Shared from a friend? Subscribe or see past wins

The first week of winter hasn’t put a frost on savings accounts. Westpac (yes, a big bank) has added another dose of fertiliser to its market-leading 5.75% rate account by lifting the age restriction from 34 to 40 and the maximum balance to get the top rate from $30k to a generous $150k—a cool 400 per cent increase.

Why? Westpac is clearly sowing the seeds for potential first home buyers who might stay on to take out a mortgage with the bank, but savvy savers know better than to treat their day-to-day bank as an automatic one-stop shop when it comes to something as colossal as a mortgage.

Bank fees are also growing like a beanstalk and not in a good way. My colleague Laine and I worked out households are shelling out an estimated $412 a year in bank fees, according to the latest RBA data.

Fees for what? The biggest culprits last financial year were credit cards and mortgages, which banks already charge you interest on anyway, while transaction account fees are starting to creep up the beanstalk due to a rise in international transaction fees—a 3 per cent (or so) tax most banks slap on any purchase you make in a different currency.
The thing is, bank fees aren’t like death and taxes. Many of them are negotiable and there are almost always fee-free options if you shop around.

Earning over $105k (single) or $210k (family)? You could get stung with the Medicare Levy Surcharge. 

Get your health cover sorted for tax time →

If you don't have private hospital cover by July 1 after your 31st birthday, you'll pay an extra 2% on premiums for 10 years (up to 70% - ouch!). 

 Get quotes today →

Federal government-proposed rebate cuts for over-65s from 1 April, 2027. April premium hikes saw Gold hospital cover jump by $400. 

 Review your policy →

NBN Co announced changes to wholesale pricing from July 1 and some of the biggest providers have already rolled out changes or set a date for the increases.

Lock in a better plan before the increase hits →

Recently, a friend had a nasty surprise when she realised her bank had allowed her account to go overdrawn for two weeks without sending her any notification. Confusingly, when she checked her banking app, she found no obvious way to set up notifications. She did, however, see a message telling her she’d be charged a 20% debit interest rate for each day she was overdrawn. Yikes!

Wanting to avoid the same fate, I checked my own banking app, CBA, to see how its overdraw policy works. I found that if my account dips into the negative and isn’t topped up by midnight, CBA hits me with a flat $15 overdraw fee, plus interest charges for every day it stays overdrawn.

To avoid these fees and charges, jump onto your banking app to turn off the overdraw feature. If you can’t figure out how, then call your bank directly and ask them to do it for you. If you do, just make sure you always have enough money in your account to cover your automated bills. There's no point dodging an overdraw fee from your bank just to get slapped with a late payment penalty from your utility provider or gym.

Karen Yang
Senior Content Production Specialist

Kmart is launching a new venture this month—‘K Home’—featuring its budget-friendly Anko furniture, seemingly in an attempt to take on Swedish furniture giant Ikea. While competition in the market is more than welcome from a consumer point of view, the key test is whether the new K Home line will stand the test of time under daily household wear and tear. It’s probably worth treading this new footprint with caution, at least initially. My kids also want to know what food they’ll be serving at the K-Home cafe, because not much rivals those Swedish meatballs.

Virgin Australia passengers have just 26 days to use their remaining COVID travel credits issued from April 2020 to July 2022 with Virgin reporting $93 million worth of credits remain unclaimed. That’s to book—and travel—by the 30 June deadline. Yes, it’s a clock that’s been ticking for over four years but if you’re in this unclaimed credit bucket, think strategically. Travel is expensive and it’s probably not worth flying just for the sake of using the credits, but the rules are flexible on who can fly and what you can spend your credits on. 

If you’ve got a HECS or HELP debt and you’ve just logged into myGov, you probably have noticed a nasty surprise: it just grew by 2.8%. Even under the relatively new rules that limit the increase to the lesser of inflation and wages growth, watching your balance balloon stings. Since this year’s indexation deadline has already passed, don't panic or rush to dump your life savings into it. HECS is still interest-free, so you’re almost certainly better off crushing any high-interest debt first, but set a calendar alert for May next year and, if you can, make voluntary payments before the next cutoff to beat the clock on the following round of indexation.