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Price hikes often feel like a game of ‘Follow the Leader’ which, most recently, is one the major telcos have been playing.

Vodafone kicked things off in April with $5 increases to most prepaid plans. Telstra followed suit on May 5 with a $4–$5 price reset. Not to be left out, Optus joined the fray this week, hiking most postpaid plans by… you guessed it... another $5.

But instead of getting mad, get switching.

If a loyal Telstra customer on a 50GB postpaid plan moved to a comparable plan, still on the Telstra wholesale network, still with 5G access, they’d save $38 a month.

OK so $38 isn’t exactly a ‘retire-early’ windfall, but do the maths. Over a year, that’s $456. If you have two phones in the house, you’re looking at a $912 annual saving.

While you’re at it, run a quick data audit. Check what you actually consume so you aren't paying for ghost data you’ll never use.

With Woolworths playing follow the leader into court behind Coles, it’s also time to look closer at those yellow and red stickers. Are they genuine discounts, or just clever marketing? My colleague Eden reckons a typical family can save over $2,400 simply by swapping brands and breaking old shopping habits.

The bottom line: loyalty is expensive. Whether it’s your SIM card or your cereal, the best way to fight a price hike is to walk away from it.

Recent cash rate rises have pushed savings account interest rates to their highest levels in over a decade. If you haven’t reviewed your savings account lately, you could be missing out on extra interest with no extra effort.

With grocery prices continuing to rise, Australians are finding smarter ways to cut costs at the checkout. See the money-saving habits more Aussies are adopting to stretch their grocery budget further.

I pride myself on being all over my finances as a single mum, but I had an off-day recently and want to help you avoid doing the same. It started when I first filled up my car with diesel after fuel prices had spiked, and I reeled when the pump ticked over to $180. Yeowch! 

Thoughts that immediately followed included: ‘What will this mean for my ongoing budget?’, ‘Do I need to buy a more fuel-efficient car’?. Next up on my to-do list was a trip to my local supermarket where I saw the food I buy for my cat was 30% off. So clearly the logical thing to do was to stock up to save money now that I know I’ll have to spend on fuel later.

This is all well and good if you have the buffer to cover it, but things were already lean that week and my panic-buying spree left me in a very tight spot. Even though I spend my days writing about money, I still slip up. It was a timely, stressful reminder that splurging on a sale you can't afford right now doesn't save you money—it just breaks your budget. On the positive side, at least my kitten Milo is set for weeks!  

Nina Rinella
Editor-in-Chief

eBay Australia is now officially fee-free for casual sellers, with the platform dropping all transaction fees for those selling less than $25,000 a year, meaning you get to keep 100% of your sale price (bye-bye, old 13% fee). While buyers will now have to pay a new 4% to 8% ‘buyer protection’ fee, this might actually work in your favour as eBay is using these fees to fund customer support and fraud detection. It's a massive win for anyone wanting a safe, secure platform to make extra cash without getting ghosted on a driveway. 

Wait! Before you hit checkout on your online shopping, jump into your search engine and look around for a discount code. You’d be surprised how much you can save by Googling, which can be as easy as typing “Zara discount code” into your search bar. It can take a couple of tries to find one that works, but the savings will be worth it. One of our colleagues was able to find a 25% off code, which saved her $57 off her winter clothing shop, simply by taking an extra couple of minutes to try a couple of codes before checking out. 

Is your car spending more time parked than on the road? Switching to a pay-as-you-drive or low-kilometre car insurance policy could slash your premium. Dropping your annual kilometres from 15,000 to 5,000 could potentially cut your average premium by about 25%, pocketing you around $368. My colleague Belinda explains it in more detail here. Just remember the catch: if you blow past your nominated limit of kms, you could face an additional excess—up to $1,000—when claiming. But for work-from-homers and prolific public transport users, it’s a win. Check your odometer, ditch the auto-renew, and start shopping around.