As the cost of living rises, we often cut obvious expenses, but hidden fees and overlooked charges can also quietly drain our budgets. This article uncovers sneaky costs like unexpected service fees, duplicate insurance, and auto-renewing subscriptions that can add up over the year and offers tips on how to spot and avoid them to save hundreds annually.

During a cost of living crisis, many of us look for obvious ways to cut expenses, like cancelling streaming services, dining out less, and skipping extras in our shopping baskets.

But what about the less obvious ways?

Sneaky fees and charges can increase our day-to-day living expenses without us realising it.

Here are some hidden or avoidable costs that could be draining hundreds from your annual household budget.

With the use of a case study, discover how loud budgeting can transform financial habits, turning the task of saving for a home deposit into a shared journey of accountability, celebration, and success.

I’d always known that saving for my first home would require a bucket-load of discipline and sacrifice. And when I thought about the amount I needed for a deposit…well, it all seemed too hard.

Whether it was a weekend away with friends, or the latest can’t-live-without gadget, I was too easily distracted and couldn’t seem to control my spending.

The problem, I believed, was that long term savings goals felt so unattainable that I saw no reason to go without the things I wanted now.

In this article, we delve into the critical role your money mindset plays in determining your financial success. Whether you hold beliefs of abundance or scarcity, or lean towards a fixed or growth mindset, these attitudes shape your financial decisions and outcomes.

Does your Money Mindset have your back? Or… Is it holding you back?

If you've never really thought about it, you'd be forgiven. When it comes to our financial success, we tend to focus on things like income, investments, and expenses. It makes sense to put our financial position down to how much we earn or spend, or the performance of our investments. But what about the role of our Money Mindset?

This article explores the impact of parental financial habits on children and advocates for teaching responsible money management from an early age. It emphasises the importance of involving children in budgeting, setting savings goals, and fostering open conversations about money to empower the next generation with essential financial skills.

Generally speaking, we Australians are pretty financially savvy, that is, we understand the how and why of effectively managing our money. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean we’re actually putting that know-how into practise and making astute financial decisions.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), the average Australian household debt has risen by 7.3% (over $260,000) in the 2021-2022 financial year. As of July 2023, Australians were paying $18.4 billion – that’s billion with a B – in credit card interest every year.

In this article, we explore how you can protect your finances against the impacts of an economic recession.

In the ever-fluctuating world of economics, recessions are an inevitable part of the financial cycle.

While they can be daunting, understanding their nature and preparing for their impact can make a significant difference in weathering the storm.

Understanding Recessions

At its core, a recession represents a period where economic activity contracts, often reflected in consecutive quarters of negative GDP (Gross Domestic Product) growth. This contraction is not just a statistic on a chart; it resonates through various facets of the economy.

Light reading article playing on the arrival of spring to inspire good financial habits of goal setting, paying down bad debt, budgeting, savings plan, and insurance.

Spring is the perfect time to rejuvenate your financial habits as well as your garden!

Here are 5 ways to set you, and your garden, up for success:

1. Plan your garden: Start with deciding what type of garden you want. In other words, get clear about what goals you want to achieve and by when. Once you have your list of goals prioritise them, so you know where to focus your efforts.
Tip: If a goal is large and will take some time to achieve, set yourself some smaller goals with shorter timeframes along the way.

Hands up if you learned trigonometry in school, but not how to budget? I’m sure we can all agree that we need to do better at setting up our young adults for financial success. In this article, we cover five tools that can help to change this narrative for future generations.

Think back to when you got your first job and that sweet taste of financial independence. Regardless of what age you started working, it's unlikely you knew how to manage that first paycheck.

Let's face it; our world isn't particularly adept at teaching financial literacy to the younger generation.

I don't know about you, but when I was in school, we learned trigonometry (SOH-CAH-TOA is still permanently etched in my brain), which has been helpful for all the times I've needed to solve the missing sides and angles of a right triangle, but not so much for managing my financial affairs as an adult.

This article explores the concept of zero-based budgeting, an accounting method that is making a comeback. While primarily used by organisations, zero-based budgeting can also be applied to personal finances, helping individuals review and justify expenses, understand their spending habits, and achieve savings goals. The article provides a step-by-step guide to creating a household zero-based budget and highlights the benefits and drawbacks of this approach in both corporate and personal settings.

Ever heard of zero-based budgeting? No? Originally developed in the late 1960s, zero-based budgeting is an accounting method that has experienced a revival in recent times.

In conventional budgeting, expenditure from previous periods is used as a starting point and raised by a set increment, resulting in many costs and expenses not being reviewed for years.

Conversely, zero-based budgeting does not assume increased costs are a matter of course. Instead, it involves redrafting the budget from scratch every period by analysing and justifying all expenses.

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This article outlines how individuals can plan for their "golden years". It looks at the necessary budgeting considerations, how to effectively plan financially and why being prepared is more than just having adequate funds.

Budgeting for retirement is like preparing your suitcase for an epic journey! Packing the right items and planning ahead is essential to ensure you don't run into any unexpected surprises along the way.

Why plan for your golden years

Just like a trip, when you're ready to retire, it's essential to have enough money saved to buy the things you need and do the things you want to do.

According to the Retirement Confidence Report, 38% of the 1,500 Australians surveyed over age 50 felt some anxiety about not having enough retirement savings.

An alarming number of Australians are living paycheque-to-paycheque. This article explains how poor money management leads to cashflow issues and provides advice on how to break the pay-to-pay cycle and get your finances under control.

Now and then, Jodi borrowed $100 from her parents. She’s good for it, and always paid it back, but her situation was not uncommon.

5.9 million Australians live pay-to-pay

A study by Deloitte between November 2021 and January 2022, surveyed over 14,000 Millennials (born 1983 – 1994) and Gen Zs (born 1995 – 2003) worldwide.

The results were alarming: over 30% of respondents indicated that they did not feel financially secure, while 47% of millennials and 46% of Gen Zs lived paycheque-to-paycheque.

It's not necessary to make significant changes in your spending habits to achieve your financial goals. Sometimes, it’s simply understanding where you spend money or finding better deals on your current expenses to save money. This article provides 8 tips to save money on your bills so that you can put the savings to better use.

We work hard to earn our income and even harder to save it to achieve our dreams. Even a few dollars saved on different types of bills over the years can compound to something meaningful. Let’s go through some of the ways that can help achieve these savings.

1. Track your expenses

Why should you track your expenses? To understand where you spend money so you can stop the unnecessary expenses. First, review your past expenses and then track the future ones.

When times are tough financially or unexpected bills pop up, having an emergency fund set aside can alleviate stress. Unfortunately, many people choose not to or struggle to find spare cash to put aside. This article explains the importance of an emergency fund and offers clever savings tips to get your fund growing.

It’s the most common story financial professionals hear. Unfortunately, too many people fail to set aside emergency savings to see them through life’s hiccups. So when the inevitable happens, and an unexpected bill arrives, they are put under pressure to find the funds to pay it.

In turn, this leads to maxed out credit cards or taking out expensive short term loans. And so begins the bitter downward cycle of falling behind on essential bills and other regular payments.

Written in the voice of a Baby Boomer and nudging on the humorous side, this article provides five financial tips that all generational groups can benefit from.

Back in my day…

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard that over the years! More interesting, I caught myself saying those words only last week as though channelling my father!

The younger generation is so tech-savvy these days that I can’t keep up. Although we had technology too! Our ‘information revolution’ produced gems like floppy-disks, dial-up internet and entire families sharing a single land-line telephone. Quickly superseded and gone forever, thankfully!

When it comes to money, some things stay relevant regardless of your generation.

Have a good income stream coming in, yet still don’t have any savings? This article will help readers acknowledge some of the simple money mistakes they may be making and provides easy solutions to get their finances back in check.

The world is constantly dangling temptations before our eyes, and it’s never been easier to buy stuff, even if we don’t have the money. The upshot is that we are all susceptible to making some basic financial errors. Individually, these mistakes can be small. Added together, they can really hold us back from financial success.

Adding up the little things

Take one simple example. It’s easy to spend $15 on lunch from a café. But make your own and you could easily save over $10 per day. Multiply that by your working days and you could be saving over $2,000 a year!

This article addresses the financial decisions involved when combining two families. It uses a case study and discusses the topics of assets, debt, children, savings, life insurance, superannuation, budget and wills. It ends with a call to action to see a financial adviser.

When Jack and Sarah met through mutual friends, they hit it off immediately. Both had previously been married and, besides having a child each, found they had quite a lot in common. 

Dinner dates quickly morphed into family-style outings with their children, to the zoo or adventure theme parks, and soon the couple was talking about taking their relationship to the next level.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in 2018, over 118,000 marriages took place in Australia. Of those, 15.7 % were second marriages. Many of this number were considered ‘blended’, meaning that one or both parents had children from previous relationships.

This article provides some basic guidelines on monitoring spending and reducing unnecessary expenditure. Very simplistic but sometimes that’s what is needed to get the message across.

Each year in early May, the Treasurer delivers the Federal Budget and many people across Australia listen intently. The Budget tells us how the government plans to spend its revenue in the coming year, whether it can afford to give us tax cuts, and whether it expects to spend more (creating a deficit) or less (creating a surplus) than it receives.

Budgets are also important on a personal level, especially when living costs are rising and uncertainty abounds. So it’s worth having a look at how you can manage your finances in the current economy.

This brief article outlines the role of money in close personal relationships. It lists some financial points which should be considered.

The days of the sole breadwinner looking after all the family finances without any involvement of their partner are long gone. With two-income families more often the norm, both parties in a relationship have a say in the financial situation and an understanding of what is going on.