With the recent global uncertainty surrounding Brexit & the European Union, the Australian Dollar has continued to delve into some less than predictable waters. Coupled with Donald Trump’s continued trade war with China, there are a number of global external factors having a negative impact on our Aussie Dollar.  

Meanwhile with household debt increasing and house prices appearing to start to take a slump. Over the past few months, the Australian Dollar has started to decline against some of the more popular international currencies. In this article, we review what impact this is having on Australians planning on heading overseas. After all, there is nothing worse than feeling short-changed when you go and convert your AUD for foreign currency and feel like you can’t afford to go on holiday at all.
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Prospective car buyers are in for “excellent deals” this August, Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries chief executive Tony Weber said last week during the release of new vehicle sales data for July 2019.

A total of 83,184 new vehicles were sold. While year-to-date growth is still down 7.7%, this is better than June’s 8.4%.

From $1,000 in factory bonuses on Hyundai’s Tucson range, to a $6,000 discount off Fiat’s Abarth 124 Spider and the $44,990 drive-away price of Holden’s Colorado LSX, today’s buyers have so many options to choose from. ... (read more)

By Kate Browne

Nothing unravels a blossoming relationship quite like a bad credit history. Seriously!

Ok I know what you’re thinking “yeah right sure finance lady, it’s not about how you look or how you come across personality-wise or even if you are a dog or cat person it’s all about your credit report…give me a break.” And well that might be true, bear with me…. If you are going on a date it just might be worth checking your credit report – as well as the mirror – before heading out the door. ... (read more)

Every day countries publish economic reports, meetings of Central Banks are held, as well as governors give speeches. These events usually occur at a scheduled time. To keep abreast of the upcoming events traders use an economic calendar where the time of their release and the degree of importance are displayed.

An important economic event can significantly change the market price of the asset in a matter of minutes. Traders respond to news reports in different ways. Some traders expect such news and recommend not to miss the opportunity to benefit, while others stop trading before the releases and wait for the market to calm down. ... (read more)

When it comes to aboriginal funerals, it is an event that is highly valued by the Aboriginal people. Often, ceremonies related to funerals can go on for several days and even weeks. In more intense ceremonies, the children might even be absent from school in order to take part in these very valuable communal events. The ceremonies include multiple dances and songs, which have their varied structures and meanings. In order for all these take place, the families will surely incur expenses. This is where the importance of funeral planning comes into the picture.

Make a difference

As humans, we are always busy making one plan or another, especially when it has to do with everyday, weekly, monthly, or annual events that bring us success and happiness. A higher percentage of people never take the time to consider funeral planning, whether for themselves or their loved ones. Although it is not a pleasant topic for thought or discussion, a funeral is a significant part of everyday living and should be given due attention. This is especially true when it comes to the financial aspects of conducting funerals, which might put a whole lot of stress on your loved ones on top of their grief.

The importance of making funeral plans

There are several reasons why you should consider a funeral plan, these include but are not limited to the following;

It Reduces Financial Burdens: Especially if you happen to be the breadwinner of your household. Knowing how much you love your family, it would surely break your heart to allow them to be saddled with the financial burden of handling your funeral. On the other hand, buying funeral plans for other members of the family also eliminates the issue of funeral costs, which might just add to the grief the family is dealing with.

It Makes Cash Available: Most times, it takes weeks and months of paper work before the dependants of a deceased person can have access to the funds left behind by the deceased. This however, will not be an issue if there is a funeral plan in place. With the beneficiary’s demise, payment is usually made within 48 hours, leaving the family members with adequate cash to start the burial preparations without wasting any time.

It Helps Loved Ones Get Closure: In the aboriginal culture, giving a loved one a befitting funeral leaves the loved ones fulfilled. With funerals being a part of the grieving process, a deceased person’s loved ones are able to find closure knowing that their departed family member was given a befitting burial. With a proper funeral plan, a person’s loved ones can bid them a heart-warming goodbye.

Other Funeral Expenses Can Be Settled: Depending on the type of plan opted for, the payout might go a lot farther in helping the family cater for other related funeral expenses. Some of these expenses include but are not limited to transportation for guests, the ceremony, the headstone, and other relevant aspects.

Additional Support Is Made Available: A good number of companies go the extra mile to offer more than just financial assistance to a grieving family. There are a variety of other kinds of support which includes but are not limited to legal assistance, bereavement counselling and proper organising of the funeral. This way, the family members are able to heal quicker and better from the loss of their loved one.

Availability of Future Financial Support: With a good funeral plan, there might be the option for offering the bereaved family a set financial support for several months after the funeral. This option is available to anyone who happens to be the breadwinner of his or her family. With this fund, the family are able to offset bills and certain necessities like food, rent, school fees, etc. Even as they try to find their feet and move forward again as a family.

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Source: Pexels

Though money can take you places, there is no guarantee that a bigger investment leads to success. The invention of the internet is indeed a blessing to many who dream of pursuing a business. As long as you have an internet connection, a laptop, and comfortable space, you can start any online entrepreneurship venture even with minimal cash.

You’re in the right place because today, we are about to reveal opportunities that’ll improve your financial future – the digital way. The best part is that you don’t need hundreds or thousands of dollars in order to get your business up and running.

 

Where to Source Ideas for Your Digital Business

Since you are planning to build an online business, there’s no other place to get inspiration from but the internet. For a start, you can type in any niche you like into Google and see what results come up. Explore individual websites to know what’s going on in your space.

Aside from that, we want to show you a definitive list of online business ideas to spark your imagination. Consider these options and you might just find one that appeals to your personal interests.

 

Business Idea #1: Freelance writing

Working as a freelance writer is the perfect idea for the writer at heart. If you love the written word and enjoy expressing your thoughts, surely you can find so many platforms where you can apply as a content writer. These potential marketplaces include Upwork.com and Freeeup.com. Applying on these sites is for free.

You can find multiple content writing opportunities especially now that more and more site owners look for someone to produce content on their behalf. If you have less than $50, you could even start a blog where you can feature your portfolio for everyone to see.

 

Business Idea #2: Dropshipping 

You many or may not have heard of the term dropshipping. In case this is your first time to encounter the concept, dropshipping is an e-commerce strategy where you, as a business owner, don’t stock items in your online store but instead source it from a third party provider that will ship them directly to your customers.

When you venture into dropshipping, you don’t need a huge capital. You pay the wholesale provider only after a customer makes an order from you. What’s more, you can manage your online store regardless of the time and place. This means that you’ll be able to enjoy a relaxing vacation while making money.

 

Business Idea #3: Vacation rentals

Do you have some extra unused space in your home? Instead of buying a land and starting a real estate business which would be way expensive, you can take advantage of the services of an online hospitality marketplace such as Airbnb.

Source: Pexels

 

All you need to do is apply as a host in Airbnb. List your space on the website and agree to their terms and conditions. Airbnb will also let you know how much profit you can potentially make when a person books your room through their platform. However, you’re always free to decide on your price.

 

Business Idea #4: Affiliate marketing 

In affiliate marketing, you earn a commission when someone purchases another brand’s product or visits their website. When visitors reach your site, they click on your affiliate link which leads them to the brand that credits your action.

 

For you to find affiliate marketing opportunities, you need to use the services of an affiliate network. Affiliate networks help you grow your affiliate business by acting as the middleman. Through an affiliate network, you find advertisers to connect with whose products you’re willing to promote.

 

Business Idea #5: SEO Consultant

If you love the idea of helping new site owners boost the visibility of their business in search engines, become an SEO consultant.

To get clients to avail your SEO services, first you need to set-up a website where you feature your offer. Another smart marketing tactic would be to create an online course about SEO and put it up on Udemy. That way, people will learn to recognize you as an expert.

To pursue a business idea as an SEO expert, it’s important to research, read industry leading blogs, and watch training videos. While experiencing SEO firsthand by being able to successfully rank websites is the great, you can always start out small. Try practicing keyword research, increasing website speed, and optimizing pages. After all, there are plenty of free SEO tools to use.

 

Wrap Up

Did you find something that interests you on our list of online business ideas? Don’t worry if you weren’t able to, because there are still a lot more to explore online. Hopefully this article helped you in a way to turn your dreams into reality even on a shoestring budget.

What makes the prices of currencies move on the open market? This is one of the first questions that virtually every trader tries to answer. The reality is that values fluctuate constantly in the currency markets and, more often than not, they are at the mercy of the countless trends and influences found throughout society. 

Factors that Influence
Geopolitical turbulence, macroeconomic policy, government legislation, and technological breakthroughs all rank among the most influential world events on forex prices. Events which affect the forex market can be as benign as a democratic election which returns the predicted outcome, or as unpredictable as the outbreak of a war, or a natural disaster.

Trading the News

Each participant in the currency market is constantly anticipating price movements. To accomplish this, traders rely on news reports and market data to inform their positions. This is one reason why veteran traders will spend as much time scanning live news feeds as they do watching the currency charts. It is called “trading the news”.

As geopolitical factors change, they create movements in the market: encouraging a seller to raise their prices, or convincing a buyer to lower their offer in response to a growing risk. Learning how to best interpret the news and apply that knowledge to investment decisions is, therefore, a vital technique for every forex trader.

The NPP (New Payment Platform) is an innovative platform to give Australian consumers and institutions a new way to make everyday payments. Also known as the New Payments Platform, the NPP will allow Australians to make low-value payments 24 hours a day in less than 30 seconds. The system will operate seven days a week, 365 days a year, with no holiday breaks.

Since Australian business—just like the global economy—never sleeps, a round-the-clock payment system that can get payments into the right hands in less than a minute is a real boon for the country. The NPP is the real-time payments infrastructure that Australians need to kick their economy up to the next level.

NPP Australia

Designed for low-value payments, NPP Australia will allow customers, businesses, and other organisations to make payments and receive payments without hassle. This secure system will connect financial institutions, such as banks, credit card companies, and third-party payment processors (such as PayPal) to consumers and businesses.

Payments will be data-rich, meaning that payers and payees will have not only a timestamp to record the transaction, but also a record of the flow of currency and other information relevant to the transaction. Businesses will be able to track the successes or failures of their products and services, and consumers will be able to track their spending.

What makes NPP Australia such a boon to the Australian economy is that funds can change hands quickly. Payees can access their funds nearly as quickly as they receive payment. With the NPP, even when payees and payers have accounts in different banks, the system will free up funds at almost the speed of payment. Instant payment—and almost instant access to funds—without the extra fees that platforms like PayPal offer—will create a better way to do business.

NPP Launch Date

Originally set to launch in October 2017, the NPP will delay its launch until Australia Day, 26 January 2018, according to a 2 October 2017 article in the Guardian. The platform will offer several services from which each financial institution can choose from to provide for their customers.

Organisations and businesses who want to optimise the financial end of their business can leverage the power of the NPP to pay their creditors and employees at near real-time speeds. On the other side of the fence, they can also receive payments from their customers and have the money in their accounts within seconds.

Financial institutions that want to take their business to a whole new level can connect to the NPP platform to lessen their customers’ wait time to receive funds. Those who do not connect to the platform risk being left out in the cold, since today’s customers want convenient payment options in real time.

Customers who want a more convenient way to pay for goods, services, and existing bills will welcome the advent of the NPP. Having a centralised payment platform on which they can pay for practically anything will simplify their lives and free up time that otherwise they would have spent paying bills the old-fashioned way. Customers can even use the system to make a mobile payment—an added convenience.

To link an account with the NPP, customers and institutions will need a service called ‘PayID’ to create a seamless, simplified payment process instead of a BSB or account number.

What Is PayID?

A PayID is a unique ‘address’ that allows people to link their financial accounts to a more memorable piece of information. Most users prefer to use their email address or telephone number for their PayID, since they use them practically every day. Since few people know their BSB or account numbers by memory, this service will make the payment process all the more easy for users. Businesses and other organisations will want to integrate this function into their payment system so their customers can use the system with no worries about remembering account numbers.

To create a PayID, you need to register your chosen ID name with a financial institution that plans to use the system. Your institution will link your PayID to your actual account. That way, when you need to pay someone, you needn’t share your actual account number. All you need is to give them your PayID—and your BSB and account numbers will remain private. No more worries about stolen account numbers. With PayID, your information is safe.

PayID will work with the new Osko by BPAY service, a product designed just for the NPP. Eventually, it will include three services, but at the launch of the NPP, it will provide only one: Payment.

Payment: This Osko service will allow you to make instant payments in real time. Funds will be available almost instantaneously. It will work no matter which financial institutions you or the other party uses. You can also send a description—up to 280 characters—with your payment, so you and your payee will have a record of what the payment is for.

How Secure Is Osko by BPAY?

Transactions done through Osko by BPAY will take place using the Fast Settlement Service from the Reserve Bank. The makers of Osko have embedded a slew of safeguards to make sure your transactions are safe.

First of all, they have instituted built-in fraud screening. If a potentially fraudulent situation arises, they can slow down the payments to respond to the situation. Secondly, when you link your phone number or email address to your account with PayID, you’ll never have to share your account number or BSB with either payers or payees. To request a payment or make a payment, you’ll need to log into your bank account through the Internet as well, increasing the level of security for the new system.

How Is Osko by BPAY Different from BPAY?

BPAY has provided its customers with a secure, efficient way to receive and pay their bills. Once customers sign up for the service, they can have their bills delivered right to their mobile or Internet banking platform. Customers can view their bill and pay it through their online banking platform, adding both convenience and security to the process of paying bills.

What Osko by BPAY does is augment those functions with the ability to pay and receive money in real time. With a PayID, Osko customers will have even more security, since with the PayID, they won’t need to share their actual account number with the payee.

With these new developments in paying bills and receiving money, Australia looks to lead the way among developed nations in the financial arena.

For you—the user—it means that you’ll have a faster, more secure, and more reliable payment service that keeps records for you. It will be easy to use, require little memorisation, and will increase the speed at which you can do business.

How can you make more money when investing? And how do you protect your investments from market downturns and unexpected future events? The answer is diversification. If you’re looking to build your investment portfolio, diversifying is important.

A diversified portfolio can help protect your income and wealth during various stages of the economic cycle and provide good long-term returns.

 

Here are seven tips for diversifying your portfolio.

Spread your money across multiple asset classes

By investing in multiple asset classes, your overall returns will be less volatile because losses or low returns from one asset class are offset against gains or high returns from another. You’ll also be less exposed to one economic event, so if a company or sector you’re investing in doesn’t perform well, you won’t lose all of your money.

An investment portfolio with a 100% allocation to shares, for example, wouldn’t do well during an economic downturn. So it’s important to diversify across different asset classes, such as:

• cash
• property
• bonds
• shares
• international bonds
• international shares.

Diversify within an asset class

Even within asset classes it’s important to diversify, to provide further protection against unexpected events. For instance, you’ll want to consider investing in various types of bonds (fixed rate, floating rate, inflation-linked). These can help reduce your income risk, interest rate risk, and inflation risk. You can also invest in both corporate and government bonds.

When it comes to stocks, you should have about 15 different stocks in your portfolio for diversification, including blue chip, second-line, and speculative stocks. Together, these offer security, growth potential, and speculative fun to increase your return. This can help manage your portfolio risk and minimise the impact of one stock having too much influence on the portfolio.

As for property, if you’ve already invested in residential property, you should consider investing in commercial property for further diversification.

Invest in both high-risk and low-risk assets

You can also grow and protect your wealth by diversifying risk. High-risk or “growth” assets have higher returns, whereas low-risk or “defensive” assets have lower returns.

High-risk assets have more volatile returns over the short term, but the higher risk and volatility can be offset by investing in low-risk assets that have lower short-term volatility.

How much of your portfolio you allocate to high-risk and low-risk assets will depend on your:

• age
• needs
• goals
• risk tolerance
• financial situation
• personal circumstances.

For example, if you’re near retirement age, you need more predictability in your portfolio because you have less time to recover lost capital. You can do this by increasing your allocation to fixed income to decrease the proportion in high-risk assets.

Choose different industry sectors

Different industry sectors perform better at different times, and some sectors are more volatile than others. This shows the importance of investing in multiple sectors within an asset class. Sectors of the Australian share market include:

• S&P / ASX 200
• consumer staples
• industrials
• materials (including resources)
• consumer discretionary
• financial services
• healthcare.

If you invest in stocks in various sectors, you’ll expose your portfolio to growth in different areas of the economy and it’ll be less vulnerable to a downturn in a specific industry. You can use a financial analysis tools to help you identify top stocks from different sectors to buy and sell.

Invest in different companies in the same sector

If you have a stock in the same sector, consider having one leading company (larger capital) and one emerging company (smaller capital). In the healthcare sector, you can invest in a hospital and in a pharmaceutical company. This’ll give you a good mix of companies across your portfolio. And if one company does poorly, you still get the benefit if another company does well.

You can also invest in the following types of companies in the same sector:

• fast-growing company
• slow-growing company
• turnaround company bouncing back from the grave
• old plodders that still manage to grow
• highly-geared company
• low-geared company
• big company
• small company.

Invest in both local and international markets

If you invest in the Australian market and in international markets, you’ll reduce your exposure to one market. Different markets peak at different times; for example, when the Aussie market is down, the US or Asian markets may be up.

You can invest in international markets directly or via an overseas share option in a managed fund, exchange-traded fund (ETF), or superannuation fund. Just keep in mind that when you invest some of your money overseas, changes in currency exchange rates can increase or decrease your returns.

Diversify within a managed fund, ETF or SMSF

If you have a managed fund or an ETF, focus on diversifying within the fund by employing the expertise of various investment fund managers to manage each of the different sectors within different asset classes.

Additionally, you can invest in different asset classes and different sectors through your self-managed super fund (SMSF). You can also achieve a diversified fixed income portfolio through your SMSF by holding different types of bonds with varying credit quality. Think carefully about what you invest in as they should be appropriate in terms of your risk tolerance and be in line with the fund’s main purpose of building savings for your retirement.

Diversifying for wealth and success ... (read more)