New hipages energy service to save Aussies $250 a year by automatically switching plans
Finder's utilities expert Mariam Gabaji said better energy offers can be found on the first page of your bill, but a new system is set to do all the hard work for you. (Source: Finder/Supplied/Getty)
There's a new system to help keep your electricity bill as low as possible and it's set to save the average Australian $250 a year. Hipages energy will automatically roll you onto a new plan if a cheaper one becomes available.
Some Aussies might not have noticed the small note on their energy bills that now legally has to advise you every 90 days if there's a cheaper plan available. Finder utilities expert Mariam Gabaji told Yahoo Finance that "many people miss it" even though it's on the first page of your invoice.
Despite facing another energy bill price rise of up to $300, Australians simply can't be bothered to make the change, paying a collectively $1.1 billion in electricity loyalty tax.
The hipages energy system is set to change that.
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How does it work?
The hipages energy setup uses Australia's Open Energy initiative to do all the heavy lifting for you.
The Open Energy initiative is managed by the consumer watchdog and allows you to access and share your energy data.
The data is collected by your electricity smart meter and it's meant to give you more "choice, control, and convenience" when managing your energy usage.
It also helps you find the best retail price deals as this data provides a much more accurate snapshot of your usage.
Do you have a story? Email stew.perrie@yahooinc.com
'We know that all Australians have been hit hard with skyrocketing prices, and the cost of energy is causing particular strain," hipages Group CEO Roby Sharon-Zipser told Yahoo Finance.
The system harnesses this platform to chuck you onto a similar but cheaper deal if and when it becomes available.
"While the extension of the Federal Government's Energy Bill Relief Fund will help, it's unfortunately a temporary solution," Sharon-Zipser added.
'For homeowners and renters, hipages energy ensures residents always have a competitive electricity deal by automatically switching their plan.'
The company estimated this first-of-its-kind initiative will shave off 20 per cent off your energy bill within the first year.
They're so confident in that belief, that if your bill is $5,000 or less and you don't get that much in savings, you'll get a $1,000 gift card.
'We hope that by expanding our offerings available to homeowners and business owners, we can make building and maintaining homes and businesses easier," Sharon-Zipser said.
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I'm Ross Mack, and this is sponsored by to Financial Freestyle here on Yahoo Finance. I'm your host, Ross Mack. No matter where you are on your financial journey, you could always learn more and that's why I'm always talking to some of the most informative people, inspirational people in the world of finance, helping you get to a bag. In today's no different, I'm talking to Adam Nash, CEO and co-founder of Daffy. Adam, how are you doing today? Good, good. It's great to be here. Thanks so much for coming, man. I know you're coming from the West Coast, so thanks. Thanks for that. But also write to the people, who is Adam Nash? Oh, as you said, I'm the CEO co-founder of Daffy. Um, I've had a long career in technology, I actually started at Apple early on as an engineer, and I've worked for a large number of startups, um, and, and famous companies along the way, but very passionate about building products that actually make a difference for a real passion for personal finance and I just feel like it's been an amazing run the last 10 to 15 years where we've been able to use technology to create better products to help people spend better, save better, invest better and and you know, with Daffy now give better. I love it. So let's kind of go back, right? You're you're venture guy from Silicon Valley type vibes, right? And something that you talked about was, and obviously we talked about this offline, but you're not just a tech guy, right? You're also a person that is adamant about helping people understand personal finance. In fact, you lecture at Stanford. So when you start thinking about Fintech and the democratization of access to information, right?How are you seeing Sofi actually change people's access to information when it comes to personal finance? Yeah, well, I think, you know, it starts with the basics of recognizing that it's, it's a problem. I mean, the reason I teach the class at Stanford on personal finance is because I wish that class existed when I was in school. I mean, if you don't teach personal finance to people, you can't expect, it's not an IQ thing. You can't just expect people to learn it. Mostly what they're going to learn and internalize is from their parents and their friends and the friends of their parents and the parents of their friends. And the truth is that's a really bad set of information to be learning so I think that the great thing about the web, of course, and, and all these technologies, they brought a lot of information to people. Originally it was just basic content, now it's it's shows like yours and and other things people can subscribe to and learn from. Um, but the great thing about FinTech is we actually can build better products and services now, right? We don't have to just tell people what they should be doing with their money or how they should treat their money. We can actually build tools to help do it for them or help them learn along the way as they make these decisions and you're passionate about helping people with these problems around money and and personal finance, I I I think it's, it's a wonderful time to be building and it's a wonderful time um to be learning about personal finance. I love it, man. I,I'm clear as day, right? Very adamant and passionate about personal finance and actually helping people, you know, become better with their finances and their money. And so if you were, you know, just one lesson that you can leave us with that you are, you know, speaking, if this was a Stanford class, what's one personal finance lesson everybody needs to know? You know,Believe it or not, I mean, in the Stanford class, right, you know, the students are fairly smart, like there's not a problem with IQ in the room, etc. but a lot of the students in the class, um, some of them are the first in their family to go to college, um, others are are majoring in in computer science or engineering degrees, they, they know they're going to make some money when they graduate and they don't want to mess it often I just have to convince them to start slow. The basics are really important. I, I can't tell you how important it is to just spend less than you make, right? Everyone wants to jump to how to make money in the market or do this or it's like, slow down, you spend less than you make, um, I'm a big advocate for emergency funds and having a little bit of a cushion, and if you don't have one building that you get to the basics of, you know, investing and, and, and aiming for financial goals in the future, you know, keeping expenses low and, you know, having some humility about your ability to kind of magically pick the winners. Um, and then we talk a little bit about taxes and the other realities. We even talk about, you know, what it means to manage money as a, as a couple versus an individual, which is another problem that most people ignore. And yet it turns out it's a very hard problem and money breaks up a lot of relationships, uh, both married and otherwise. And so, um.I think if you look at the content, I put it online for free. If you look at the content, there's no rocket science there. These are not, you know, this is not difficult math. Um, the hard part is to get people into a a zone in my experience where they have enough humility to say, like, just because I'm an expert in something else doesn't mean I'm an expert in handling money, and having kind of that mind to just learn the basics of how do you lead a healthy financial life and what does that even mean? That's,honestly, that's, that's very interesting. You don't hear that too often when you start thinking about managing money as a couple, right? There was a statistic that came out where it was saying like, which states and cities are, you know, the most expensive to live in and when you actually take in like the average income of those states, like,You know, the average person can't even live in like half of the states, right? And then you actually take into account if you are in a relationship or not. And now it's like, OK, you can actually afford to live in here, but if it's a two-parent household, right, or a two income household. And so the idea of managing money as a couple is, it's no right answer, but there's obviously a few ways to hopefully end in success. So I love that you brought that up. But let's actually get kind of to where you are now, right? Obviously, CEO of Daffy andHow do we get there, right? Because you got a very extensive resume when it comes into the tech world. Oh, well, um, I mean, that's, that's flattering, and I, I have had the chance to work at some amazing companies, you know, when you, you know, each generation of technology, it's funny looking back on my career, you know, from Apple to a company like eBay, um, LinkedIn, of course, for Web 20 and, and, and, um, and then Wealthfront, um, it's just been an embarrassment of riches and sort of in some ways in terms of the people I've gotten to work with and the problems, etc. Um, Daffy comes out of, you know, both a personal I have around um building these products that can help people with important problems, and a feeling thatWell, there's a little bit of hubris with founders, you're gonna have to forgive me, you know, I, I wasn't convinced it was gonna happen otherwise, right? It, it turns out we've had 15 years of fintech of, of these amazing apps and services to help people spend better, save better, invest where are the apps and services to help us give better? I mean, actually giving is huge in the US it's over half a trillion a year. I think last year was 557 billion, and over 370 billion of that's from individuals. So this is a big problem. I mean, that's like 2% of GDP. It's, it's bigger than yet, um, I don't think a lot of people embrace the reality of this is a financial goal that means something to people. I mean, we teach our kids to give. This is not just, you know, budgeting, um, I don't, I don't want to be a little anything that is saving, investing, etc all important, but, um, and so Daffy was really born on this idea of like, hey, those 60 million households in the US who give to charity every year. Um, what if we build a great product for them? They can put aside money for charity proactively when it makes sense for get that tax receipt, right, for the charitable deduction, the money is invested tax free, and then anytime they're inspired to give just a few taps on their phone, and the money can go to any legal charity in the US. So when I really, when that really crystallized, my co-founder and I really felt like that that's a product worth building, that's a that's a platform worth building, um, and that's how Daffy was born. Daffy actually literally stands for the the donor advised fund for you. I love it. I love it. And you know, one thing you might hear, right, is that it's a luxury to give, right? And so if the average person thinks you need to be rich to be generous, rich to give, how is Daffy not only you know dispelling that, but also making it a lot more accessible for someone that is trying to be interested ingiving. You know, it's funny. I think this has to do with the fascination our culture has right now around billionaires andAnd beyond and what they're doing, we, we talk so much about what they do with money. We sometimes miss the forest for the trees about what most people's lives look like. Um, it's a complete myth that only the wealthy give. I mean, in fact, a lot of studies actually show that the, the average person proportionally is is more generous, right? It it's, um, and I wasn't kidding, it's about 60 million households in the US every year that give to um those, um, and that's meaningful to them, right? So it's not about dollars, it's about people. And so I was inspired, I have to say I am inspired by their founders and other companies I've worked with in the past. I was on the board of this company, uh, Acorns, wonderful service, now helps millions of lead a better financial life, um, just by having this simple app and service that makes it easy to save, you know, easy to spend better, etc. And so some of the inspiration for Daffu is we can do that for giving, you know, the, the research shows that if you set a goal, if you're intentional about it, right, if you give 32% more to charity. I mean, think of what that would mean, out of those hundreds of billions of dollars, as big as that number is, we actually want to give more. Um, the question is how to do it smart and, and, and, and in a financially prudent the reality is most of giving that is done today when someone asks you, right? But, but how many of us would save for retirement, well, if uh we only put money aside for retirement when someone not how it works. What you want is to say, oh, I have a goal for my retirement. I'm gonna have this much come out of my paycheck every couple of weeks, and over time it'll build up. Um, it turns out some of those lessons apply to giving too. Uh, you set a goal in Daffy, you can set a goal for your giving. You can put aside money every week or or every month. Some of our members actually, you know, they have income is not standard for people. More and more people have good years and not so good years. So putting money aside in the good your taxes are higher, right? And you actually have the money to give, ensures that in the not so good years, you still have some money put aside for the organizations and causes you care about. And the truth is if you talk to the organizations, that's what they really want. They want people who are gonna support them for long periods of time. They don't just want one check, you know, one donation, um, they want to build a community around the cause and and and the organization that that they're passionate about. That's very interesting. So let's actually kind of walk us through it, right? Say I'm a, you know, a person that's making, I don't know, $80,000 a year, right? And I'm making a point that I want to give 10% a year to charity. How exactly would I utilize Daffy? Oh, that's, well, first of all, you're describing a very generous person, which is fantastic though. Um but no, no, no, no, not, not unusual actually, you know, it turns out, um, so there's a couple options there, right? Like, so you, you said this they always make $80,000 a year? Is it the kind of job where there's some years where better or worse? Um, I would probably say putting a little more money aside in the years that you make more money is, it's smart for your taxes and and an easier way to do it. But it's amazing you can treat it just like retirement or any other financial goal, right? You could decide to put aside, like you mentioned, if it was $8000 a year, you can do that simple math if, if you get paid, you know, that turns into what, you know, sorry, I'm doing this math on the fly, you know, $600 to $700 or something like that every month. Just have it come out of your paycheck and and go to Daffy. You pick a portfolio, it's kind of like a 401k for charity. It could be that simple. And the only advantage is, of course, besides being tax free, is that you're not limited, you don't have to wait to use the money until you're, you know, at retirement age, 59.5 or or something like that. You can actually, um, anytime you're inspired to give, tap tap tap on your the money go to the charity of your choice. That's awesome. We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, we're gonna have more with Adam Nash of right, welcome back to Financial Freestyle. I'm Ross Mack and I'm talking to Adam Nash. So Adam, quick question, right? What exactly is a donoradvised fund? Oh, no, this is a great question. I mean, obviously we named the company Daffy, the donor advised fund for you, but a lot of people haven't heard of a donor advised fund before, which is kind of amazing because they've been around for a very long time, you know, more than 50 a donor advised fund is just a tax advantage account for charity. You can think of it as like an IRA or 401k for charity, right? Um, and it's designed for that. You can put money aside in this account, um, you immediately get the charitable deduction for your then that money can be invested tax-free in any number of portfolios, and then anytime you want that money to go to a charity, tap tap tap, you tell the donor advise fund where that money should go, and they send it off. So it's really a fantastic product. I honestly believe that Daffy aside, everyone who gives to charity regularly should have a donor advised fund. Um, and a lot of what Daffy does is just makes it simple and easy for you to get started with a little account for money put aside for charity. I mean,It is one of the oldest ideas, right? The idea of putting money aside every year for those less fortunate than yourself is is a pretty old idea. Um, Daffy just puts a modern tech rapper over what is a fantastic financial product that most people haven't heard of. No, no, no, no, that I, I think you just truly broke it down and so correct me if I'm wrong, you don't just have to invest money though, right?You have the ability to invest maybe stocks, etc. other investments. Yeah, yeah. Our, our mission at Daffy is actually to help people be more generous more often and so anything that people want to give, we're, we're super excited to help them do that. So you can just use cash, you could use a card, a debit card, credit card, you, um, you can even use Apple Pay, but there's immense tax benefits, you know, so many people now work for companies where they get some compensation in stock. We have a lot of people who are investing in when you donate stock or crypto to charity, you get a double tax win, because if you've held the investment more than a year, first of all, you get to deduct the full market value of that investment today, not what you invested in it, you know, years ago, but what it's worth second, you'll never pay the capital gains taxes on that gain. So you get this double win and so the problem is most charities are not that big. Most charities can't take stock donations, they can't take your ETF or your mutual fund, and they certainly can't take crypto in most cases. But if you use a service like Daffy, we take everything, right? So, you know, we support every crypto that Coinbase supports, right? You know, any ETF, right, any if you happen to be fortunate enough to be sitting on an investment that has a large capital gain on it, it is an incredibly smart financial move to use that instead of cash to give to charity, because you get those extra tax benefits and using an app like Daffy makes it trivial to do, literally can take seconds. Wow. That's that's fascinating. That's fascinating. So I definitely kind of want to pick your brain, uh, from the lens of like an actual founder as well, right? So like you know I speak with a decent amount of founders, tech founders, and you know I always am curious when it comes to starting a company, right? What is the mindset? Right? Are you solving a problem? Are you adding new technology to things that are existing? Like what was the reason you started Daffy? And let's kind of talk aboutYou know how you went from idea to true business. Yeah, well, it's interesting, and this has been a lot of my career is like when you think about building a great product, it's easy to talk about the technology. Um, it's less easy but important to talk about the design, right, and the real product you're building. But the truth is, if you don't wrap a product in a great organization in a great business, um, it won't go forever. You won't have the people on the platform to really solve the problem you're going after. So I think what I tell founders, you know, the, the basic things to think about in the beginning is,You know, what is the product, you know, what's the market for this product? I I spent a lot of time talking to founders, not about the technology, but, but who is this designed for? Where do you really create value? And then building a business around that, you have to have some eye for, wait, why hasn't this happened already? Why now? Right? What what are you seeing that all the incumbents aren't seeing, right? They have money, they have resources, they have smart people, they have customers. Why aren't they building this?And I just happen to be a student, you know, if you go back to Clay Christensen, you know, the innovator's dilemma, um, I always believe that there has to be a reason, what has to be happening for it to be a great opportunity is that the best customers for the existing companies don't want there's a huge base of other people who want something simpler, easier, maybe with a different business model, and the existing companies can't see it because their best customers aren't asking for it. And to me, when you find one of those opportunities, you really have an opportunity to be transformational. I mean, so for know, it turns out most donor advised funds charge fees that they borrowed from the investment industry. They charge you a percentage of assets, even Vanguard, which I love, I love Vanguard as an organization, I love their products, they charge 60 basis points, 0.6% on their donor advised fund, um, and they have a minimum of $25, if you're one of the existing institutions and you have a business model based on making a percentage of assets, you're gonna chase the biggest accounts. You want to acquire the most so at Daffy, we actually were very purposeful. It wasn't just the product and the technology, we said no, let's align our business model with giving with those 60 million households who don't have millions of dollars, but give a few $100 or a few $1000 to charity every year. And so we make it free to get started under $100. Um, most of our members pay $3 a month, it's flat, and we have a family plan in a higher tier that costs a little bit we really tried to align ourselves on what we thought was the best business to support a product like this, which is a a revenue model that's aligned around people staying with us for very long periods of time and making giving something they do not just once but every year, possibly for decades. That's amazing, right? You're in a very interesting place because you're at the fintech and philanthropy. Where do you see that?Growing in thefuture. Oh, there's there's so much to do. I am so excited about the potential in this area, and part of that self-serving, right? I care about giving, I care about, um, philanthropy, and, you know, I'm very serious as a parent, I have, I have 4 children, um, it's not like other financial goals. It's, it's, it's even more important. It's not just a budget item, although it should be. Um, we, we teach our kids about giving, right? You know, most of us grew up knowing that it's not all for that actually there's other people out there and so I am very passionate about the topic, but I think we're at an exciting time. I mean, the truth is, after 15 years in FinTech, the platforms that are available, I mean, I can't tell you 15 years ago how hard it was to build one of these applications and services. We've learned so much. The fact that I can leverage platforms from companies like Plaid, these might be companies that most people haven't heard of, but you know, what it means is to build a new financial service that has great security, um, that has great features, right? Think about how hard it was to imagine 15 years ago, a computer managing a portfolio for you. But now Daffy can have, you know, 1617 different portfolios, everything from cash to bonds to index funds. We even have crypto for people who want we can do that all automatically in software, not because we're so amazing, although, you know, Alejandro's team really is very impressive, um, but we can build those features and capabilities in in weeks and months because of all these other companies and platforms out there. And so I think we're gonna see an immense amount of innovation in the space, um, at Daffy, you know, this might sound simple. um before Daffy, there wasn't a donor advice fund with a family so many people, you know, we, we see people with their siblings, with their parents, grandparents want to teach their grandkids about giving, um, what, what tech product doesn't have a family plan? I mean, I'm I'm inundated this as a parent, like the, the request from, you know, Apple or Xbox, I get a lot of Xbox requests, that sort of thing, um, but why not forgiving, so I just think the innovation we're gonna see in this category is just phenomenal andI think it's meaningful because the truth is, people always think about the donation, about the benefit to the organization, cause they're going to use that money to have impact and do something good. I think people underestimate the value that people find on feeling like they as a donor has have an impact, that they didn't just talk about something, they did something. It the the the amount of dollars actually doesn't matter, whatever is meaningful to you is what really but I think technology is going to have a huge role to play, and, and we just rolled out some new features that are based on some of the new AI platforms, etc. Um, a lot of the advantages that the ultra wealthy had, you know, teams of people to advise them on giving or kind of make something happen when they're inspired to give, we can now put these innovations in an app that that's available to everyone. That's it for this episode. I just want to give a warm, warm thank you to Mr. Adam Nash for a phenomenal conversation, right, being at the intersection of philanthropy and tech. But that's it for this episode. Make sure you like, subscribe. If you see this QR code, just hit it so you can watch other podcasts on this exact network. And so then, guys, we'll see you next week. I'm Ross Mack and this is Financial Freestyle. This content was not intended to be financial advice and should not be used as a substitute for professional financial services. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
