Whether you’re a tax-time veteran or approaching the EOFY as a newly-minted employee, you’ll want to get as much out of your tax return as possible. Knowing all the work-related expenses you can claim tax deductions on will help you in that mission.
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Queensland has become the latest state to announce a ban on bank-led school banking programs, including the Commonwealth Bank’s well-known ‘Dollarmites’ program.
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Virgin Money has expanded its banking suite after launching a brand new transaction account, two savings accounts, a banking app and a loyalty program.
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There are so many Buy Now Pay Later platforms around these days, it would be surprising if you hadn't heard of at least one. Think Afterpay, Zip, Klarna and Payright. The question is have you come across the 'Bill Now Pay Later' concept?
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Most people tend to think of banks as intermediaries between people with savings and people who want to borrow money. They loan out deposits to borrowers, and make a profit by charging more interest than they pay savers.But is this an accurate description of how banks work? Nowadays, there’s a lot of debate about where banks actually get the money for loans, with some suggesting deposits may not be the source after all. Below, we explore a few of the main theories.
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Like a gymnast at a limbo competition, savings account interest rates keep edging lower.
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At 1.35%, right now ING's Savings Maximiser offers one of the top interest rates in the Mozo database*, however as of 1 March 2021 the online bank is adding another condition for customers to meet. This will make it just that little bit harder for savers to earn the full interest rate.
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If you go by the numbers, Australians haven’t been the most dedicated savers over the last decade. Economists at the Reserve Bank use a measure they call the ‘savings ratio’, which in a simple graph can show us that since about 2012 our savings in relation to our income has dropped. As such, where we have parked our money perhaps hasn’t been top of mind. Hopefully it will become more top of mind with the findings of this report. Another factor to this point has been our spending as a nation. You might even say we’ve been consistently strong spenders, with our national spending rate typically represented by a 45-degree incline on any line graph showing the years 2012 to 2019. Numbers from the Australian Bureau of Statistics can confirm this trend, so too can several survey-based reports like that conducted by ME Bank, which in 2018 showed that the combination of rising expenses and subdued income gains has led Aussies to actually dip into their savings. Yes, we have been saving less.Last year’s sledgehammer to the global economy has shifted this trend though - at least, on the savings front. As the graph below shows, COVID-19 led restrictions forced many people to revise their spending-to-saving equation, with the household savings ratio skyrocketing during 2020.
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Whether you know CommBank’s Dollarmites as ’80s gremlin puppets or as their schmick new animated kid-selves, their reign as Australian school banking royalty is coming to an end.
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