Posted in Financial Planning

Is Your Budget Accurate? In order for your budget to be a successful tool in developing your financial plan, it needs to be accurate. Here are some tips to help make your budget more accurate: Before you start, obtain some source documents from which to obtain actual expenditure (e.g. credit card statements; bank account statements; bill notices; rental statements). Separate your expenses into categories (e.g. household; vehicles; education; debts [c...

How to Budget When You're Having a Baby Budgeting for a newborn baby is key to reducing stress on the family. The family's income may be lower due to mum not working leading up to, during and after pregnancy Detailed cash flow planning is a must to ensure sufficient monies are available to meet the family expenses You should revise your expenditure budget to include costs of newborn baby (you can use our budget template) You should include hospita...

Budgeting:  How to make it simple In order to have an effective budgeting system, you need to make it easy to follow and implement.  We recommend not having too many bank accounts - it over complicates the budgeting system.  You only need 3 bank accounts: A day-to-day bank account; A bills account; and A special purpose account (i.e. holidays). All income should be received into the day-to-day bank account and then distributed to the bil...

Are you a small business or sole trader?  Do you know your rights and responsibilities? The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) on 11 January 2018 published a new guide for small businesses. If you engage in buying or selling goods or services you must comply with the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (CCA). The guide is designed to help small businesses understand their key rights and responsibilities under the CCA and the Australian Consumer Law...

Do you know what trauma insurance is? Recently we've been asking friends if they know what trauma insurance is.  The feedback is that they are really not sure what it covers you for. We all know someone who has been touched by cancer or a heart attack or MS - well if that person had trauma insurance then they could receive a lump sum payment.   This lump sum payment could be put towards: your medical expenses (not covered by private health or Medicare...