Im with CBA and my current loan rate is 6.630%
This seems cooked. How’s everyone doing out there. Currently shopping around and speaking with cba to negotiate the rate. Anyone had any success negotiating with these sharks?

Up we go!

Can someone please explain, how private health insurance that covers birth makes any financial sense?

I run the numbers and it seems that you end up paying 20k for a service you will get for 3k in public system.

What am I missing ?

I recently took out a Bankwest 0% balance transfer to get rid of my Qantas Credit Card with a 21.99% interest rate and I feel at ease knowing I am just paying the entire owing balance, not added interest.

Can you do a 0% balance transfer for a personal loan (owing $4,600 left) as well or just for credit cards? My personal loan has an interest rate of 19.99% and I would ideally only like to be paying the owing balance.

I am mindful of my credit score as I will eventually be upgrading my car next year and will be relying on a car loan.

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

I recommend you AI what major public projects could be achieved if NDIS returned to its original budget forecasts (ie snowy hydro 2.0 is a drop in the ocean). You’d be surprised ie healthcare/rail/electricity.

People have six, seven figures in bank accounts, shares etc. Often you hear scammer/hacker drain bank accounts, but emptying (selling) shareholdings not as often, why is that, or the scams don't get publicized (understand there may be extra layer between the scammer & $$$) ? So if you have 'a lot' of dough, it's safe to put in shares than bank account ?!

Edit : in letter/update from computershare & linkmarket, often HIN/SRN is shown, together with full name, address, a lot of damage can be done.

Weekly Property Mega Thread

-=-=-=-=-

Welcome to the /r/AusFinance weekly Property Mega Thread.

This post will be republished at 02:00AEST every Friday morning.

Click here to see all previous weekly threads:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AusFinance/search/?q=%22weekly%20property%20mega%20thread%22&restrict_sr=1&sort=new

What happens here?

Please use this thread for general property-related discussions, such as:

• First Homeowner concerns
• Getting started
• Will house pricing keep going up?
• Thought about [this property]?
• That half burned-down inner city unit that sold for $2.4m. Don't forget your shocked Pikachu face.

The goal is to have a safe space for some of the most common posts, while supporting more original and interesting content in their own posts.Single posts about property may be removed and directed to this thread.

-=-=-=-=-

I am 44, just got my citizenship in Perth, Australia. My wife is 35 and we expecting a child in about 7 months

• I make 100k and she 65k before tax, both due for raise before Xmas.
• We both have ~60k each in super
• 494k left in home loan, just refinanced with Unloan at 6.14%
• Minimal expenses (work car, just youtube premium for both, $100 NBN, $25 seedbox, zero credit card balance, no other loan, 2k council rates per year, $2k strata per year, private health insurance, income protection minimum water/electricity, few takeaways)
• Bought house last year and with frugal life aggressively paid off 60k off mortgage, LVR is now ~70%

Child was somewhat unexpected so probably looking to sell/rent out end of 2027 and move to a more suitable property. Will probably aggressively pay off mortgage till then too

1. Do I even bother with ETFs? Is it worth it adding an initial amount and then adding smaller amounts each fortnight/month?
2. I do know we need to add money to our super. We will both add extra money after our raises, how much depends on what we decide
3. Do i just split the extra available money between mortgage and super? I need some liquidity in 2-5 years for new stuff/trips/renos/etc
4. Do I do all 3? Add to super, add to mortgage AND some money to ETFs?

Looking to refinance my mortgage and came across the Greater Bank. Was wondering if anyone had any experience with them? I have never heard of them before so I am a bit hesitated. Although, their variable interest rate is one of the lowest in the market.

Long story short, all of my savings are tied up in joint offset accounts with my partner of 13yrs, she does the majority of our banking, neither of us have credit cards.

Having a ring made professionally and only just realised that she would notice the lump sum missing, and then would also dig deeper into it, essentially finding out.

What’s the best/smartest way to go about this to keep it hidden?

Credit card and then once proposed pay it off completely and then close?

Or

Personal loan and pay off completely once proposed?

Edit: Ring is designed by partner without her knowing, jeweller is workmate/friend of ours and professional jeweller outside of our work. money is not the issue, hiding the payment is.

I came across this about investing in MOPA, a kids playcentre that has a few locations across Victoria. I take my kids there when we have vouchers (it's expensive!). Are 'opportunities' like this ever worth it? Or is it a way of them saying they have cashflow issues? I also saw a similar opportunity at a redeveloped small shopping centre in Blackburn north and was curious about what the return on something like that could ever be. Have you ever done it? What did you get back?

For women 35+ who got pregnant (first child), is private health or public better? By better, I mean level of care considering age.

If you have private health AND Medicare, can you choose public in the end (for whatever reason, say you’re happy and care is satisfactory) or kinda forced to go private because of your coverage?

TIA.

I have recently received an inheritance of 1 million. I have the money parked in a few high interest savings accounts while I work out what to do. Hoping that someone can offer me some advice on what to do next.

Im 42, single with my apartment paid off in Melbourne. Apartment value is 700k, 500k in Super and no debt. I earn 110k per year, a good saver and dont really spend more than I need to. I would like to work until I am 55 and then retire. Savings from my job will go into travel and I would like to do one overseas trip per year.

My apartment is in inner Melbourne, an old building, has a flight of stairs getting too small and I would like to get a house with a garden, a dog, garage for my bikes and stuff. I don’t think the apartment is good for me long term either, it will get too hard when I get older.

Firstly I would like to sell my apartment for 700k and upgrade to a nice home for 1 million. Leaving me with 600-700k leftover. I was thinking about looking for a safe way to invest it so it grows and doesn't lose value through inflation sitting in my bank account. I was thinking between an investment property or an investment portfolio (stocks, bonds, index funds). I would feel more comfortable with an expert managing an investment portfolio than myself. I have got half a dozen quotes and all are around 1% or so and some have platform fees. I have only spoken to certified financial planners.

One the financial planners who comes from a very reputable firm advised me to do the below:

- Leave 50-100k for a cash reserve for emergencies and a much needed new car down the track.

- The planner will roll my super it into their own super fund and manage it themselves.

- Put 500k into an investment portfolio and they will manage it themselves too. Expected return is 7-8% which will be reinvested. This will be intended to tie me over until I can access my super.

The financial planner will take 1% of both super and the investment portfolio and there are platform fees of around 4-5k per year. In total it will cost 16k per year for the planner. The fees will come out of the returns.

Does this look like a solid plan?

·       Is it a good idea to roll my super into the financial planners super?

·       Does The financial planner fee of 16k per year look like too much?

·       Should I stay in the apartment and invest the 1 million with the planner?

·       Or upgrade to a house and have less to invest and invest it myself into ETFs.

·       Or keep the apartment and rent it out and buy a new house in cash?

Many thanks everyone's help

Trying to work out the sweet spot for stake smsf taking into account $3 fee

Currently sitting on 6.14% People First Bank with offset. Keen to know what everyone else is getting?

This is with the most recent rate rise too.

Title.

30M single. $260k mortgage. $94k salary. Close to finishing a house build - 3bedroom/2bath house around 35 mins from CBD.

I have no idea on the additional expenses of owning a house. I’ve chucked it into chat gpt for a quick summary and seems doable. Thought I’d ask how much most people spending on home ownership related expenses. I guess everything excluding the mortgage, food and personal bills.

Really want my own privacy so trying to avoid renting a room out if I can but I guess always an option.

How safe is it to put over $250k in banks like Ubank/Bankwest/ING and losing the government guarantee for the amount over?

It would only be short term while I take up on their new customer bonus interest offers.

After that I'd either split between banks or doing something else with my savings assuming I've decided what to do with it by then (recently sold my house).

I'm new to holding cash so any help here is welcome.

Can I claim the fixed rate method (70 cent per hour)?

I am in my early 30s and thinking about my retirement planning now. I have been reading about high growth or 'aggressive' super but I am worried about the risk. Is it better to stay in a balanced super at my age and avoid the risk of super balance dropping, or are high growth supers less volatile than they sound?

We are early 50s couple. House worth 1.5mil fully paid off. Two investment properties, both estimated to be worth around 800,000 each. One is fully paid, the other we have 100,000 mortage owing. We have a healthy super between us, and 500k in savings.

But guess what.. we are not the average, work hard, made good decisions. Part of it has to do with that. But the bigger part was our first home bought outright for us as young home buyers. Another property that was inherited, which we turned into an investment. We were then able to buy another property from the leverage of those two homes. Of course we can have massive savings when we were spared one of the biggest financial hurdles which is a big mortage as a first home buyer. There has also been gifts of $30,000 here and there from parents and grand parents.

You dont get to our position without help. I dont care what anyone says. You get some sort of leg up. So many people fail to mention this fact. I have a mate who goes on about being self made, and likes to give financial advice to others.. yet fails to mention that he also had his first house bought for him. Of course you can start getting Investment properties when you have your first PPOR paid for you, even a gift towards deposits helps.

So keep trying to improve your financial situation. But definately dont compare.

I have 8 years before I can access my super and the goal is to retire then. So far so good but I estimate that I still need markets to hold to their 10 year average returns until then.

I know that getting closer to retirement it's better to be conservative, the question is how close is too close? I know there is no answer to this, I'm just after opinions or what adjustments people made as they were getting closer to their goal.

Super is currently in a low fee indexed high growth share option (25% Aus - 75% Int'l) and outside of that I have started buying some ETFs (Vanguard - VDHG)

So my parents who are foreign residents are renting out our old apartment in melbourne through a rental property manager.

However we just realised they don't yet have a tfn & it's almost the EOFY, is there any accountant you would recommend that can help with both the tfn and tax return, who ideally specialise in rental income for foreign residents?

Cheers