Skip to main content

$500 in 5 minutes (here's how)

A 5m 19s phone call to my bank earnt me an extra $497.73

A 5m 19s phone call to my bank earnt me an extra $497.73

Term deposits can be a good way to save. They often pay more than saving accounts if you are able, and willing, to lock away money for a fixed amount of time.

Specials

Most banks will have a 'special offer' on one of their term deposit rates. For example the 7-month term deposit might have a far better rate than most other lengths. Seems like a good deal.

The Catch

At the end of 7 months the default option is to re-invest for another 7 months. But hang on - what if the 7 months rate is now terrible and the 9 months rate is really good? Doesn't matter. The default will be to invest for 7 months at the new terrible rate.

It's a bit like the lazy tax I mentioned before.

Big money for little work

When your term deposit comes due, take notice. Check out the interest rates for different term lengths - if term deposits are still your preferred option. A branch visit or a phone call is enough to switch you to the term deposit length that now has the best deal.

At the moment the difference can be as much as 0.65% - even just between a 5 and 7 month term. If you've got $40,000 saved, that's an easy $260 difference each year.

After my phone call I'll now make an extra $497.73 this year.

Why I'm talking finance

Money is the key to living a simpler more meaningful life. Working part-time I've had so many people say they wish they could do the same but can't afford it.

Smarter spending and investing wisely can give you freedom and options. You can choose a job you love rather be forced into one for money. You can find yourself out of work for a while and still be OK. If you want to retire earlier than the government pension age you can do so. If you want to work part-time or have time off between jobs you can do that too.

That's why I'm doing a few finance-related posts this year. Subscribe at the top of the page to be alerted to new posts.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What to do with 128 pens?

I never need buy a pen again. Ever. The pen round-up. I searched the house for pens and gathered them up. We had 128. Woah - that's more than I expected. Then it was test-time. (You can get a lot done watching summer sport ;). Good ones went on the table. Broken ones in the box. Pen operations I saved a few 'broken' pens, by taking working insides and matching them with functional outsides. Particularly much-loved pens, for sentimental reasons, were given a life-extending 'ink transplant'. Final Tally We ended up with 67 broken pens and 61 good ones. And about 10 pencils. What to do with 67 broken pens? In my city Biome recycles pens . It's as easy as taking them into the store and dropping them into the giant collection box. Decluttering and recycling together - I love it. A lifetime of pens An average pen writes 45,000 words. So that dedicated shopping list pen on the fridge could write a 20-word shopping list for 43 years. Our 61 pens repre...

Happiness: 13 science-based hacks

I've recently been doing a happiness course through Yale University and am excited to find so many proven methods for increasing our happiness. Here's a brief summary of some of them. You can find out more and go deeper by doing the free online course . My previous article was about our brain often making mistakes in picking the things it thinks will make us happy. So the first part here is quick happiness hacks to get around that. The second part is about wanting the right parts of the things our brains think will make us happy. Then there's the course experiments I did - to 'rewire' our habits for greater happiness. 1. Quick happiness hacks Experiences make us happier that things Stuff doesn't make us as happy as we think. "A new car sticks around to disappoint you. But a trip to Europe is over. It evaporates. It has the good sense to go away, and you are left with nothing but a wonderful memory." Studies show that (compared to material pur...

How to waste a year's wages

A friend recently asked me why it is that so many people (on good incomes) are struggling to save. Often the big three money areas are housing, transport and food. In one sense these are necessary items. But what we spend on them is often way more than necessary. I crunched some numbers on how much extra my wife and I could spend on these things - if for some reason we wanted to burn our money. 1. Housing Our apartment is fairly nice, but also cost-effective. I've mentioned how choosing it saves us $1,800 per year , compared to a similar one we saw. The high end of 2-bedroom apartments in our suburb is $305 per week more than our apartment. Not $305 per week. $305 per week more than ours is. I cannot get over that. Sure it's new and modern-looking, but that's a lot of money. It's an extra $15,860 per year above what we pay. 2. Transport The Australian Automobile Association lists the costs of owning and running a car. It includes many often-overlooked c...