How important is third party car insurance How important is third party car insurance Contact Us Should third party car insurance be compulsory? The Government seems to be weakening on this issue. Some politicians are saying they want to see compulsory third party insurance on cars, and most New Zealanders agree with them. What many people don't realise is how inexpensive third-party insurance can be to buy and how expensive having no insurance can be in the event of an accident. I think our family's story should be a warning to every car owner; you may think you'll never have an accident of any sort, but they happen, and when they do, they can be very expensive. Insure your car and avoid debt! If you have a vehicle, insurance is vital. Remember, when you insure something such as a car, it is not the car you are insuring. You are insuring yourself so that, if you cause damage with that car you will not be placed under the pressure of a debt you may never be able to escape from. Vehicle insurance is not about insuring your car - it's about insuring yourself against a lifetime of debt! If you are uninsured because you find it too expensive, phone an insurer and ask for a third-party insurance quote - it's worth it for your own peace of mind. For years people have been writing letters to the editors of newspapers and phoning talkback saying that third party car insurance should be compulsory. We're not going to go into answering that question here, but one thing we do know for sure; if you're driving your car without at least third party insurance, you are crazy!! A lesson learned Let me tell you a story about our youngest daughter's most horrifying moment. We had an old blue Corolla. Three children had learned to drive in it and they were pretty good drivers. It was an old car, but it was a good car. Mechanically, it went well and there was very little evidence of rust. One day our daughter came home, parked the car in the drive and went inside. Minutes later, she heard a crash. She'd forgotten to put the handbrake on! The car had rolled backwards and into our neighbour's house. Amazingly, there was very little damage to the car. However, the house didn't fare so well. The car was now sitting in the front bedroom. The cost to repair the house was $27,000! As I talked with our daughter about this I pointed out, "If you didn't have insurance, you would be paying that off at $100 a week for the next five years." What is third party car insurance? Third party car insurance is insurance you take out to repair or replace any damage you do with your vehicle, it doesn't cover damage to your own vehicle. There are two types of third-party insurance; Basic third party insurance insures the damage you may cause to another person's vehicle or property with the insured car. Third-party fire and theft is slightly more expensive and insures damage to other vehicles, and to yours if your car if it is damaged by fire or stolen. So, while your car isn't covered, any damage your car causes is. That makes third party car insurance ideal for cheaper cars. The Corolla I told you about was only worth $1,000. To insure it was going to be about $500 a year because of the age of our children. Third party insurance, however, was only $150 a year - and it was worth every cent for our family. View next post At Futurisk, we work for you, not the insurer. So when it’s time to make a claim, we’ve got your back. We’ve got your back Enquire Now Freephone 0800 17 18 19

Car Insurance hiccups Car Insurance hiccups Contact Us 3. Taking your vehicle off-road Most would assume this rule doesn't apply to them – when was the last time you took your hatchback 4-wheel driving? However, off-road doesn't just mean doing jumps and doughnuts in the mud. If you try to do a U-turn in a paddock and a stampede of cows damages your car, that’s counted as driving off-road. If you park on the beach and your car gets damaged, that’s also counted as off-road, and is all the insurer needs to decline your claim. 4. Driving in unroadworthy conditions If you have an accident and upon assessment your tyres are declared to have had insufficient thread, your claim can be denied. It doesn't matter if you have a Warrant of Fitness, or if bald tyres had nothing to do with your accident. 5. Driving recklessly Burnouts and hand-brakies are a favourite past-time of many young folk these days, but attempting to do a manoeuvre in a car that goes wrong is means to have your claim declined almost immediately. There are a number of key things to remember when driving a car: always put on your seat belt, give way to traffic on the right, and make sure you've read the fine print of your insurance policy documents. These days you’d have to be pretty foolish to drive around without insurance. Damaging your car, or even worse, someone else’s, without insurance is a fast-track to debt. But something so many drivers forget is that even having insurance is not always a get-out-of-jail-free card. Your insurance policy will have so many special clauses and exclusions to give your insurer all they need to deny your claims, and put you out of pocket. Here are a few key exclusions to remember. 1. Breaching license conditions If you’re on a restricted license, and you have an accident while illegally carrying a passenger, your insurance claim can be declined. Even though your passenger had nothing to do with the accident, it still gives your insurer all they need to decline your claim. 2. Not securing your vehicle If your vehicle gets stolen, but you’d left the door unlocked or the window down, that’s another reason to have your claim declined. This one can get a bit tricky because there’s often nothing for the insurer to go on other than your word, so you could say it was locked – but that wouldn't be honest. View next post At Futurisk, we work for you, not the insurer. So when it’s time to make a claim, we’ve got your back. We’ve got your back Enquire Now Freephone 0800 17 18 19

Six Things Your Bank Will Never Tell You Six Things Your Bank Will Never Tell You Contact Us 4. Bouncing cheques are good for your bank’s business as long as you don’t write too many. Providing there’s no fraud involved, your bank earns big bucks every time a cheque bounces. Not only do they sock you with a fee for the bounced cheque, you'll pay a higher rate of interest if you go over your agreed overdraft. 5. You can pay your entire credit card bill by setting up a direct debit like you do with your power or phone. Banks don’t actively encourage customers to do this. Why should they? They can’t earn interest on your credit card if you pay it off each month. For the bank, the best credit card is one that has money owing on it. 6. Bank advice may be self-interested. Sometimes, when you use your credit card to book overseas travel-related items,you will be charged interest immediately; e.g. if you use your card to book a hotel room for a trip you are to take three months' time, you may be charged interest from the time of booking rather than the time of staying in the hotel. In a similar way, if you rent a car overseas the trader ma reserve an amount of credit to secure their payment or to cover any possible damage to the car etc. That means, you may find when you use the card it has less credit on it than you expected despite you having actually bought anything. Most people know nothing about the lodging security until it's too late. If you are travelling overseas with your credit card, or using it overseas with your credit card, or using it overseas from within New Zealand, it pays to find out first, what the various conditions of use are. So, these are Futurisk's six credit card traps. One thing we cannot stress enough- avoid credit card debt. What if I'm already in debt? If you find yourself struggling with debt right now, contact the team at Futurisk. We may be able to restructure your debt in a way that savs you hundreds, even thousands of dollars. This information is adapted from Consumer Magazine (January/February 2006, Issue 455, Page 23). There’s something every person who uses a bank needs to understand—a bank is a business. It exists to make a profit and it does that by maximising the use of your hard-earned cash. Knowing how they do that could save you money. Here are six things your bank will never tell you: 1. Your bank wants you to overspend and stay in debt. That may sound a little harsh, but that is the simple reality. You see, banks make money from people who are in debt. In fact, if you are $250,000 in debt you are a better customer for a bank than a person with $30,000 cash in their savings account. The more you spend the more interest the bank earns from you. And, if you’re prone to cheques bouncing, or if you don't pay your credit card bill off in full every month, then you are the bank’s best-friend. 2. A bank’s review of your account is really a sales pitch. The bank is thinking of its bottom line, not yours. If you’re offered a review of your finances or get a call from your “personal banker,” then chances are they want to sell you a new product—usually insurance. It could be that the product on offer is good value, but ask yourself two questions: Do I need the product at all? And, is the bank’s product better than the one I already have or can get elsewhere? 3. Banks prefer to keep their savings-rate changes under wraps. When banks advertise new accounts with flash savings rates, they do so to attract new customers. The banks can’t afford to put their existing customers on these new high-flying rates and they often don't tell you about them. That’s why it pays to ask. View next post At Futurisk, we work for you, not the insurer. So when it’s time to make a claim, we’ve got your back. We’ve got your back Enquire Now Freephone 0800 17 18 19

Do you have an emergency nest egg? Do you have an emergency nest egg? Contact Us Most financial gurus and advisers these days recommend having a separate account that’s just for emergencies, and they’re not hard to set up. In fact, most banks will let you do it online. Just log in to your banking website and create a brand new internet account.But having the account is only half the job – now it just needs some money. Because many people live from pay day to pay day, putting a couple of hundred dollars aside into your emergency account is much easier said than done. Instead, consider starting an automatic payment, so every week or fortnight even as little as $5 is transferred into your emergency account without you having to do anything. $5 doesn't sound like much, but within 10 weeks you’ll have more than enough to put petrol in your car and buy some lunch if your pay doesn't come through. One of the key pieces of advice given about keeping an emergency accounts is to make it a little harder to access than your regular accounts. If you had a card in your wallet that had access to your emergency account, the temptation to spend the money would be too great. Instead, make it so that the only way to access that money is to have to transfer it from the special account into your regular account. So next time you need some emergency cash in a hurry, all you’ll need to do is whip out your smartphone, transfer some money and you’ll be away laughing. Earlier this year this was a glitch with ANZ’s payment system, and a whole lot of New Zealanders woke up on payday to discover they hadn't been paid. It didn't take long for the issue to be resolved, and everyone was paid by lunchtime, but the ANZ Facebook page was still inundated with complaints and tales of tragedy as people claimed they were now starving, cold and unable to put petrol in their car because of ANZ’s mistake. If you woke up on payday and found yourself in this situation, what would your day be like? Would you be going to work hungry because you couldn't afford to buy food for lunch? Would you have to walk to work because you had no money to pay for petrol or a bus? Or would you just transfer a few dollars from your emergency account and go on your merry way? For many, waking up on pay day to find their account empty should be a wake-up call, and one of the best things you can do if you’re scared of ever being in this situation is to create an emergency account. View next post At Futurisk, we work for you, not the insurer. So when it’s time to make a claim, we’ve got your back. We’ve got your back Enquire Now Freephone 0800 17 18 19

Cleaning up after Christmas Cleaning up after Christmas Contact Us The Futurisk plan to escape Christmas debt: Make escaping debt a priority. This is the most important step: make a conscious decision that you are going to do whatever it takes, and make whatever sacrifices you need to make, to get out of debt as quickly as possible. Work out what you can do without. To become debt free as soon as possible will require some short-term sacrifices. Think about some things that you could do without for the sake of being debt free. Maybe you only buy coffee twice a week at work instead of every day. Maybe you don't buy that weekly magazine for a little while. Maybe you don't go out for dinner until the bill is paid. Whatever sacrifice you make, it will be worth it to escape the stress and financial cost of credit card debt. Just make sure you put the money saved towards paying off that debt. Pay off more than the minimum. This is the biggest mistake made by people with credit card debt. They believe that, by paying the minimum payment required each month, the debt will quickly disappear. While it will eventually disappear, it will be a long and costly process. The quicker you pay off debt, the more you save in interest and the better off you are financially. Having decided what sacrifices you will make with your spending, calculate how much you can put towards paying off your debt each month, and stick to it. Don't add any more to your credit card. The temptation is always there to treat yourself. "It's only a few dollars," we say. But all those few dollars add up. When the credit card interest rate is added to that, we are just prolonging our time in debt. Set a goal. Having made the decision to be debt free; and worked out where you can economise; and calculated what is the most you can repay each month; and having determined not to add anything to your card, set a date at which you can be debt free. Circle that date on your calendar or in your diary; keep that date at the forefront of your mind... it's the day you'll feel a great sense of release--you'll be debt free! Celebrate. Being debt free is something worth celebrating. Plan a celebration for the day you pay off your debt - but don't make it an expensive celebration, and don't put the cost of celebrating onto your credit card! The team at Futurisk would love to talk to you about all aspects of your personal finances and insurances. Beware Christmas debt! As we wander around the shopping malls leading up to Christmas, it's so tempting to pull out our credit card to buy gifts and treats for family and friends. Of course, our intention is to quickly pay off the amount owing as soon as we get back to work in the New Year. Problem is, for many New Zealanders that doesn't happen. Some credit card statistics Leading up to Christmas last year the New Zealand Herald reported: New Zealanders were collectively paying more than $600 million a year in interest on personal credit card debt. New Zealanders collectively owed $5.542 billion on plastic cards at the end of July 2012. Of this $5.264 billion was on personal credit cards. Nearly two-thirds of personal credit card debt is incurring interest. Despite credit card rates of just 12% being available, the average interest rate on outstanding balances is 17.8 per cent. That equates to $638 million in payments going into the pockets of financial institutions over the past year. Credit card debt is dangerous Now, I know most people will say, "But I pay off my card every month before it incurs any interest." The reality is, most people don't! Much of the debt loaded onto credit cards occurs in the period leading up to Christmas. Last December, we collectively loaded over 5 billion dollars onto our credit cards. Did we pay it all off within the month? No. In January this year we still owed over 3.5 billion dollars of that, plus the interest it was accruing. Credit card debt is dangerous because of the high interest rate it incurs. For many people, going into debt on their credit card puts them into debt for a long, long time. It makes sense to limit the use of your credit card leading up to Christmas, but just in case it's too late, here are a plan to help you clean up after Christmas if you find yourself in debt when January 2014 arrives. View next post At Futurisk, we work for you, not the insurer. So when it’s time to make a claim, we’ve got your back. We’ve got your back Enquire Now Freephone 0800 17 18 19

Six Tips to Help You Pay Off Your Mortgage Faster Six Tips to Help You Pay Off Your Mortgage Faster Contact Us 3. Make repayments fortnightly, not monthly Most banks will set up your mortgage with monthly repayments; request fortnightly repayments. What that means is that, over a year, you’ll make 26 half-monthly repayments rather than 12 monthly payments – that’s two extra repayments per year. Over the course of a 30 year mortgage that can save you thousands of dollars. 4. Make lump sum repayments If you have a tax refund or some other windfall, put it on your mortgage. It will go straight towards paying off principal owed and save money on interest repayments. 5. Track your finances Many people could radically improve their personal finances if only they kept track of their income and expenditure – that means, keeping to a budget. Remember, even small amounts of money saved and put on your mortgage can save thousands over the period of your mortgage. 6. Set your mortgage up with part revolving credit Of all the tips to save money on your mortgage, this is the most effective. It can be tricky to set up properly and you may need some financial advice to do it. Once set-up, however, it can save you tens of thousands of dollars and many years of mortgage repayments. The team at Futurisk would love to talk to you about all aspects of your personal finances. Click here to contact Futurisk. I remember when I was about Intermediate School age (a long time ago), my mother would give me $20 each fortnight and I’d take it to the local building society. It was the mortgage money. Having taken out a mortgage, my parents faithfully paid back the required sum every fortnight until every dollar of the interest and principal were paid off. No thought was given to ways of saving on those mortgage repayments. These are, however, simple things you can do to speed up your mortgage repayments saving you both money and time. Here are Futurisk’s six tips to help pay off your mortgage faster: 1. Start early Whatever strategy you decide on, start as early on in your mortgage as you can. In fact, think about how you will repay your home loan before you even sign up for it. Perhaps get some advice from a financial solutions company like Futurisk or from your accountant. This is because, with a table mortgage, which most mortgage-holders will have, the early payments are mostly interest with little principal being repaid. Then, as time goes on, the proportion of interest per payment decreases, and the proportion of principal per payment increases. So, the sooner you begin on a plan to speed up the paying off of your mortgage, the more you save. 2. Each fortnight, pay a little more than the bank asks for If you pay any amount over what the bank asks you to pay on your mortgage, that amount will go straight into lowering the principal owed and therefore lower the interest you are paying. Over the life of your mortgage even a small amount of extra money paid per payment can save tens of thousands of dollars. Here’s another little trick: over time, most mortgage repayments will decrease. Many home owners look forward to this and see it as extra money in their wallet. However, by keeping your repayments the same throughout the life of your mortgage, a lot of money can be saved. View next post At Futurisk, we work for you, not the insurer. So when it’s time to make a claim, we’ve got your back. We’ve got your back Enquire Now Freephone 0800 17 18 19

Recent News News > Helpful news and advice on your insurance, finance or mortgage needs. Advice All news Financial Insurance Mortgages How to know if a reverse mortgage is for you You've probably heard of a Reverse Mortgage, sometimes called a Home Equity Mortgage. With our aging population, they are becoming more common. Reverse Mortgages can be a good way to free-up money to spend on things you want - provided you're aware of the many pitfalls. Read More Top tips for keeping your house warm this winter Keeping your house warm over winter can be hard. It can cost a small fortune to generate enough heat to get your house warm, and then there are so many ways for cold air to take its place. Luckily there are some affordable and simple ways to keep your house warm this winter that don't require a big budget or a degree in rocket science. Read More Six Things Your Bank Will Never Tell You This information is adapted from Consumer Magazine (January/February 2006, Issue 455, Page 23). There’s something every person who uses a bank needs to understand—a bank is a business. It exists to make a profit and it does that by maximising the use of your hard-earned cash. Knowing how they do that could save you money. Here are six things your bank will never tell you: Read More Six Credit Card Traps to avoid Credit card can be dangerous! Many people in New Zealand today find themselves buried by inescapable debt that can be traced back to being overzealous in the use of their credit card. Sure, credit cards are handy. They provide an easy way to purchase things online or if you don't want to carry cash around with you, but it's so easy to forget when you buy something with your card, you are incurring a debt. And, once you get into credit card debt, it can be very difficult to get out of. Read More Nine Things to do to get Your Personal Finances in Order The team at Futurisk have three rules regarding personal finance: Spend less than you earn, Pay off debt, Don't go into debt This article expands on those rules - do these nine things and you need never worry about your finances again. Read More How to know you have the right insurance cover - Life Insurances Life insurances can be pretty confusing. There are so many products out there, and you never quite know which ones are best for you. And then, having decided on the type of insurance, there's the question of how much should you insure for? And when should you start with life insurance? Read More Show more news At Futurisk, we work for you, not the insurer. So when it’s time to make a claim, we’ve got your back. We’ve got your back Enquire Now Freephone 0800 17 18 19