Hi folks,

In light of the recent immigration boom, i'd be curious to know what what people think or have experienced in Australia.

I'm a kiwi myself and travel often to australia for work + family. My interactions are low outside of a small bubble but in NZ everyone paints Australia as the go-to place for wealth, life and career.

Is it really the case? do all migrants that come to Australia ( from whatever country) have a good time/are more successful relative to being in there own home country.

O Captain! My Captain!

My Bank Australia and Zip Pay were both rejected. I have a feeling the answer is "You're screwed, sorry" but I still wanna get a zero fee credit card purely that I can use to buy R18+ games on Steam.

No intention of using it. Just want the cheapest, easiest credit card I can get that will let me prove to Steam I'm over 18.

Cheers.

Put this together before the Health Dept's specialist fees consultation closes (12pm Monday 19 Oct). The survey questions focus on what doctors charge and barely ask about insurers.

Have your say here:

https://consultations.health.gov.au/medicare-benefits-and-digital-health-division/options-to-address-excessive-fees/

Sample answer (please put it in your own words, identical submissions tend to get counted as one):

These questions focus on what doctors charge. They barely ask who gains. Your own paper (section 6.4) says withholding the Medicare rebate would leave patients out of pocket while the doctor keeps the full fee. Rule it out. Taxpayers give insurers $7.56 billion a year, and insurers made $1.12 billion profit in the nine months to March 2026. None of this is in the questions. Before penalising patients, make insurers publish where every premium dollar goes, and require them to pay back at least 90 cents in every dollar.

Not affiliated with any party, insurer or lobby group. Sources are on the last image, with links in the comments. Happy to be corrected.

How much do you reckon Coles and Woolworths make from paper bags alone? They’re now 30 cents each, and if the average shopper buys 2–5 bags a week, that adds up pretty quickly across millions of transactions. Even after taking out the cost of making the bags, I wonder how much they’re actually pocketing from this. Has anyone got any figures or estimates?

I bring my own bags but the major supermarkets have released publicly available data that shows that the sales of these bags are equivalent to 2-5 sold per customer per week my guess would be this is something to do with home delivery that you cannot opt out

Spare a thought for all these poor REA that now have to actually work to sell a house.

Ok Tightwads I need some strategies, with the rise in costs of everything (I don't need to break it down because we are all feeling it). I need help.

What is everyone cutting and more importantly what are some hacks for saving ? The tighter the better.

My partner (35m) and I (36f) have been in a relationship for 10 months. I have been renting for 3 years prior to meeting him. He and I are in different financial situations. I finally see a chance to make a move on a small unit or townhouse in the outer suburbs using the government help to buy scheme (this scheme does have genuine downsides but after careful consideration I have found it is right for me based on my feelings, personality and values). He on the other hand is in credit card debt with little savings and he told me that his credit rating isn't the best. When I met him, he was living at home with his parents. He has been living with me over the last 6 months and not contributing to rent or bills. He buys groceries here and there and is loving in other ways and really spoils me on special occassions. He has made offers to help me when he can. I've been feeling a lot of resentment towards him lately. I told him of my interest to get out of the rental market and secure my own place. I worry about my financial future and security. I feel vulnerable as a 36 year old female continuously paying rent. He says he doesn't want me to buy my own place and that and if I proceed with that decision then he will not stay in my own home with me. He has the firm belief that couples should buy together, but, beliefs and financial facts are different. I am feeling really torn and don't know what to do. He says that he will be ready in 12 months to buy with me and that we should buy together but I am not optimistic given his income, work ethic, and his spending and saving habits. Especially when I look at his pattern living with me over the last several months. At times early in our relationship, he has asked me for money before for his bills until I drew up some form boundaries and now he doesn't ask. He often worries about his bills. I don't know where his money goes. He has resentment towards his parents for not helping him enough. I do love him and care about him deeply, but I feel like I shouldn't have to delay my goals just because he is not ready and for a relationship this soon. I worked really hard and made a lot of sacrifices to have the base I do now. He wants us to move and rent an apartment somewhere else as we both heavily dislike where I am living now. He wouldn't be able to afford to rent an apartment on his own. However, with his finances I am worried about signing up for a lease with him and risk paying 2.3k+ per month for us if he fails to pay his share, and losing away a portion of my income that I will never get back and delaying my goals in the process. What do you think I should do?

hey guys,

im 21 F, and i’ve consistently had about 1.5k in zip debt since the age of 18.

i got basically kicked out of home at 17, and have barely made ends meet since then so have just constantly been in the cycle of paying some off, then being short on money because of payments, so then having to use it again.

does any one have similar experiences? do you have advice? i feel like such a failure because im so young and already have debt.

thank you

I am currently with Up for personal banking and I love it, recently set up a Westpac Business One account for my Sole Trader business and I'm not a fan so far.

I don't like that when I take transactions on Saturday's and Sunday's, the transaction shows as the settlement date on the following Monday (but I can get over this), what I am mainly looking for is a bank account that will show the transaction timestamp (for incoming PayIDs), in my nature of business at market stalls it's very handy for me to be able to cross check my transactions using their timestamps on the day.

This seems like such a simple thing and I have no idea why this would be left out of a banking app.

Can anyone who uses a NAB business account or any other business accounts confirm if they have this feature?

I have recently met an Australian man that said he made his large fortune by investing in an Australian company ( open cast mining ) . When I asked the man the name of the company he invested in , he just said that I would not know the name. I have a feeling that what the man is telling me , may just be BS . I know the mans full name , but I'm not sure where I can search on line for information on a possible Australian company ( using the mans full name ) . Any suggestions as to where I could search Australian company records , that may show the investors names / shareholders .

I'm a first year Bachelor of Commerce student right now, and I'm running into issues where I'm learning financial theory, but I'm missing a lot of real-world context when it comes to discussions. Part of this is that, because of the Adelaide Uni merger and some poor scheduling, I've been forced to take program electives for second-year students. I feel like I'm lacking baseline understanding of finance and investing, and am sort of playing catch-up. Especially when there are discussions about real-world companies and situations, and I feel I should know more than I do.

Was wondering how people here keep up-to-date with financial news, and how they keep it entertaining? If there are shows, podcasts, or books you'd recommend, or enjoy?

Resources for independently learning financial theory would be even moreso appreciated, but I don't think those are quite as popular, lol.

Hello. Im 52 F who loves her job so plans to work until 65. I have about 28K in various ETFs and want to buy a more Asia focused ETF. Which one(s) are good for a 10year plus investor. Ive looked at ASIA and AIA but I’m sure there are others.

Hi guys, unsure how to word this title properly. Hopefully you guys understand what I mean and don't flame me in the comments, my brain is all shot from everything going on this week as I'm sure a lot of y'all can relate.

---SKIP THIS PART IF YOU DON'T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT THE CAR ISSUES---
I'm 19F, living with my mother, it's just us two girls on a property (farm) and we have/had this cute little Hyundai Accent (it lasted us about 4ish years? My stepdad loved it when he was alive).
Yesterday we wanted to dip into a local store (local for us is 20, 30, or 45 mins away depending on which town, we chose the 45min drive due to it having better shops!) and we were about 10ish minutes away from Northam before mum noticed the car was running hot, long story short, the radiator cap was missing (it wasn't when we left so maybe it flew off during road-works?) when we got out to check on it, some lovely dudes pulled over and tried to help us by pouring water into it when it was running and oil began to spit out of it and it looks all shit... when I'm on my phone I can attach a photo of the radiator if anyone wants to have a look for whatever reason...

---CAR ISSUE PART DONE---

So now we're worried because that was our only working car (we have a Black Holden Colarado ute which has something wrong with the battery terminals, I have no idea with cars so... oof) and now we're sort of stranded for now until we get a mechanic to have a look at it and that's not until Monday.

My mum wants to go big or go home with a car since we're thinking of selling a large New Holland tractor, she would like a GWM car, something about a "Jolion" is what she's really after, whereas I'm not sure if we can cover those expenses (she gets $669 from my allowance and she also is on disability pension) so I just wanted to ask some people about their opinions on this?

Is it best to get a loan for this (if so how do car loans work? I'm just worried about going into debt since I don't want to live with my mum forever) or is it best to dip into savings for this? (If so, I don't have nearly enough, I got like $5.3K and my mum has $0 in savings).

Thank you guys.

---UNRELATED RAMBLES, SKIP THIS IT'S UNIMPORTANT!---

Unrelated, but if I could drive (she won't let me drive because she doesn't want me to break the car but at the same time she also doesn't want me to not drive because she's had strokes in the past and wants me not to be stranded) I'd want a hearse. I freaking love hearse's so bad, I'd love to put a coffin in one and then have a skeleton propped up in it so anyone driving behind me just about shits their pants lmao.

This question is to those of you that have done a few more rotations around the sun. I've been in the work force for only15 or so years but it feels like for as long as I've been working, every industry has been having issues with pay raises. Teachers, APS Workers, Nurses, Construction workers.

Obviously negotiation is always involved with awards, but it makes me wonder if larger raises were the norm say 20+ years ago?

What was income growth like 20 years ago compared to what we have today? Is it essentially just the same?

I am just curious.

I currently hold a low income healthcare card as I'm a full-time student and am unemployed. I recently got a job at my uni's student life office, which is casual (most likely would be 3-4 hours a week on a regular basis) but pays around $43/h. I am intellectually and physically disabled so I rely heavily on this card to buy several types of medication regularly, and I am worried that I will not be able to apply again when it expires in February. I know there is information available on the Services NSW website but I am struggling to understand and hoping someone could put it in simple terms for me.

Thank you in advance!

Does anyone know a website where you can calculate savings from an offset account but can update it as you put more money in? Found a couple of banks that have them on their websites but they aren’t exactly what I’m looking for. I’m sure there’s a way to do it in excel and I’ll resort to watching YouTube to figure it out but I’m not an excel kinda person. Just looking for a way to see week by week how much I’ll be shrinking my loan by buffing the offset account.

I review developer tools obsessively as a hobby, which means my personal finance setup gets the same treatment. Over the years I've tried YNAB, Buckets, Actual, Firefly III self-hosted on a VPS, and lately a plain spreadsheet again. The irony isn't lost on me for someone who reconciles client ledgers professionally. There's always a moment around month three where the friction wins and I revert to checking account balances nervously.

What I actually need is something that handles dual income gracefully. PAYG salary plus lumpy freelance invoices means most envelope budgeting assumes a predictability my cash flow doesn't have. Some months I want to allocate a surplus aggressively toward tax reserves or voluntary super. Other months I'm drawing from reserves and the software treats it like failure.

I've landed on a hybrid for now. Business account runs through PocketSmith for forecasting, personal stays in a spreadsheet, and I reconcile them manually fortnightly on Sunday mornings with coffee. It's not elegant but it's honest.

Curious whether others with irregular income have found a system that actually stuck past the novelty phase, or if the answer is simply accepting more manual intervention than the app stores promise.

Hi,

I’m looking at buying an ICE car and keep hearing people say to “put it through the business” or buy it under the ABN for the tax benefits.

I’m a sole trader with an ABN, but I’m trying to understand what the actual benefit is compared with simply buying/financing the car personally.

Realistic usage:
- Majority personal use, including driving from home to one main workplace
- Maybe once a month genuine work travel between different workplace

For people who have done this, what can you actually claim by having the vehicle associated with the business?

Is the benefit mainly:
- depreciation
- interest on finance
- fuel, rego, insurance, servicing etc.

And presumably all of those deductions still need to be apportioned based on the actual business use percentage anyway?

If 95% of the vehicle is effectively private use, is there actually much point putting it under the ABN/business at all, or is buying it personally and claiming the legitimate business kilometres/percentage generally safer?