But wait... there's less!

If you're on a low-to-middle income, the Australian government will give you up to $500 co-contribution towards your retirement. Here's how to get it. Check your eligibility. What counts as "low-to-middle income"? Right now, people earning under $39,837 can get up to the full $500. People earning up to $54,837 can get at least part of it. There's some other technical eligibility rules , including that you are 70 or younger, have lodged your tax return (to verify your income) and that 10% of your income comes from employment or running a business. Not sure why that last rule exists, but it does. Oh, and here's the one that stops most people from getting their free money... Start saving yourself There's a reason it's called co- contribution. To get the money you have to put some of your own money into your superannuation. Some people don't like doing this. But really it's just giving money to your future self. It doesn't includ...

The watch-spend-work treadmill from the Story of Stuff. Ads tell us to buy things. We buy them. We go to work to earn back the money. Then the cycle repeats. Locking down the treadmill In recent times, the only shops open have been the "essential services". For once we could only buy what we actually need. That's a significant change from usual times, and (after a brief surge of stockpiling) our spending has gone way down. The treadmill strikes back Of course the online world means that we can purchase most things even when stores are closed. Advertising and business love smartphones. For them it's like having a cash register in every home. In normal times there's a gap between when we see and ad and when we make a purchase. Marketers like to close that gap because time allows us the chance to realise that the purchase isn't worth it. Purchase distancing In 2020 we all know that creating distance protects our physical health. The same things appl...

Some books provide a wealth of advice. The $1000 project has basically one idea - but it's good. Why don't we have more money? It's not like we don't earn money. At the average Australian salary of $75k, we'd earn a million dollars by 35. According to author (and financial advisor) Canna Campbell, people who find this out wonder "where has all my money gone?" . Well, it's not about salary. It's what you do with it. Pretend savings So often we 'save' money - a bargain at the grocery store, taking a packed lunch to work, or getting a lower rate on our mortgage . Other times we get a bit of extra money - some over-time at work, a tax refund, selling something online . So where does all this money go? Often we spend it on something else. "I saved $50 on X, so I can afford to blow $50 on Y" is often the way we rationalise it. Clearly that's no actual saving at all. What's the answer? Step 1 - Canna sets up an extra ...

For a sci-fi movie set in 2169, "In Time" is remarkably similar to the choices we face today. The premise Future humans are genetically engineered to stop physically aging at 25. Then their life-clock (built into their forearm) starts counting down from 1 year. They'll die at 26 unless they add more time to their clock. As Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) describes it, Time is now the currency. We earn it. We spend it. While the wealthy have all the time they need, Will lives in the ghetto, where people "just want to wake up with more time than there are hours in the day" because when the clock reaches zero, that's it. Spending Time Characters earn extra time by getting paid or by passing it between people. They lose time as their clock ticks down or when they buy things. So is a purchase worth the time lost? With less than a day on their life-clock is it worth giving up 4 minutes of life to pay for a coffee? Is it worth losing years of life to have ...

Cola wars? Not really. Both companies win. Perhaps it's the people who lose. Australian viewers can see it on SBS On-Demand until 26 April. It's retitled "Drink Wars" to sound less American. I'm fairly cynical about most advertising. This documentary, showing how cola advertising makes these companies 11-figure sums of money, just by selling brown sugary water, reinforced my view. Here's what I learnt: Big money Coke spends $6 billion a year on marketing. Pepsi is almost identical at $5.8 billion. At first we might think that their efforts cancel each other out, but it's more likely that the combined effect makes us buy even more of the stuff. The "Pepsi generation" In the 60s , Pepsi targeted the youth market with the phrase "Pepsi generation". Your parents drink Coke but the next generation is cool and drink Pepsi. They did it again in 1983 with Michael Jackson , and in the late 90's with the Spice Girls . It seems...

Suddenly we're spending a lot more time at home. Sometimes we're unsure what to do with our time. We didn't choose for this to happen, but we can choose how we deal with it. Shutdown Schedule Here's my daily planner template. It's flexible so feel free to move things around and put other things in. The main idea is that it gives you a default activity to be doing at any given time. Click the image for a larger version to download, and see below for more details. Key Actions I've designed this to give us the things we'll miss while being at home all the time. Purpose Find a project that you want to work on. Time will pass quicker if you're working towards a goal. There are some suggestions in the planner. You may have some of your own. Joy Events and activities have been cancelled, but we can make our own fun. I've included some time for playing (or listening to) music, playing games (I still love Uno) or watching a movie. You might choose...

To stimulate the economy during these strange times the Australian government is allowing people to raid their superannuation accounts. They'll let eligible people take out $10,000 this financial year (before 30 June) and a second $10,000 after 1 July. Why "early super access" is a bad idea While there may be an incredibly small number of people who could benefit from this, for the vast majority it seems to me to be a terrible idea. Here's why... 1. You'll pay a 37% "desperation tax" Superannuation money is invested in the sharemarket (among other things). For some it's 100% in the shares, for others it's a bit less. This morning the Australian sharemarket was at 4,564. Back on 20 Feb it was 7255. That's a drop of 37.1%. Basically, shares are going cheap. So if you own shares (and you do, through your superannuation) this is a terrible time to cash them in because you'll get a rather low amount of cash for them. If you've...

It's 2169 and people are genetically engineered to stop aging at 25. Time has replaced money as a currency. Each person has a clock on their arm that counts down the minutes they have left to live. Why would I watch this? I'm not watching for the action scenes, or for Justin Timberlake, or Johnny Galecki. I'm watching because in my view the premise is not too far from reality (except the genetic engineering bit). How so? We do all have a certain number of hours on this planet - though we don't know how many. We do spend these hours to buy things, or status; or at least to get cash to buy things and status. In the movie and in life time ticks away. How do we spend it? What would we do if we had more of it? What would we do if we had more than we could possibly use for ourself? Where can I see it For Australians, it will be on Channel 93 (Go!) at 7.30 tonight. Tomorrow I'll write again - once I've actually seen it.

Electricity is one of those bills that just keeps coming. Or is it? We've just received our first $0 monthly bill. So how did we do it? Low usage and good prices Even as a couple we use a bit less than the average 1-person household. Also we're with Powershop who have pretty good prices. This month would have been $80, except... Special offer When we signed up, the offer included a few monthly $25 discounts. This one took our bill down to $55. Extra bonuses Instead of spending big money on TV ads, Powershop gets new customers by offering sign-up discounts. When someone signs up through our special link they get $75 of credit and so do we. Last month my cousin took up this great offer. $75 for her, $75 for us. That took our bill to zero, with some extra credits left over to reduce next month's bill.

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...