rackcatt

Where can i find prices for things like

Gas/ elec
food bills
mobile etc

Going to Victoria.

cheers

freebo

Some in this thread - http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=699557

or just look on the suppliers websites, like coles/woolies for food, AGL for gas, Optus for mobile etc, google is your friend

rackcatt

thanks very much.x

ABCDiamond

For electricity bills, it can really pay to check what is available.

For some prices when looking at an average of 3,000 kWh per quarter:

• Victoria shows: $2,350 was the cheapest and $3,300 was the most expensive.
• Queensland shows: $2,475 was the cheapest and $3,320 was the most expensive.

eddie007

wow... I thought our electricity bill for $580 for a family of 7 was bad enough...

steen1976

3000 units in a quarter

That's very high. Constant air con useage?

ABCDiamond

Oops, those prices were for a year

ABCDiamond

Very little air con actually, not too hot round here.

But... a plethora of electronics, pool pump, etc.

It would be interesting to see how much we could cut down if we tried.

We actually use about double the average Australian kwh's
www.abcdiamond.com/../average-household-electricity-consumption

Back in September I checked my actual usage using each States prices:

ACT was cheapest with between $1,528 and $1,793
TAS being the most expensive with between $2,084 and $2,798
Annual totals

steen1976

Pleased to see that was for a quarter mind and not a year as that was a scary thought

Anyway the electricity companies back here are giving away electricity monitors for free. It's a very good way of keeping your costs down. I spent the first couple of days just going around switching stuff on and off to see how much they use. It's horrible watching the monitor when you have the dryer, dishwasher, oven and kettle going!

Not sure if you can get them there or what price they would be (can't be too expensive if being dished out for free here) but I think it would be a very good investment if you want to cut down your usage.

ABCDiamond

We got them for free too. But as consumers, we must then do something about it. I kept reading mine; showing say about 79c, and then seeing someone else's at 5c, it made me wonder... But all I did was work out why, and then accept it..

Ours starts to beep when a certain threshold is reached, ours was set to $2 per hour, so almost every time the kettle went on, my unit beeped, with the kettle pushing the usage over the limit.

I've just checked some average costs, and these are my most expensive estimated Monthly Electric usages:

$51.47 Personal computer (based on 3 PCs and 2 laptops)
$34.31 320 - 440 litre 2 Door (frost free)
$10.98 140 - 220 litre Chest Freezer
$10.29 3x PVR's on 24hr running
$ 5.43 3x TV's

That totals $340 pq on its own.

Fridges and Freezers account for about 33% of my power usage.
More energy efficient ones may be better for me...