Everyday banking and spending

[imadodgyumpire]

Does my head in.

As little as a few months ago, I was a long time satisfied ING account holder.

I felt good about it and didn't have a care in the world. If ING were dodgy, I wasn't aware and didn't care. If I had ever noticed another person whip out their Orange Everyday debit card for purchases, internally I'd think "They're smart. They know..."

I also had a ME account as a secondary account because of their low rate credit card which I got prior to ING introducing the same product.

Then ING announced they were going to add another condition to get their bonus interest rate. ****.

On top of their other conditions which I could manage, I couldn't guarantee that my Savings Maximiser balance would increase the following month.

Ah well, all good things come to an end. It's disappointing but time to move on and I just happened to find little known MyState Bank. The offered the same bonus savings rate (1.35%), and their conditions were less demanding (% card purchases and depositing $20 a month instead of $1000). Brilliant, sign me up!

But then 2 weeks after I opened accounts with them, MyState cut their savings rate to 1.2%!

That being the case, I may as well just use ME as my main account since they had 1.2% savings bonus as well, for only 4 card purchases.

Then whaddaya know? ME are now getting taken over by BOQ. **** that. On top of which I hadn't noticed their rate went to 1.!%

I spent 2 hours trawling over HSBC's new Global Everyday account to fin the 2% cashback on card purchases wasn't worth it.

The good news was that AMP had a 0.85% savings account with no conditions. They subsequently added a 0.4% with an easy $250 deposit.

The good thing about AMP is that like ING and ME, use can use any ATM. None of this BS free for using the big 4 ATMs or 10,000 available ATMs. Every single one.

All of this while enquiring about Bank Australia, BankVic and Beyond Bank.

This big OP without discussing the transformation of how I go about everyday spending, which has transformed due to my discovery of micro investing. Now I really care about the 50c I save on yoghurt when it's on special. I'll save that for another post though.

 

[ash_1050]

How much cash are you keeping in the bank that the nominal 0.x% difference is worth the time and effort of changing banks for?

 

[faible]

Does my head in.

As little as a few months ago, I was a long time satisfied ING account holder.

I felt good about it and didn't have a care in the world. If ING were dodgy, I wasn't aware and didn't care. If I had ever noticed another person whip out their Orange Everyday debit card for purchases, internally I'd think "They're smart. They know..."

I also had a ME account as a secondary account because of their low rate credit card which I got prior to ING introducing the same product.

Then ING announced they were going to add another condition to get their bonus interest rate. ****.

On top of their other conditions which I could manage, I couldn't guarantee that my Savings Maximiser balance would increase the following month.

Ah well, all good things come to an end. It's disappointing but time to move on and I just happened to find little known MyState Bank. The offered the same bonus savings rate (1.35%), and their conditions were less demanding (% card purchases and depositing $20 a month instead of $1000). Brilliant, sign me up!

But then 2 weeks after I opened accounts with them, MyState cut their savings rate to 1.2%!

That being the case, I may as well just use ME as my main account since they had 1.2% savings bonus as well, for only 4 card purchases.

Then whaddaya know? ME are now getting taken over by BOQ. **** that. On top of which I hadn't noticed their rate went to 1.!%

I spent 2 hours trawling over HSBC's new Global Everyday account to fin the 2% cashback on card purchases wasn't worth it.

The good news was that AMP had a 0.85% savings account with no conditions. They subsequently added a 0.4% with an easy $250 deposit.

The good thing about AMP is that like ING and ME, use can use any ATM. None of this BS free for using the big 4 ATMs or 10,000 available ATMs. Every single one.

All of this while enquiring about Bank Australia, BankVic and Beyond Bank.

This big OP without discussing the transformation of how I go about everyday spending, which has transformed due to my discovery of micro investing. Now I really care about the 50c I save on yoghurt when it's on special. I'll save that for another post though.

You should calculate how much time you've spent on all the above, versus the estimated interest earnt between the different interest rates you're looking at.

Any more than about 2 hours of your time and you're probably worse off over the next 12 months.

Also the balance of your Savings Maximiser only has to go up by any amount, it could be $1.

 

[burge13]

The time people spend on penny-pinching to the extreme to save money versus just changing daily habits is backwards imo

Don't buy a coffee every day, catch the bus rather than pay for parking, take your lunch to work. This will save you $1000+ a year easily
Make sure you're on close to the lowest home loan rate available to save a good chunk

Bigger, easier to do changes that make a real difference. The negligible savings rate of 1.1% to 1.2% won't make one iota of difference to daily life.

 

[ash_1050]

The time people spend on penny-pinching to the extreme to save money versus just changing daily habits is backwards imo

The backwards bit to me is people focusing on minimising every last cent in expenditure rather than focusing on increasing their income. You may be the best saver in the world on $70k/year, but you'd be a hell of a lot happier if you worked to increase that to $90k/year and gave yourself a luxury or two like coffees or a holiday.

 

[Gigantic]

The backwards bit to me is people focusing on minimising every last cent in expenditure rather than focusing on increasing their income. You may be the best saver in the world on $70k/year, but you'd be a hell of a lot happier if you worked to increase that to $90k/year and gave yourself a luxury or two like coffees or a holiday.

Easier said than done though. Increasing income by +20k per year can be difficult if you're working in an industry with little flexibility for negotiating your salary, or you simply aren't able to run a business or side hustle. Or you could look towards high yield dividend stocks but that'll take most people years to build to get to that sort of yield.

To me, it seems logical to 1. minimise your expenses by changing habits, 2. increase your income, and then after doing those or those options are exhausted should you start looking at things like tax efficiencies e.g. negative gearing. I see a lot of people chasing after negative gearing as if spending $1 to save 30c is an astute decision.

 

[NonPhixion]

-If you catch the Tram to work, not touching on with the myki can save a lot of money over the course of a month. Not so easy when catching the train however.
- Bringing lunch + coffee to work
- Find the cheapest possible phone plan & abuse the fk out of any public wifi - use this time to download sh!t you want for later on.
- Drive an economical car that doesn't guzzle fuel.
- Download 1/2 price and use it to supermarket shop accordingly.

Small things

 

[The Edukator]

Jokes on OP of he's worried about earning an extra 1-1.5%pa in interest.

 

[MirkosMangle]

I have no idea about the rates etc etc. But you made me think a lot. I guess the first think i gonna do on Monday - call credit one bank phone number and ask them lots of different questions. Good luck customer service)