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:
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.
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.
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.
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. Thick curtains are great for trapping your heat inside, and curtains with thermal lining are even better. But if you have only got standard curtains in the house, there are a couple of tricks you can use to maximize their heat retention. Thermal lining can be expensive, but other materials, such as cheap fleece, can be almost as effective. Just line the backs of your curtains with some fleece from your local fabric shop, and you'll be able to see the difference. In fact, you can even use an old PVC shower curtain to do the same thing. And it's not just the windows that need to be covered. Doors are notorious for leaking heat, so putting a curtain over your door might be a good idea too. And why not put a rug or folded towel at the foot of the door to stop your precious heat leaving the room. Opening the curtains during the day is also a good idea. We often think that open curtains during daylight hour means losing all your precious heat during the day, but opening the curtains makes the most of the sun - the most effective and affordable heater known to man. Just make sure you remember to close them when the sun goes down. Closing unused rooms is another effective method to prevent your precious heat being wasted. If you're not intending to use certain rooms for the rest of the day, close the doors. That way your heat stays where you want it to be. Bear floor boards are a welcome invitation for the cold, and account for as much as 10 percent of heat loss. Wooden floors are the worst for leaking heat, but this can be prevented, or at least minimised, by placing rugs and blankets over the floor. This also has the added bonus of keeping your feet warmer too. If you're keen to know how you can further prevent heat loss in your home, get up and walk around on a cold evening. Are there drafts coming from outside? From beneath doors? From between the floorboards? Have a think about what you could do to keep your house warmer this winter without splashing the cash! Reference NZFSG
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. S ure, 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. That's why the team at Futurisk want to remind you of the six credit card traps you need to watch out for:
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.
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? One thing is for sure, however, living without any form of life-based insurance cover leaves your personal and business finances in a dangerous position. One of the most common ways of falling into debt is through the unexpected need to replace a lost or damaged asset that was not insured, and your greatest asset is your ability to earn. If that was suddenly removed from you, debt could quickly follow.
If we were buying a new appliance or vehicle, we'd shop around. If we wanted some new computer gear or were renovating our kitchen, we'd look for the best deal. So why don't we do that with insurance? I t seems many New Zealanders think of insurance as coming in a fixed package at a fixed price, but there are some practical things you can do to save money on your insurances. Here are six hot tips.
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. 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.
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.
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:
Sometimes it’s easy to feel like insurance is a waste of money, particularly if we’ve never made a claim. Before you get to thinking this way, however, remind yourself what insurance is for. When we purchase insurance, we’re purchasing a product. It’s like when we pay for groceries or petrol or a new television. In the case of insurance, we’re buying protection for our assets and for our financial future. A simple fact of life is this, unfortunate things happen. These things happen when we least expect them, and often catch us completely by surprise. In New Zealand today, one of the most common ways people fall into debt is through the unexpected need to replace a lost or damaged asset that was not insured. Here’s a general rule to bear in mind: anything you need for day to day living, which you could not replace with cash if you lost it, needs to be insured. In general, that boils down to three things: your home, your house contents, and your vehicle.
ANZ
AIA
NIB
Partnerslife
Southern Cross
Perpetual Guardian
Westpac
Vero
FANZ
Under the new financial advice regime rolled out on 15th March 2021, we are required to provide publicly available information on our company. Click here for our company information.