My health insurer saved me hundreds on travel cover

I have saved $400 on my travel insurance, thanks to my health insurer! I’m going to Europe for six weeks and know the importance of travel insurance. I have a credit card that offers complimentary health insurance, but the underwriter has changed and now NO pre-existing condition is covered. I’ve had a few accidents and illnesses that their previous underwriter covered previously; but the new underwriter said No to ANY pre-existing injury, even if it was healed and needed no further treatment or medication. So I had to independently take out cover for $620 for the six weeks I’m away. In an attempt to offset the cost, I phoned my existing HEALTH insurance. After talking with them, I have suspended my insurance for the time I’m away, and a few weeks when I’m back in Australia, which is two months in total. This has saved me $400 for two months, therefore reducing the cost of my travel insurance to only $220. My annual credit card fee is $150, so I will be cancelling that as well, as it no longer is worth the money if I am not eligible for cover with their travel insurance. So all up, a saving of $150 plus $400 adds up to $550 in total. No small amount and will certainly help fund my travels!

A 'glovely' way to stop nail biting

If you're a nail biter and want to stop, get your gloves on and leave them on. Don't knock it until you've tried it! It's impossible to get past a fleecy woollen layer, no matter how hard you try. If you can leave them on long enough, (maybe get the kind with fingertips so you can still use your phone!) the habit is broken and before long, your nails will be strong and long (er). Give it a go!

Devious savings

Changing circumstances and a growing familly all added up to us paying a whole lot less off our mortgage than we would have liked. Pretty soon we would have started to go backwards. It was crunch time!

Using the Simple Savings calendar I identified our most expensive habits, and was astounded to see the amount of money that could have been saved. Our grocery bill was always around $200 or more per week. This amount did not include meat or bread that we get from the butchers and bakery.The trouble was, my husband loved all the expensive name brands for items such as chocolate biscuits, lollies and savoury snacks and was convinced that the cheaper or no name products would be tastless and boring. Week after week I would just automatically reach for these items, without even glancing at the alternatives. I knew as soon as my husband saw the packaging, the goods would remain in the pantry unopened, and he would then go and buy the brand name items anyway.

One week I kept mentioning to him that I was going to do a big clean up of the pantry and I was finally going to utilise all those assorted Tuppaware containers that I had never used. That week I substituted his expensive brand of snack foods with cheaper versions, emptied them into the assorted airtight containers and threw the plain packaging out before he could see them!

I also applied this technique to several other items; I would fill cheaper dishwashing liquid into Morning Fresh bottles, no-name hand wash into saved Palmolive dispensers, you get the picture. Our grocery bill went down from $200 to $140 per week - a saving of $240 a month!

When I finally fessed up to what I had been doing, my husband admitted that most of the snacks were just as good as the name brands, you just have to try a few out. All it took was some creative (OK, and somewhat deceitful) way to present the changes, but we have never looked back. Why would we, with a saving of $3120 a year? Plus of course, one very neat pantry!

Make wedges at home quickly and easily

Making potato wedges at home is much cheaper than buying them frozen from the supermarket. I use my OXO Good Grips apple divider (bought from a kitchen shop) to cut up a 5kg bag of spuds. I give the spuds a wash before cutting them up into eight wedges and one cylindrical wedge (the kids all fight over these ones). After popping them in boiling water for a couple of minutes I put them onto paper towel to dry, then into freezer bags. These are quick, economical and you can vary the seasonings in different bags, and have them on hand in the freezer for a quick snack or side dish.