WOULD YOU LIKE TO pocket an extra $39,000 when you sell your home? If the idea appeals it's worth considering "staging" your home when you next sell. Home staging has been big in the US for some time, but is a relatively new concept in Australia. Put simply, it is preparing a property for sale with the aim of making ...

THE MAIN RECOMMENDATIONS of the Cooper review revolve around something called "MySuper" - tightly regulated default super funds. The idea is that only such plain vanilla, low-cost products, as defined and regulated by the federal government, should be allowed to be a default fund.The thought I imagine raising perspiration on the foreheads of Australia's super fund managers is MySuper products ...

WHEN IT COMES TO budgeting it's not how much you earn that matters, it's how much you spend. And thanks to Lifestyle Planner, this month Money has an exclusive offer of up to five months' free "Gold" membership covering an online budgeting and cash flow management program (valued at $110) that'll see you take control of your spending and be ...

THE PROPOSALS MADE for superannuation by the federal government as part of its 2010-11 budget announcements, if implemented, will have a significant impact on the long-term retirement savings of every Australian employee.By far the biggest impact will be the result of lifting the compulsory superannuation guarantee contributions that employers have to pay from the current 9% of an employee's salary ...

EXPECTING HER fourth child any day now, Carolyn Creswell is glowing with health and humour. Whether that's attributable to her pregnancy or her diet, who'd know? For the 36-year-old founder of Carman's Fine Foods, the novelty of pregnancy wore off long ago. She wants the wait to be over, smiling ruefully: "I'm kinda ready for it." The company she founded ...

Professionally managed investment funds can be the way to go if you don't have the time or expertise to manage your own investments. For a fee, the professionals do the work for you. Theoretically, a full-time fund manager should be able to produce a better return than a part-time investor.Morningstar (www.morningstar.com.au), a leading global provider of investment research, supplies our ...

CATALPA RESOURCES (CAH) IS A relatively safe gold punt in which investors could realistically hope for a share price gain of at least 50% over the next 12 months. That will depend on the maintenance of the gold price around its current level of $1400 an ounce and no production hitches after the ramp-up to production over the past two ...

IF YOU'RE UNHAPPY WITH SERVICE YOU received or a product you bought, do you sit back and say nothing, or speak up? According to the TMI/SOCAP Complaint Culture Survey in 2005, only 44% of customers said they complain "more than half the time when they are unhappy with a product or service. Too much trouble, lack of time and lack ...

FOR INVESTORS IN A PUBLICLY listed company, its AGM, or annual general meeting, is basically what it sounds like - an annual meeting, open for all shareholders in the company to attend.At the AGM, the key attendees, in addition to the shareholders, are the company chairman and board of directors, and often members of the senior management are present. The ...

THE SHAREMARKET continued its rocky ride on poor economic news from the US and Europe. After weeks of falling on disappointing US employment news, a housing relapse and manufacturing woes, the local market rose on signs of a US consumer recovery, the prospect of good US company earnings and some optimism about the European debt crisis.It was helped by a ...

YOU WOULD THINK A SAVINGS account that provided tax concessions, and bonus contributions from the federal government, would be an instant success. Not so. The First Home Saver Account is proof that sometimes you need a couple of launches to get it right - and even then it's not perfect!The government estimated 730,000 accounts would be opened within the scheme's ...

GENEROUS TAX CONCESSIONS ARE enjoyed by superannuation investors but anyone running their own self-managed fund still needs to make sure they don't pay more tax than necessary. One risk that can be removed by astute management is the possibility of being hit with a legitimately avoidable capital gains tax (CGT) bill. It is even possible to use your fund to ...

IS IT JUST ME OR IS LIFE GETTING increasingly expensive? Things were pretty tough in the finance sector last year, so I was OK with the CPI adjustment to my pay. But, while I know electronics have never been so cheap, food and other essentials are really expensive. I am sure they have moved up well above inflation (CPI) level. ...

INCENTIVES FOR GOING GREEN ARE A big hit. Over the past three years Australians have put more than 100,000 solar panel units on their rooftops and 1 installed 135,000 new solar hot water systems, according to Penny Wong, minister for climate change and energy efficiency. I The federal government has promised that 20% of Australia's electricity will come from renewable ...

We're getting bigger. No, I don't just mean our tummies. The human race is getting taller - as well as wider and heavier. So we need larger cars while we want them to be more frugal, without sacrificing performance or equipment of course. For every automotive need there is an automotive solution, as Skoda proves with the Superb wagon.At more ...

A recent UK study predicted the consumer navigation market will triple over the next five years. More and more people are throwing out their old, dog-eared back-seat street directories in favour of slick dashboard-mounted GPS units. And why wouldn't they? Once the privilege of wealthy drivers, GPS receivers have tumbled in price over the past five years while features have ...

INVESTING IN LAND CAN BE worthwhile in the longer-term, but a big drawback is that it rarely provides any sort of income while you hold it. And so you cannot claim the deductions you could with a rental property, such as interest on borrowings, depreciation and maintenance. The investment potential of land is often ignored - as pointed out by ...

HAVING A BABY IS EXCITING FOR families but there's no denying it is expensive. And with the potential drop from two incomes to one this can place an even bigger strain on the family budget. That's why it's important to be financially prepared for the pitterpatter of little feet.The first step is to at least estimate how much money you'll ...

Buying a property is just the first step of property investing. One big decision you must make is whether to manage it yourself or whether to employ a real estate agent. Given you'd pay a managing agent 7% to 10% of the rent, it's tempting to go it alone. But it may not be as easy as you think. Getting ...

RECENT MONTHS HAVE PROVIDED investors with a sharp reminder of the continued uncertainty afflicting the world's main sharemarkets, in the process highlighting the need to at least consider diverting some money to assets that have the potential to perform well when shares are falling. One group of investments that promised to do so but which, in many cases, failed to ...

COMMENTATORS STILL see the risk of a double-dip recession in the US and there have been mixed company results, but upbeat earnings reports from some key US corporations, including Alcoa and Intel, have improved the mood.The Australian sharemarket does not look overpriced. If anything, some stocks are perhaps 10% underpriced on price-earnings measures, assuming their soon to be released 2009-10 ...

IF YOU'RE IN THE MARKET FOR good deal on a personal loan, car loan or credit card, it can pay to think "mutual". The term, mutual, broadly describes the structure of credit unions, building societies and the nation's handful of friendly societies, whereby the members, who are also the customers, own the organisation.For many of us, a personal loan or ...

I'm 38 and my wife Carol is 49. We have $212,000 owing on our mortgage and we're paying 7.44%pa interest [variable rate). We've had the ban for only two years [we borrowed $228,000) and our property is worth about $380,000.I have $38,000 in an industry super fund and my wife has $174,000 in super. We earn roughly the same salary ...

A $300,000 HOME LOAN with a standard variable rate from a major bank will cost you $2074 in monthly repayments and around $445,400 in interest over a 30-year term. Qualify for one of their "packaged loans" and both repayments and interest fall substantially - $1932 a month in repayments and $395,355 in interest.Go with a lender you've probably never heard ...

Q. I My mother and father-in-law gave us $3116 for our eldest son and $2773 for our younger daughter to invest for when they get older [say 21]. Our kids are five and three. As I understand it, if you invest in a normal rapid saver account with a bank there is a limit to the interest earned before the ...