*Monthly Aussie Frugal Living discussion: Tues June 4th

I recently saved about $400 (yes $400!) by switching my car insurance to another provider. Same excess, same type of insurance. I know it’s common advice to shop around when renewals come in but I’d been lazy the last couple of years. So yeah, shop around for your life bills, don’t pay the lazy tax.

Mr P got his renewal the other day: $1,632! I've asked/begged him to get a quote from other insurers but he can't be bothered, "I'll just pay it monthly, so what?" I said, you're paying an extra $200+ per year! You can't even afford to pay that monthly on Centrelink! There's no getting through.. it's a tax on laziness and bloody minded stupidity 🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️
- You can go online and put in the car rego and answer a couple of basic questions such as age of drivers and have a quote in under a 2 minutes. If he doesn’t mind, you could do it yourself and show him the quotes? I know it might feel like you’re doing his work for him but will be better for the finances. Or buy yourself a gift with the difference for your efforts!
what other provider if I may?
- Swapped to AAMI

and maybe monthly discussion posts while we're a small community?

and porridge. I've just started eating it again, it's like armour against winter.

Yeah that's a good idea. I can't guarantee I'll remember but hopefully more people hop on board
- While we're a small community there's really no need to be overly concerned with regularity and what not. The lemmy police wont be deployed with relaxed posting standards. Anyone with issue is welcome to step up.
Porridge is godly food in this house! It ticks the cheap, nutritious, tasty and ancestral food boxes!
- This sweet video about porridge makes me feel my Scottish ancestry.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBP7V7MdHeE

Caked on antiperspirant armpit stains that resist all attempts to come out in the wash can be dislodged with something acidic.

You might try soaking in undiluted vinegar over a couple of days.

But I’m impatient so I use a small amount of pool acid directly on the damp stains, enough to re-wet them. After a few minutes the stains turn into a mushy paste that you can get out with a brush and in the wash.

⚠️ Hydrochloric acid is powerful stuff, don’t touch it if you don’t know how to handle it safely.

I'd be terrified of hydrochloric. Perhaps a paste of citric acid powder sitting for a few days might work
Cool. I just cut off the arms of old t-shirts and use them as gym shirts

Just paid a massive vet bill so - I'm replacing the elastic on some well loved trackies to extend their lives, and plan to wait for the end of season clearance to get new ones. I've started knitting socks from yarn I already have (if they suck they become bedsocks). I might replace a zipper on a winter jacket and potentially replace the worn out lining with fleece if I can figure out an easy way.

I haven't been turning the heating on to heat the house. It's been mainly the hot water bottles, layers and an electric blanket with a timer (the cat gets in too). It's actually working pretty well so far.

I'm looking at a knockoff oodie style robe that's on clearance.

Onesies are great also, it's like walking around the house in a sleeping bag
- I've actually got one of those. I bought it from an op shop after the fad for them was over and replaced the broken zip with a bit of hand sewing. I plan to wear it to bed/around the house when the weather gets colder
Jobs like your trackies are the reason I hoard shoelaces after the shoes go kaput.

My next meal prep idea: egg/tofu curried rice.

1kg white rice.
5 tbl Keens curry powder.
~10 eggs - fried and sliced.
2 pk firm tofu - sliced and fried
Some peas, carrots, celery and green beans. ~1kg ish.

maybe 5g ea of salt/msg/citric acid/onion powder/garlic powder.

~10 serves.

Plate with soy and chilli oil.

I feel it'll be lacking something, maybe a few things. I've previously used pork mince which added a lot of flavour and fat. I'm looking to reduce my meat, but I don't think the egg/tofu will bring a lot to the meal. I'm wondering what I can do to zhuzz it up. Disappointing meal prep can be disappointing for two weeks. Maybe 50-100g of butter to replace the lipids.

With tofu if you manmade it in some soy sauce and chilli oil (you can also add a pinch of sugar or some ginger) and let it soak for a few hours it makes it a lot nicer. Squeeze the water out of it first (and buy the firmest stuff you can find). Also if you shallow fry it it can give it some crunch but that crunch will disappear after a while so I'd probably just marianade it if I was going to save it in the fridge.

if you don't go too heavy on the curry power you can play with the flavours when serving - fresh or dried herbs could change it up. Basil + soy and chilli is nice. Maybe plain curry power with some coriander through it. I keep an eye out for what I can pick up cheap. Or a handful of nuts (almonds or peanuts would work) to give it some crunch and a bit more fat / protein
- Last one I cooked had 3tbl of curry powder and I felt the curry flavour was pretty weak.
  
  The nuts is a good suggestion as I'm decreasing my meat intake.
You might be missing the drizzle of sesame oil at the end - with buying a bottle it depends on whether you make Chinese a lot. Also cooking the rice in stock (powder or cube) might give a more savoury MSG taste evenly throughout - but might add a fair bit of salt
- Sesame oil is a good one. It's a strong flavour to itself.

This feels like a real obvious one, but I'll share for those who don't know: https://petrolspy.com.au/map Always check this or any of the hundreds of sites like it before filling up. if petrol prices are high there's no shame in chucking in 20 bucks and waiting for a better price.

And this.

Crumpets are half price at Coles this week. The good news is you can stock up and freeze them.

Aldi are usually cheaper than Coles even when on special, which is crazy!
Freezing bread is great. I'd always get two loaves and freeze one, then when I got down to the last few slices of the first I'd move the frozen loaf to the fridge to thaw overnight. Doing it that way meant a slow defrost so it didn't get soggy. You could always keep it in the freezer and pull off a few slices at a time if you rarely ate bread and usually as toast, but it can be hard to chip slices off without breakage.

I would always keep the active loaf in the fridge too. People say it dries out but I wasn't going to let it mould before I finished it (or pay extra for mini loaves). And dry bread is why french toast or bread and butter pudding exist.
- I divide a loaf of bread in half. Use one half and freeze the other. I also freeze english muffins.
I never knew you could freeze them. Thank you
I only have half a small freezer, I can't stock up ☹️

I don't know how useful this is for you guys since it's mostly an SA thing, but I have been taking advantage of the discounts I get as an RAA member (insurance company in SA) and it has saved me a non-negligible amount of money. In particular, I buy Woolworths gift cards at a 4% discount each fortnight and use those to buy my groceries (not including fresh produce, which I buy cheaper at independent grocers and markets). I've saved about $100 in the last 5 months, in addition to any Rewards points I cash in (you can still collect those when paying with gift cards). There's no expiry on the gift cards so I can use them as needed and still price match with the local Drakes when necessary.

Anyway, not necessarily applicable to anyone else here but if you have an insurance provider or something it's maybe worth looking through their partners to see if they have any offers you can take advantage of.

REST Super offers this as well. Check your super funds!
Ah, I don't actually have any insurance myself but I'm sure someone else might be able to do that
- You could try your energy/electricity provider. Mine also offers some discounts, though on nothing as useful as groceries.

This might sound strange, but buying a new fridge.

My old 80s Gumtree fridge used according to my power company app around 3-3.5kw a day.

I looked online and bought a new 5 star efficiency for fridge for $1000 with delivery which is roughly 750w a day.

lol I dread to think what mine is. Maybe that's the next savings goal
2.75kw/day @ 30c/kw x365 days = $301.12/yr difference.
- Wow that's amazing. Shows you that sometimes it's better to upgrade to more efficient things than to keep an old thing running.

I meal preped a bunch of roast veggies to have with rice noodles, satay sauce and roast tofu. Carrots, potato/garlic, zuchini/broccoli/cauliflower/onion. The commas are the separate trays for different cooking times.

And the peanut sauce from this book is fantastic https://books.leannebrown.com/good-and-cheap.pdf It's a cook book written by/for people on food stamps. The roast veggies I mentioned yesterday/above, for a meal I give them another half hour roast then drizzle them with peanut sauce. I had rice noodles with it for lunch but the noodles were kind of meh. I just had a massive bowl of spicy peanut veggies for dinner and it was so fucking tasty (and super cheap).

PS the spicy peanut sauce is great with PBnJ.

Doing the car insurance shuffle. So far AAMI at $190/yr for 3rd party is winning. Budget wants $594/yr. Shannons and RACV want me to call up. $190 seems okay for my old, barely driven van. I stopped insurance during covid because I was hardly driving, and a bit broke at one point.