Share your best savings tips

If you are an RACQ member (don’t know if it works in other States) you can get a 5% discount on Woolworths (and Coles) egift cards through the RACQ website. They are useable in supermarkets but only at some Woolworths petrol stations (ring the station and ask them if they take Woolworths egift cards (not the physical ones). The discount is in addition to any petrol voucher you may have (that is a big discount!).

3 Likes

I buy my clothes and sometimes shoes at op shops. Good for the charity and good for me!

5 Likes

Consider the size container you buy for paint, adhesive and other substances with a limited shelf life. It isn’t a universal rule but such things are often much cheaper in larger tins. Buying paint in 500ml or 1l tins is usually very expensive compared to 4l or larger.

BUT If you do not use most of it within the shelf life (and remember to scrupulously clean the rim and lid and reseal) you may reopen the tin to find the contents useless. It pays to do you your sums correctly at the outset, and decide how much you need to keep for later and how much you can afford throw away or leave in the shed until it goes hard and then throw it away.

It may be ideologically unsound to some but it may save you quite a bit of money to buy 4l and have 1 left over rather than buy 3 x 1l .

1 Like

Paints, etc are a special case. Modern water based acrylics are often quoted as having a shelf life of two years. Older oil based paints (mineral turpentine clean up) can last a life time almost if sealed properly.

So once opened I buy only as much as I intend to use now or in the next few months. Safe disposal of unused paint is a tip to a dump that accepts paint for recycling. Not all do and some may redirect you to a fee charging service.

3 Likes

In supermarkets and online, compare the unit prices (price per unit of measure) of all types and forms of food and grocery items not just for different size packs of branded products in constant measure packages, e.g. packages of breakfast cereals

Often there are large differences in unit price between products sold loose from bulk, and in random measure packages, and in constant measure packages, An example is salmon filets sold per kg at the deli, or in random weight packs in the chiller cabinets, or frozen in constant measure packs in the freezer cabinets.

And, use the unit prices to check that whether what is prominently advertised as as “special” is indeed the best buy.

Finally, compare the unit prices of substitute/alternative products, which we all did when banana prices were sky high.

6 Likes

With thanks to the Community, here is our article on money saving tips:

3 Likes

Here’s some tips that can save you money in the kitchen. Are you doing any of these already? What would you add to this list?

2 Likes

I didn’t see any mention of keeping the fridge and freezer well stocked rather than fairly empty, so that by having more cold food and less cold air results in less cooling loss when they are opened.

Somewhat like using the food as cooler bags or freezer bricks when the doors are open.

1 Like

I am unsure if that is true. Do you have any data to support the idea?

The point about the cold air not escaping depends on two things. The first, is this the the only factor in play or is something else happening that keeping the fridge fuller or emptier matters one way or the other? Secondly if it works as described is the effect significant?

1 Like

To save you actually bothering to do some research yourself, here are a number of articles.

https://www.google.com/search?q=keep+fridge+freezer+full+to+save+energy&oq=keep+fridge+freezer+full&aqs=chrome.4.69i57j33i22i29i30l7.36681j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

There seems to be no consensus, which one(s) do you think are right? Why?

1 Like

Thermal mass would help even out temperature fluctuations, particularly if it was an upright freezer. A chest freezer on opening would not suffer significant loss of the cold air as it is denser than the hot air around it and would tend to remain in the box. An upright on the other hand would have the colder air drop out of the freezer and it would be quickly replaced by warmer air. In this case a fuller freezer that has a lot of very cold thermal mass would more quickly return to near set temperature range than an nearly empty one. After shutting the door a mostly empty upright freezer has a lot more warmer air that would need to be cooled to get it into range.

3 Likes

We can all come up with plans about how the heat might flow or not and draw conclusions from that. That does not answer either of my questions. Is that all that is happening? Does it really matter?

I would think it is better to skip all the theorising and set out to measure. If somebody has any data on what actually happens in the two cases of the fridge being nearly full or nearly empty I would be keen to know. Let me illustrate with an old brain teaser.

You have two identical threaded bolts that you hold by the heads, one in each hand. These are standard right-hand threaded bolts. The non-head ends face opposite ways with the shanks parallel and the two threads engaged with each other. You hold (say) the left hand bolt still and move the right hand bolt in a circle around the left, keeping the threads engaged, in a clockwise circle viewed from the head of the right hand bolt. It looks like this:

image

The question is; as the bolts circle around each other (neither bolt rotating on its axis) what happens? Do the threads pull the two bolts so:

  1. the bolt heads get closer,
  2. the reverse or
  3. neither, they stay in the same relationship?

You are asked to give reasons why you have come to your decision not just guess.

The physics behind this is simpler than the fridge question but highly trained physicists (including Richard Feynman) can come up with all kinds of plausible arguments as to why the outcome will be 1, 2, or 3.

My approach is to go and get two bolts from the shed and forget the theory.

Dear Moderators, I am not looking to waste a lot of time on the puzzle just trying to illustrate something relevant to savings tips; empirical results matter more than theories about what might or ought to work.

2 Likes

Since this latest discussion is around freezers, there is a rather interesting effect that has been tested empirically over centuries, but cannot be explained entirely by theory.
Hot or warm water put into a freezer will turn into ice faster than cold water, under most circumstances. The so called Mpemba effect.
So if I want to fill my icecube tray, I fill it with hot tap water, and I will have icecubes quicker. Every time.
Thermodynamics is very weird at times.

2 Likes

I suspect standing in front of the fridge, how often one opens the fridge, which often relates to how many are in the home at the time matters. Then the grey matter rattled.

I’m with @gordon on the basic science. The density of air is 1.225kg/m3 at STP. The heat capacity of air is also approx 1/4 that of water.

Experimentation might resolve the effect more clearly. It’s important to consider most of the time at the fridge is adding or removing contents. A suspicion is it is what we put in and take out, being high thermal mass relative to air has the greatest effect.

1 Like