Frequently asked questions when buying a home

You've probably heard of a Reverse Mortgage, sometimes called a Home Equity Mortgage. With our aging population, they are becoming more common. Reverse Mortgages can be a good way to free-up money to spend on things you want - provided you're aware of the many pitfalls.

This information is adapted from Consumer Magazine (January/February 2006, Issue 455, Page 23). There’s something every person who uses a bank needs to understand—a bank is a business. It exists to make a profit and it does that by maximising the use of your hard-earned cash. Knowing how they do that could save you money. Here are six things your bank will never tell you:

Credit card can be dangerous! Many people in New Zealand today find themselves buried by inescapable debt that can be traced back to being overzealous in the use of their credit card. S  ure, credit cards are handy. They provide an easy way to purchase things online or if you don't want to carry cash around with you, but it's so easy to forget when you buy something with your card, you are incurring a debt. And, once you get into credit card debt, it can be very difficult to get out of. That's why the team at Futurisk want to remind you of the six credit card traps you need to watch out for:

The team at Futurisk have three rules regarding personal finance:  Spend less than you earn Pay off debt Don't go into debt This article expands on those rules - do these nine things and you need never worry about your finances again.

Life insurances can be pretty confusing. There are so many products out there, and you never quite know which ones are best for you. And then, having decided on the type of insurance, there's the question of how much should you insure for? And when should you start with life insurance? One thing is for sure, however, living without any form of life-based insurance cover leaves your personal and business finances in a dangerous position. One of the most common ways of falling into debt is through the unexpected need to replace a lost or damaged asset that was not insured, and your greatest asset is your ability to earn. If that was suddenly removed from you, debt could quickly follow.

If we were buying a new appliance or vehicle, we'd shop around. If we wanted some new computer gear or were renovating our kitchen, we'd look for the best deal. So why don't we do that with insurance? I  t seems many New Zealanders think of insurance as coming in a fixed package at a fixed price, but there are some practical things you can do to save money on your insurances. Here are six hot tips.

Earlier this year this was a glitch with ANZ’s payment system, and a whole lot of New Zealanders woke up on payday to discover they hadn't been paid. It didn't take long for the issue to be resolved, and everyone was paid by lunchtime, but the ANZ Facebook page was still inundated with complaints and tales of tragedy as people claimed they were now starving, cold and unable to put petrol in their car because of ANZ’s mistake. If you woke up on payday and found yourself in this situation, what would your day be like? Would you be going to work hungry because you couldn't afford to buy food for lunch? Would you have to walk to work because you had no money to pay for petrol or a bus? Or would you just transfer a few dollars from your emergency account and go on your merry way? For many, waking up on pay day to find their account empty should be a wake-up call, and one of the best things you can do if you’re scared of ever being in this situation is to create an emergency account. Most financial gurus and advisers these days recommend having a separate account that’s just for emergencies, and they’re not hard to set up. In fact, most banks will let you do it online. Just log in to your banking website and create a brand new internet account. But having the account is only half the job – now it just needs some money. Because many people live from pay day to pay day, putting a couple of hundred dollars aside into your emergency account is much easier said than done. Instead, consider starting an automatic payment, so every week or fortnight even as little as $5 is transferred into your emergency account without you having to do anything. $5 doesn't sound like much, but within 10 weeks you’ll have more than enough to put petrol in your car and buy some lunch if your pay doesn't come through. One of the key pieces of advice given about keeping an emergency accounts is to make it a little harder to access than your regular accounts. If you had a card in your wallet that had access to your emergency account, the temptation to spend the money would be too great. Instead, make it so that the only way to access that money is to have to transfer it from the special account into your regular account. So next time you need some emergency cash in a hurry, all you’ll need to do is whip out your smartphone, transfer some money and you’ll be away laughing.

There are a number of key things to remember when driving a car: always put on your seat belt, give way to traffic on the right, and make sure you've read the fine print of your insurance policy documents. These days you’d have to be pretty foolish to drive around without insurance. Damaging your car, or even worse, someone else’s, without insurance is a fast-track to debt. But something so many drivers forget is that even having insurance is not always a get-out-of-jail-free card. Your insurance policy will have so many special clauses and exclusions to give your insurer all they need to deny your claims, and put you out of pocket. Here are a few key exclusions to remember.

I remember when I was about Intermediate School age (a long time ago), my mother would give me $20 each fortnight and I’d take it to the local building society. It was the mortgage money. Having taken out a mortgage, my parents faithfully paid back the required sum every fortnight until every dollar of the interest and principal were paid off. No thought was given to ways of saving on those mortgage repayments. These are, however, simple things you can do to speed up your mortgage repayments saving you both money and time. Here are Futurisk’s six tips to help pay off your mortgage faster: