A fantastic money saving day

Wow what a profitable day.

With my save/earn an extra $50 a week challenge for July I was really struggling to come up with ways to do either. As a single parent receiving government assistance I get heavily penalised for increasing my income. I know it sounds crazy but that's the way the system works when you reach a certain income level. In fact for me to earn $50 in the hand I need to earn about $90 before tax. So totally not going to happen.

Then there's the trying to save money alternative. When you lead a frugal lifestyle it is extremely difficult to save more money. So difficult in fact that I almost gave up. After all the only things I can seem to do to save me any money are reduce my already small grocery budget or have home days on the days I am not working. I don't really want to reduce my grocery budget as if I am facing unemployment I want a nice healthy stash of food and toiletries on hand to cover the time until my next job. Home days are slightly more possible at the moment as it is the school holidays so I don't work as much. Still with work and taking the lads out it's only realistic to squeeze in 2-3 a week.

Today though I looked at it from a different angle. I had heard on Simple Savings that people were getting up to $150 credit on their power accounts simply by asking for it. So I asked and got $50. Considering I have the lowest power bill of anyone I know I was happy with that. Then I rang and canceled my mortgage protection insurance. I am now at a level on my mortgage where I can manage unemployed to pay the bills and survive. And my policy didn't cover redundancy/unemployment just illness and accident. Another $30/month saved. I then rang a different car insurer and they couldn't do me a better deal so I got $40 in petrol vouchers and lastly I added a $500 excess to my medical insurance saving another $10/month.

So I have succeeded in meeting this week and next weeks challenge and that's without even taking into account yesterdays home day.

If you haven't taken the time to ring all the companies you pay by direct debit or automatic payment then you should. You will be amazed at what you can achieve.