortunately. Mm-hmm. So it's a matter of just if you're not eligible for one of those pensioner or concession card rebates, it's a matter of just making sure you're paying as little as possible.

[00:14:27] Now, this is actually one bill that's going down potentially in July, and we never had this conversation, so I'm gonna try and highlight it. It's actually meant to be going down in July, energy bills. So the government default offers are dropping by up to 11%- Mm-hmm ... depending on where you live. That means that some of the other plans will come down as well.

[00:14:45] But what I'm seeing at the moment is a real mixed bag. People are getting letters from their energy retailers. Some are getting price cuts, and some are getting price increases. So really important, I think, to keep an eye out for that letter. And when it lands, if your price is going up or it's not going down by as much as you'd like, see what the, uh, cheapest plans- Yeah

[00:15:02] on the market are in July and get out of there if you, if it's- Make the

[00:15:05] switch.

[00:15:06] Mm.

[00:15:06] And we are getting, well, for certain areas in Australia, we are getting that three, three free hours of power, which I really struggle with that tongue twister, three free hours of power.

[00:15:17] Three free hours. Solar Share, they call it.

[00:15:20] Now, that's an interesting one because there's actually already plans available where you get three or four free hours in the middle of the day. So you can already get one of those- Okay ... if you want with a handful of retailers.

[00:15:29] Wow.

[00:15:30] And that's great if you work from home, for example.

[00:15:33] Yeah.

[00:15:33] Or you're retired or something and you're home in the middle of the day, or even if you've got timers on some appliances that mean you can sort of shift the usage to the middle of the day.

[00:15:42] Mm.

[00:15:42] Could be really worthwhile. But just make sure if you're not using a lot of power in the middle of the day- Yeah ... those plans are probably not gonna be the cheapest for you. It's great if you've got to charge a car, for example. Yeah. Um, or if you've got a battery, you could put three or four hours of power into the battery at that time of day.

[00:15:55] Yeah.

[00:15:55] Um, so those are the sort of people who'll get the most out of it.

[00:15:58] Oh, wow. That's great. I didn't know you could-

[00:15:59] Yeah ...

[00:16:00] um, get those kinds of plans. And then just to finish us off, we are in winter. It is getting... I mean, I've just moved to Queensland, so I'm like- Mm ... did anyone tell Queensland it's winter?

[00:16:09] It's awesome. But for those where the costs- Do go up a little bit in winter. We're using those heaters a lot more. Any fun money-saving hacks that you like to do at wintertime?

[00:16:23] Yeah. Well, my favorite one is the f- is just this sort of general rule, rule of thumb that when you set the thermostat on your heater or your, uh, cooler in the summer, your air con, every degree can add about 10% or $100 over the course of a season.

[00:16:37] So- Wow ... if you're setting your heater every time to 25, just dial it down to 22 or 23. Give it a little bit more time to sort of take effect, and just see if that's enough to warm up the house because you'd be saving potentially hundreds of dollars if you do that, and sometimes you don't need to dial it right up to max.

[00:16:55] Also, in terms of different heating options- Yeah ... apparently the reverse cycle air con is the cheapest to run.

[00:17:01] Yeah

[00:17:01] If you run that in heating mode, that's cheaper than your other sort of heating options, than gas heaters even, and also much cheaper than those kind of convection electric heaters. You know, the ones with the kind of glowing bars or whatever on- Yeah

[00:17:13] them. They- They're

[00:17:13] not, they're apparently shockers

[00:17:15] They tend to be a pretty, pretty they suck a lot of juice. So yeah, if you've got a reverse cycle air con, that's what you should be using to heat and cool your house different times of

[00:17:23] year. Nice. And my little tip there for listeners is if your house is quite cold, it is way more cost-effective to buy a heated blanket and just keep- Mm-hmm

[00:17:32] that on you while you're working at home than to heat up the whole room as well. Something crazy like it would cost you, like, 10 to $15 across the whole season just to have, like, an electric blanket, so way cheaper than putting on your heater.

[00:17:46] Nice and cozy, or get a dog.

[00:17:48] Or get a, get a hot-breathing dog.

[00:17:52] The other thing that I would say that we probably don't do well at all in Australia is insulation. We tend to- Yeah ... uh, they, they call our houses glorified tents- ... 'cause we tend to have cracks under the doors- So true ... and around the windows and through the floorboards. It's

[00:18:03] like we live in denial that we get winter, yeah.

[00:18:05] Yeah.

[00:18:06] They reckon that good insulation costs a bit obviously to put in-

[00:18:09] Mm ...

[00:18:09] but even just door snakes and stuff, you can save up to sort of 20% of your power bill if you're, if you're storing the heat in the winter and storing the, and keeping the heat outside in the summer.

[00:18:20] And then just finally, we've been talking a little bit on the podcast lately about solar and batteries.

[00:18:25] What is your take on solar and batteries? Love it, hate it, got it?

[00:18:29] Love it. Love it, because, you know, you're effectively fixing the price of your power for the next decade so you don't have to deal with all this nonsense, uh, in the energy market of, you know, price spiking by 20% when Russia invades the Ukraine a couple years ago or, you know, uh, this year it's going down slightly in July for some people, but every other year it seems to go up.

[00:18:47] So I like the idea of, you know, fixing your price, knowing what you're in for, what you're gonna pay, and then, you know, there are all sorts of different ways to pay for that too. You don't have to have upfront cash to put solar and a, and a battery in. You can finance it. You can, you know, there's buy now, pay later basically- Mm

[00:19:02] um, installments for those sorts of things. Um, and they can set the price over a period of time to be very similar to what you're paying for grid electricity now. So I think if you can do it, obviously a lot of people are locked out of it unfortunately because they don't have an appropriate roof or they're renters or whatever, so it's not very fair.

[00:19:19] But if you do have the opportunity to do it and you're gonna be in that place for a while, it's really worthwhile I think.

[00:19:24] So Joel, we're seeing a lot of you online and on our TVs as well. So you're on the Today Show?

[00:19:32] I am on The Today Show now from, uh, Tuesday through to Friday most weeks doing the money segment about 8:20 AM, so tune in if you're not already.

[00:19:40] And then obviously on Instagram and TikTok you'll see a lot of the stuff that I've had to research for my TV segments. If there's something that I've learned there that I think other people would wanna know that's useful for money-saving, then I'll put it up on the socials, like, usually later in the day.

[00:19:54] So check me out in the morning live or- ... jump on whenever suits you online.

[00:19:59] Going viral online. And then just a quick shout-out to your books. Obviously we've got Kill Bills. Have we got some more books coming out?

[00:20:06] Nothing sort of, uh, that I've started work on, but I did mention earlier I'm getting really interested in what, uh, in the, in the possibilities of AI for money-saving, and so I might start, um, looking a bit closer at that, I think is my next big project, when I find some time.

[00:20:19] I've got two teenagers- ... and, um, I'm quite busy running them around at the moment, so we'll

[00:20:24] see. Fair enough. Sorry, no pressure. And then just your work with the Big Switch. For those people who don't know what it is, could you just break it down?

[00:20:31] Yeah, sure. One Big Switch is a consumer network. There's over 1.4 million people who've joined up over about the last 12 years or so, and what we do is we use the combined sort of buying power of our membership to go to providers of household bills and negotiate member discounts and member offers.

[00:20:48] So it's energy bills, it's your health insurance bills, it's home and car insurance, it's, uh, you know, some telco stuff as well. Costs nothing to join, but once you're on the list, once you're one of the members, you get access to whatever the deal of the week is or the deal of the month. Yeah. And you can decide, you know, if you wanna switch, or maybe you can even use it to negotiate with your current provider and get a better deal out of them, whatever.

[00:21:08] Yeah. Love it. I get those emails from you quite often. I love checking them out and seeing what the greatest deal in Australia is at the moment. Well, thank you so much, Joel Simon, for joining us and sharing all your bill knowledge. And ladies, do reach out and let me know how much you manage to save once you've negotiated on all your bills.

[00:21:27] Yeah, we love to hear those stories. Thanks for having me, Molly. I always enjoy chatting, so, uh, see you next year.

KEYWORDS
 cost of living, bill reduction, energy savings, shopping hacks, financial tips, Australia