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The Australian mortgage market today has a range of bank and non-bank mortgage providers all competing for your mortgage business.
While this level of competition can result in competitive interest rates, there’s still a misconception about whether a non-bank is as safe as a bank when it comes to your mortgage.
So it makes sense to understand the basics of how a mortgage contract works, how a bank and a non-bank mortgage provider makes money from a mortgage contract and what happens if your mortgage provider goes bankrupt.
Are you considering asking a family member to become your Guarantor for a mortgage?
Here are some things you need to know and do- first
- One of the questions about home loans and mortgages we're regularly asked by older clients is, ‘Can a parent go Guarantor to a Mortgage to help one of their adult children?’
- Their adult children usually ask a variation on the same question, ‘When can a parent go guarantor to a Mortgage loan?'
- The real question people want to ask is 'Should you ever become a Guarantor to a Mortgage?'
Getting your Life Insurance policy and Income Protection policy can sometimes take longer than people might expect and the main reason why is simple;
Once you have this type of policy, it can’t be taken away from you or cancelled by the insurance company, regardless of any future changes to your health or occupation.
The life insurance Underwriter has to get it right the first time, because they don't get a second chance to fix a problem they may have originally overlooked.
Looking for some smart super ideas?
Whatever your longer term plan is about your Super, have a shorter term plan about understanding it's potential.
With the end of the financial years' June 30th fast approaching, it might be time to start thinking about your super for another year. Here are five smart strategies that could benefit you now, and help boost your super balance for later.
Teaching your kids to save is child's play
As parents we're constantly looking for ways to teach our kids. Whether that's through sharing our own culture, our beliefs and our understanding of how the world works or unconsciously by what we do, it seems that nothing teaches an impressionable mind, like watching.
But simply talking about savings money, can feel like a drag.
It's so important to remember that what and how we teach our children about money when they are young, will impact on their financial future. It's our responsibility to raise money smart kids.
So how do you actually start setting financial goals?
By now you’ve had a chance to read the ‘thinking’ part of making financial goals and decisions, it's time to start the ‘doing’.
It's no secret the COVID19 pandemic has hurt many Australians and has either derailed many of us from our financial goals or has forced us to re-prioritise our current situation.
With historically unusually low interest rates, many Australians are now prioritising their debt and looking for strategies to consolidate and pay down credit card debt much faster than they previously had planned.
This is a great step, but how do we make sure it's just not just another stand-alone opportunity to take and miss the chance to pause and refocus our thinking about what we all actually want to be doing?
Living happily ever after — in a rented house, maybe
At a recent business conference the presenter, a young speaker from Generation Millennial, made some insightful comments about changes he saw occurring in Australian - the rise of the sharing economy (ride sharing, home sharing and job sharing) and how these new approaches to ownership were changing the way people thought about traditional forms of ownership.
Some interesting insights I thought.
He went on to list emerging business examples of the new sharing and rent-on-demand economy including renting music through Spotify, accessing movies on demand from Netflix, renting a community car (or van) from the Car Next Door and renting movies online direct from YouTube.
Add to this ever growing list of rentables the prospect of renting a driverless car in the future and it was a great high level presentation; all until he made the rookie mistake and said,
‘So what's the point of owning a house today, when I can just rent one or rent an Airbnb whenever I want?’
Boom!
With that potentially naïve comment to a room of financial advisers his presentation fell off a cliff into irrelevance, all because he didn't understand the place family home ownership holds in the Australian economy.
Three high-stakes risks of being a Sole Trader
Most people going into business for themselves cite a desire to provide more opportunities for their family and greater personal freedom.
But working for yourself involves more personal decisions, greater risks and depending upon your business structure, greater personal liability.
And if you're making this decision based simply on cost alone, this is the question you need to answer, ‘What could possibly go wrong?’
Thinking about setting some financial goals this year?
Sounds simple enough right? But simple doesn't always mean easy
When it comes to managing our personal debts and credit cards, savings and investing, many people are quick to look for a sequence of simple steps to follow (or a three minute blog to read) to achieve what can usually be a complex outcome.
If a fast solution isn’t found, ‘it's obviously the wrong option’ so we quickly browse on elsewhere looking for that dopamine hit of ‘New’ and never really get to where we need to go.
Now that 2020 is behind us, it's time to check in on the emotional and financial damage suffered by the millions of Australians affected by COVID-19.
Job losses for some, reduced work hours for others, still others forced into early retirement - ready or not - many small businesses surviving one month at a time and families trying to make sense of lockdowns and restrictions - it’s safe to say there will be many COVID-19 flow on effects yet unseen.
We’ll all need to work through in some way.
Drew Browne
Sapience Founder & Director.
Simplifying Financial Complexity
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