The Money Hackers - independent and unbiased financial tips for young people

Associatedkeithality @ The Money Hackers on 10/11/2017 - 11:52
Last edited 11/11/2017 - 00:54

Hey OZBargainers,

While I've always been naturally frugal, my ozbargain education over the years has taught me plenty and I feel I wouldn't be in the positive financial situation that I am now without it. In saying that, my friends and I have reached that stage in life where we've started to have to make those boring 'personal finance' decisions. More often than not, I've found the same questions asked repeatedly. These questions are often also echoed in the forums here.

As a side project, I've started to pull together answers to those questions. The answers are by no means perfect, but in my humble opinion are much better than the advertisement ridden answers you get from plenty of other 'financial advice' type sites run by big companies focused on profit.

Some of the articles I feel that may be of interest here:

I've love to hear feedback from this community on the site, and maybe even offer some useful advice to some.

All other articles

PS. No ads, no 'courses' or 'seminars' and also no selling of 'eBooks' - just hopefully some useful advice.

Financial

Related Stores

The Money Hackers
The Money Hackers
Third-Party

Comments

  • PAOK11 on 10/11/2017 - 14:32

    Great page will bookmark. I'm working on something similar

    • Associatedkeithality @ The Money Hackers on 10/11/2017 - 19:19

      Thanks! Look forward to seeing yours in the future.

  • donga100 on 10/11/2017 - 14:53
    +1

    I feel like the maths on your rent/buy article is missing some things:

    • Rents tend to increase each year but interest rates remain roughly the same.
    • Paying rent gets you a place to live. Paying interest on a home loan gets you a place to live plus the growth on a $440k investment.
    • There is no point adjusting property growth for inflation because house prices are already the biggest contributor to inflation. The value of cash doesn't increase with inflation and as stated above you wouldn't have had $440k in cash/other investments if you didn't have the mortgage anyway.
    • Seraphin7 on 10/11/2017 - 17:33

      Determining the solution to the rent vs. mortgage problem is practically impossible, at least without going into umpteen numbers of scenarios to illustrate the key issues.

      One thing that does need discussion in this is the fact that there is no such thing as "the" housing market in Australia. There are many, many housing markets dispersed across the country …

      Cities vs. "commuter cities" (e.g. Wollongong) vs. regional vs. rural.

      Inner city vs. inner suburbs vs. outer suburbs.

      Small (studio/1 bed) apartments vs. large (2/3+ bed) apartments/townhouses vs. free standing.

      New vs. established properties.

      High rise vs. low rise apartments.

      Each of the point of intersection on these markets will exhibit different market forces at any point in time. Yes, there will be some common characteristics for many (although, not necessarily all) at any given point in time, but each move with a level of independence over others.

      • Associatedkeithality @ The Money Hackers on 12/11/2017 - 01:01

        Hi Seraphin7,

        You raise some valid points. I'll have a think about how I can extend the article to include the various different housing markets.

        Thanks!

    • Associatedkeithality @ The Money Hackers on 12/11/2017 - 01:00

      Hi Donga,

      Thanks for your feedback. Let me challenge some of your points however:

      • The likelihood of rents increasing or decreasing are the same as the likelihood of interest rates rising or falling. For example, in Perth, the average weekly rental at the moment is about $50-100 less for my area than it was 1-2 years ago

      • Growth on property in the short run is not guaranteed. As for the long run, as mentioned in the article, in the real rate of growth has varied between 1.4 - 4.5% over the last 30 years.

      • The CPI index does not include real estate prices

      I'll try to address each of these in an updated version of this article.

      • donga100 on 12/11/2017 - 06:40

        Respectfully, the likelihood of rents going up is the same as the likelihood of property values going up and as you point out this has been pretty consistent over the last 30 years. The likelihood of interest rates going up is something completely unrelated.

  • donga100 on 10/11/2017 - 15:01

    On the private health insurance page it would be handy to provide a calculator or examples of how much people would pay for the medicare surcharge. For example, if you earn $100k per year you would pay $1k for the levy pre-tax which is equivalent to $630 for someone in that tax bracket. For comparison, the cheapest private health policy I could find using the link on your page was around $1100 per year.

    • Associatedkeithality @ The Money Hackers on 10/11/2017 - 19:22

      A calculator is a great idea.

      Re your search for a policy using the government tool, that's unfortunate nothing cheaper came up. What kind of policy were you after?

      Worth reading our other article on buying and renewing insurance to find a cheaper policy ;)

  • donga100 on 10/11/2017 - 15:04
    +2

    On the extended warranties page it would be useful to consider that spending $150 for an extended warranty on a $1500 computer is actually spending $150 for a warranty on a used 1yr old (at least - depends on manufacturer warranty length) computer worth considerably less than $1500 by that time.

    • Seraphin7 on 10/11/2017 - 17:34

      That is a really good observation, pending what the extended warranty actually provides. I think this would be a good extension to the point in the attached article of having a personal "warranty fund".

    • Associatedkeithality @ The Money Hackers on 10/11/2017 - 19:16

      Good points, I will add them in. Thanks!

  • donga100 on 10/11/2017 - 15:12

    In the new/used car buying comparison I disagree that new car servicing is cheaper, especially if you shop around rather than just going through the dealership. However, I feel that it's worth noting that you will need to replace things like tyres, brakes, wipers, fluids, filters, timing belts, etc. earlier in a used car compared to a new car and the cost of these can be significant.

    • Associatedkeithality @ The Money Hackers on 10/11/2017 - 19:17
      +1

      Valid points, I'll refer them to my guest author who wrote that article for his opinion.

    • AssociatedB-prince @ The Money Hackers on 11/11/2017 - 04:13
      +2

      Thanks for the comment. I am the guest author who wrote this article on car buying.
      I'm not sure how closely you examined the article but I didn't state that servicing for newer cars is cheaper. The article also does already describe that unscheduled maintenance can be expected to be higher for a used car which was the other issue you brought up.
      If you have any further questions please let me know.

      • donga100 on 12/11/2017 - 06:47

        The article states:

        Service costs for the new car over 3 years will be $943 while for the used car it is $1005
        Anyway, don't take this as an attack on the article or website. I think it's great, just had a couple of suggestions.

  • TheycallmeAce on 13/11/2017 - 16:58
    +1

    Great page, definitely bookmarking this!

    • Associatedkeithality @ The Money Hackers on 14/11/2017 - 18:47

      Thanks, great to hear!

Login or Join to leave a comment
Login Join