Interesting Armchair Critic, your rent & rego cost almost exactly the same as my rates & home insurance. As that doesn't include my maintenance it is obvious that rental can be a lot cheaper than home ownership, at least in some parts of the country. That does of course represent 3 months of single pension, those councils are very greedy. My cars are on top of that.

I had to borrow $6000 bridging finance when I bought this place 29 years ago, waiting for part of my last property on 3 titles to settle. Cleared that after 3 months, & I have not owed a cent since. If I can't pay cash, I don't buy it.

I work on spending about $100 at the supermarket weekly, & take $100 cash out at that time. If that runs out that is it, no more money that week.

I do have to be a bit careful of these on line hobby shops, as I do still enjoy building my remote control planes, which replaced restoring classic cars when that became a bit heavy. It would be easy to go overboard on the net. Much easier to be sensible when you have to actually pull the cash out of your wallet, rather than thin air.

I used to download plans & do all framing myself, but since they started wasting all the balsa in windmill blades, balsa is a bit expensive & hard to get in some sizes. Now I buy kits, build them, fly them a couple of times, then give them away. It's the building that is the best part.

A few people who are time poor but love RC flying have brought kits for me to build for them. This is the best of both worlds. They get to fly just what they wanted, & I have the pleasure of building them.

Hey Hasbeen,

I saw a deal last week about eBay plus.
The offer is pay $49 for the annual subscription, get a $50 voucher.
Now I wanted to buy this $289 graphics card for my computer, that enables me to plug in more monitors.
I could've used the $50 voucher, but they offered me 20% off if I used Afterpay and an extra 2% if yo're an eBay plus member.
So I took the 22% off saved $34 and paid $254, and kept the $50 voucher.

Now, one of the benefits of eBay plus is you get 5% off at Coles (I think it used to be 10%) and free delivery over $49.
Now you can just shop the half price items, (there's apps purely for weekly half price items, or the catalogues) get an extra discount on top of half price item and get it delivered to your door free.
I'm used to going down there in person and paying cash but its almost hard not to move to these new ways.

You can buy digital gift cards at a discount and save on top of existing savings at the checkout.
I went in to Super-Amart on one of their cheap days - Black Friday or something and hammered out a deal for a new mattress.
Sealy - I think it was like $649.
I paid the $149 as a deposit then bought a $500 digital gift card for $470 which I paid when I came back to collect with the trailer.
Mattress now $629.

Discounts on discounts.

I bought 2 Dell monitors normally $399ea, they're on order.
A current Dell special on eBay reduced the price by 22% to $309 each.
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/324294557480
Then I used another 22% discount (20% for using afterpay 22% for eBay plus members)on top of the first 22% discount to reduce the price down to $241 each.
- And I don't even have to pay anything up front, no costs if I pay on time, and they even give me rewards on top now as well.

And I've still got my $50 shopping voucher.

Here's an app for half price grocery specials at Coles and Woolies:
http://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.codylab.halfprice

And also the place I get discounted gift cards is through my banking app on my phone.

It's a different world now than it used to be, but there are ways you can gain an edge, or extra discounts if your savvy and prepared to take the time.

Downloading Takeaway apps like Maccas, Hungry Jacks, Red Rooster, KFC, can save you on food.
7 Eleven app can find you cheap fuel price in area and lock that price in at your local 7 Eleven as can Woolies dockets.

I saw a phone deal a week or so back for mobile data.
Good if you have an unlocked mobil wifi, like this, only this is probably locked to optus and you need to pay an unlock fee.
http://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/optus-4g-wifi-modem-50gb-data-white-op3002381
You just buy the sim cards cheap on the specials and throw them away when done, I had a kogan offer in my email yesterday.
http://www.kogan.com/au/buy/kogan-mobile-prepaid-voucher-code-extra-large-30-days-40gb-490/
$4.90 for 40gb data unlimited calls and txts.

Woolies had a mobile sim with a big discount a week or so back which includes 10% off monthly shop.

So when you ask can you live on $44 a day you can;
- However the costs of rent, rego, fuel and if you smoke, are going to affect that budget.

I've friends whose whole houses are furnished with facebook and gumtree freebies.
- Not mattresses or whitegoods or tv's but just about everything else.
You'd be amazed what people give away these days.

I was down at the tip about 3 weeks ago and I went over to the lady and said, "You really shouldn't throw that away".
I said it's an Italian designer leather lounge in perfect condition with no marks or wear, unless there's a tear in the back I can't see that really shouldn't get chucked out"
She comes over, sure enough - perfect condition.
I said if you don't take it out I'll come back with my trailer and take it.
She said "Oh I thought it was just fake leather".

This site has a daily newsletter with heaps of cheap deals
http://www.ozbargain.com.au/

$44 is 69000 Satoshis per day.

1 million satoshis is a bit like 1 cent in a dollar.
There's 100 cents in a dollar and 100 million satoshis in a bitcoin.

Armchair Critic,
Well, could you live on that for a day ?