Sort Your Money: Mastering Debt Management with Graham Cooke | Finder

Bryce: [00:01:03] Welcome to get started investing in this podcast, we cover all the basics you need to start your investing journey. Are you joining us for the very first time or is this the very start of your investing journey? Well, before you dive into this episode, we suggest going right back to the beginning of our feed. We strongly recommend you scroll up to the start and hit episode one. However, if you are feeling brave and just want to dive in, don't let us stop you here at Get Started Investing feed, we unpack all the jargon and confusing bits here. Your investing stories with the goal of making investing less intimidating, and we want to have a good time along the way. My name is Bryce and as always, I'm joined by my equity buddy Ren. How's it going? 

Alec: [00:01:42] I'm very good Bryce. Very excited for this episode. I'm loving this three part series formula that we've we've got going, and this three part series, I think, is one that I have needed for years 

Bryce: [00:01:54] because we may have 

Alec: [00:01:56] run an investing podcast for four years, more than four years, but that doesn't mean my personal finances are in order. You've got, you know, a spreadsheet after spreadsheet to track everything. I just kind of go by vibe. 

Bryce: [00:02:11] And so I think this 

Alec: [00:02:14] three part series is going to be really helpful for me and hopefully for the Equity Mates community as well. So over these three episodes, we've partnered with Finder to talk about all things personal finance and getting your money sorted so you can start investing or like me, you can continue investing with just a little bit more knowledge. There really is no point trying to get started investing if you haven't got the basics sorted. 

Bryce: [00:03:12] As you said, Ren, we've got three amazing episodes coming up. Episode one is all about sorting your debt. Episode two is getting your money right, and then episode three is well, now that we have our money sorted. What next? When it comes to investing and to kick off our three part series today, we are joined by Graham Cooke, head of consumer research at Finder. Graham, welcome. Good. 

Graham Cooke: [00:03:34] I got to say you do very well. 

Bryce: [00:03:36] How are you going? 

Graham Cooke: [00:03:37] I'm good. I'm good at where we're getting our way through lockdown here in New South Wales and hoping we're further through the end of the tunnel. This this is less time ahead of us and behind us. We'll just have to see how we go to right.

Bryce: [00:03:48] So you have been a previous guest on Equity Mates all the way back in 2018. So for those that are new to the Get Started Investing feed community, go and check it out. We'll put a link in the show notes. But Graham is a seasoned data journalist, loves digging into the numbers to find trends that matter to consumers. Graham manages Finders global research team and regularly discusses consumer issues on Australian TV. Outside of Finder, Graham has written articles and judged awards for several publications, including The Australian Financial Review and Money Magazine. So we're going to be digging into a lot of things. All things personal finance Ren. 

Alec: [00:04:23] Yeah, that's it. Probably no one better to give us the lay of the land with Australians and their personal finance than you, Graham. So I think we'll start there and then we'll get into this conversation around getting out of debt. So your head of find is in my notes. I've got global research team, but I've heard I can't use the word global. So head of Flinders International Research Team, So let's start high level from all the data you're saying in the research you're doing. What are some of the key issues Australians face when it comes to their personal finance? 

Graham Cooke: [00:04:58] That's a really good question. I suppose if you were to to sum it all up in one word, the one issue, the one word I use to describe the issues here is probably apathy. We're not the worst in the world when it comes to financial literacy. We're pretty well informed populace. We also are pretty high in terms of the need or the desire to get our finances sorted. When we did a survey in December last year asking for people's New Year's resolutions, forty two percent of Aussies in a nationally representative survey said that they wanted to sort out their money, their their income, so that their interest earned and their their their bills going out and get into a better financial position than they were in the previous year. That came second only to doing more exercise and getting fitter, so it definitely seems to be high on the priority for Aussies. But people tend to not really want to put the effort into to actually compare our financial products to actually assess what's on the market, to actually make the switch. So often the the energy isn't there and behind the desire to save. Hmm. 

Bryce: [00:05:58] I would bet my life savings that every year the top two. After New Year's Eve would be a fitness site, your money out. 

Graham Cooke: [00:06:07] Yeah, and the third one is probably drink less alcohol, I would say. 

Bryce: [00:06:10] That's right. Every time. So, Graham, there's no doubt that, you know, we've recently been through Covid and you know, that's had impact on people's personal finances as well. But more broadly, how are you seeing any changes in behaviours from, I guess, an Australian perspective when it comes to things like savings rates, spending decisions and then also investing decisions? 

Graham Cooke: [00:06:36] OK, this one is really interesting because we've been running a project for the last two years called the consumer sentiment tracker, where we survey a thousand nationally representative Aussies every single month and we ask them a standard set of questions about their spending habits and their product usage, and about a whole other plethora of questions of things that are happening in the kind of news like guys and stuff. So we've been able to track the responses of these Aussies from before and Covid kicked in and kind of changed everything in Australia through the course of Covid running through to now, when Covid is, or at least was previous to two weeks ago, less of an issue in Australian savings was one of the questions that we decided to ask people because I find that we obviously have access to a huge amount of internal find our statistics and data based on financial products and all of the stuff released by the Reserve Bank of the Australian Bureau of Statistics and all of these data resources. But we weren't able to find out how much people are actually saving in their savings account per person every single month. So we decided to ask that question. It was the first question we put into the survey. The question was how much are you saving into your savings account? Every single one. The first thing I want to do is find out what you guys think. That number might be the amount of money the average Australian is saving every 

Bryce: [00:07:47] month in an actual dollar figures, the amount every on average, every Australian is saving per month. I'm going to say 600 bucks. 

Graham Cooke: [00:07:59] I think you've I think that's too high. I was going to say 250. That is very interesting because this is this is this is a topic a lot of hot discussion before we actually run the survey for the first time two years ago in Australia. And that was generally the two sets of views. One was it's going to be kind of six $700 and one was that's way too much. People are going to be saving that much. It should be lower. That was almost exactly how the team split in terms of what they thought was going to happen. The actual figure turns out it's somewhere between 600 and $700. So you are pretty right there, guy. Yeah, well, at least half of us around, that's 

Bryce: [00:08:37] how 

Graham Cooke: [00:08:38] that's how we bounced around, right? So if you look at the first 12 months of our survey, so starting in early 2019 and going to early 2020, the amount of money people said they were saving in Australia bounced around roughly between 600 and 700 should kind of bounce up and down. Then as soon as locked in lockdown kicked in across Australia in April 2020, the numbers started to rise and continue to rise all the way through lockdown. So it's, you know, six, 600, 700 for 12 months. Then it starts to go up to 800. By the time we hit kind of meh in 2020, the number that you mentioned many people are saving in their savings account starts to hit. Nearly eight thousand nine hundred fifty was the peak. Now, it didn't stay at nine 50 all the way through the lockdown period, but it did stay higher through that whole period than it had been previously and then started to dip a little bit, but then start to recover, said the most recent figure from June is nine hundred and eighty three dollars is the amount of average amount of money people say they're saving in Australia every single month, so that's definitely heading in the right direction. That's something we'd like to see at find. The second question is how much do you think people have in their savings account on average? So the average balance in your savings you had in Australia, you want your record. 

Bryce: [00:09:49] Wow, that's a tough one. Savings account average balance twelve and a half thousand. 

Alec: [00:09:59] So what I'm going to say, if people were saving on average 600 to 700 a month, they're talking what, like five, six grand a year. Average, what you sound like, you say, like 30 grand, average size. 

Graham Cooke: [00:10:16] OK, you got it right there. The obvious way around, it's 30 grams. Yeah, yeah. Oh wow. OK, now the on the on the slide calculations there, it's 30 grams on average. Actually, weirdly, it's higher for women than men, so the average amount for women is thirty three thousand average men for men's, only twenty seven thousand. So this is Australian spending habits heading in the right direction. We seem to have, you know, realise the importance of having a safety net due to the more risky environments of lockdown and employment uncertainty. And that trend seems to so far be staying. That's definitely a good sign. 

Bryce: [00:10:47] And just out of interest is that just across all age brackets that you've done research on there? 

Graham Cooke: [00:10:53] Yeah, the trend is going up amongst all age brackets, obviously, that the the amount being saved and the amount being demanded in the savings account is higher for older demographics of baby boomers is the highest and it goes lower the younger you get. But that just makes sense because income tends to go up and your equity tends to go up as you continue through life. So that's that's a trend we expect, but the overall chronological trend is definitely heading in the right direction. Spending was the second part of your question. There is different spending. We've actually seen a dip in it mid last year when lockdown start to kick in, and it's kind of basically returned to normal. We're actually spending more on credit cards may this year than we were May last year, for example, and the overall household spending has gone back up. So that's one that's kind of returned to normal, even though we're not circulating as most people are spending as much, probably more online than before as I did before the pandemic kicked in. Mm-Hmm. I find that really like, I don't find those numbers surprising with, you know, people lockdown, they can't spend as much. And so the outcome of that is they're saving more. What I do find interesting is that the your most recent survey, which I assume was pre this latest round of lockdowns, people were still saving that amount, which is good luck. It hasn't just the economy's opened up. People go back to spending and the savings rate goes down again. Yeah, now that's been definitely very good to see. I mean, it's it's all about making sure that you save more than you spend and that's the way you build build equity. And that's the way you know, you develop a kind of more certain financial feature for yourself going forward. Even aside from investing, you know, you need to have that stability to be able to start investing in the first place. And then the other part that question is always with regards investing trends. So I don't really cover investing stock market investing too much myself. I know you guys will talk to Kylie from Finder, who does Covid, that she can talk about that particular topic. But one type of investing that's gone crazy recently is housing investing. So if you look at the amount of money borrowed in Australia every single month to purchase housing and you track that over time, that never a past 16 billion ever until October 2020, when I hit sixteen point five past 16 for the first time and has remained above 16 every single month since then, and has actually peaked over twenty three out of the last six months. So basically, every single month is a record that's nearly beating the previous month in terms of housing spending. So it seems like the kind of low interest rate environment fear of missing out is definitely fuelling investing in that particular resource more than anything else. 

Bryce: [00:13:25] Yeah. Well, higher savings, more cash in the bank to put towards a deposit can't go on this trip over in Europe or any other international holidays. What do you do? You buy property? I haven't been able to buy a property yet, though, but I'm not contributing to that 16b. But yeah, I mean, there's no doubt that the Aussie market's on fire at the moment. Yeah, I actually did. 

Graham Cooke: [00:13:44] I bought a house about a year ago, and that's the original Covid madness. Been looking for about two years in Sydney's inner west and went to a few auctions and was a better on a few auctions, has never managed to secure anything, but did get something. Finally, a year ago and was it was a bit concerned as to what was going to happen to the housing market then. But obviously it's been fine. 

Bryce: [00:14:06] So it's more than you. So, Graeme, you know, you've mentioned there the the main issue that we face is apathy, and there's no doubt that that carries more broadly across all finance. We've we've done episode, you know, a few episodes on superannuation as well. And the apathy that Australians have towards that, in your view, is the government sort of doing anything or could be doing more to address some of the issues that we're seeing in when it comes to personal finance in Australia? 

Graham Cooke: [00:14:37] In terms of it, that's a good question in terms of financial literacy. I mean, that's pretty OK. That seems to be a decent level of understanding amongst the Australian population. The one metric where we do fall behind, though, is debt. When we look at debt, so other international statistics looking at debt as a portion of GDP household debt that produces an almost opposite table to the financial literacy table. If you look at those statistics, the highest amount of debt Australia comes second in the world. Think I'm behind, I think Switzerland and in terms of the amount of debt per household, so debt is one of the bigger issues. I think Australian consumers, definitely a lot of that is obviously driven by the housing market, which it needs to be said here doesn't always go up in value. One of the phrases that nobody ever uses in Ireland anymore post GFC is safe as houses. So if you're going to get into the housing market, obviously be prepared that you know, it's not always be going, going to be going in the same direction. Yeah, that doesn't surprise me at all, that Australians have a lot of debt, one because of that housing number and to where the home of buy now, pay later, you know, whether when the credit innovators of the world. So but look, speaking of debt, that's really the first step on everyone's personal finance journey. If you want to get your money sorted to get started investing, you start by clearing your debt. So we're going to we're going to have a chat about that in a second. Talk about some of the steps. You can take some different strategies. 

Alec: [00:16:39] So, Graham, as I mentioned, there are the first step on your journey to investing is getting out of debt or getting your debt sorted. When we read or listen to personal finance experts, we often hear about this concept of good debt and bad debt. So maybe if we start there and if you can help us understand debt, what is this distinction refer to? 

Graham Cooke: [00:17:01] That's a good question, too. That kind of depends on who you're asking, but the way I kind of view it is, there is not all debt is bad debt, and the way you divide it up is that good debt is debt that could potentially help you build wealth going forward. So if you have a home loan against a house, but the house is going to continue to increase in value, that's debt that's going to end up being more useful to you further down the line than it is right now. Bad debt is any debt that's not going to have that behaviour moving forward. The big one here is credit card debt. Credit card debt is something which is very high in terms of the interest rate. If you don't pay it off, it starts to mount on top of itself. Even further, credit card debt is probably the worst type of debt you can have. Home loan debt is probably the best type of debt you can have as long as you can manage those repayments. So it's a question of whether the debt is contributing to something bigger in the long run or not. 

Bryce: [00:17:51] What is some of the trends that you're seeing when it comes to credit card debt here in Australia? 

Graham Cooke: [00:17:56] In terms of credit cards, we've actually seen a dramatic change in the numbers in Australia over the last number of years. We've seen the amount of credit cards in the market declining pretty significantly. We've seen millions of cards less prevalent in the market than they were a number of years ago. We've seen the amount spent on cards per card go up, but a lot of that is because there's less cards in the market. It's an average, and it's really because people are moving away from credit cards. More to what you guys mentioned earlier. Buy now, pay later. Services, especially younger Australians, are in a stage now where they came out to university. They start to use these BNPL services. They're less risky than credit cards. And these people, these Australians, may never in their lives ever need to have a credit card. So there's definitely a generational divide in terms of card use in the market, and it's more prevalent with older Australians. It's almost an old fashioned, almost form of form of debt right now. Mm-Hmm. I made a bold prediction on our TV show and Aussies. The last credit card will be issued in the 2020s. Do you think? Do you think that's too bold? I actually think that it'll that's probably half true. I think I think they'll emerge. I think they'll merge. I think the definition of what is a credit card and what is BNPL, those things will start to become more flexible and one will start. We've already seen some credit card companies issuing cards that behave similar to VNP services. We've seen payment services like PayPal now offering delayed payments. So I think there will still be credit cards, but they might not operate in the same way as they have done previously. Credit cards are very, very expensive. 20 20 percent at nineteen point four percent is the average regular card in the market, and that's a huge amount of interest to be paying. And you know, there's nothing really on the market that compares to that. Having said that, credit cards are still a really good resource. If you are trying to get value added of the money you're spending in that situation and you can afford to pay it back, there's still really good value. For example, in rewards cards in Australia. If you want to build up frequent flyer points, the rewards value you can get for taking your cards in Australia is amongst the highest in the world. It's much higher than it is in most countries in Europe. Similar to what is in the US, if you can, if you're confident that you can put your spending on a credit card and pay it off every single month and not risk getting into that high level debt, then cards are pretty useful because you can get value from your spending where you count with other Typekit spend, because that's where cards can actually be useful in Australia today. 

Bryce: [00:20:23] Surely the buy now, pay later services will start introducing rewards at some point in time. You would think 

Graham Cooke: [00:20:29] they have done. They have done, but they're not. They're not anywhere near the same level because those companies don't make as much money as credit card companies. Yeah, I mean, I I started getting into frequent flyer credit cards when I joined Feiner seven years ago now, and I've built about half a million dollar, half a million frequent flyer points over that period of time via applying for different cards via basically going for every single frequent flyer acquisition option available and then putting all spending on the card and paying it off. So it is possible to do a booking if you're really careful because that interest is very expensive. Yeah, yeah. So we've explained the concept of good and bad debt, good debt being debt that, you know, helps you build wealth, bad debt being debt that doesn't essentially, I guess the next question that we often get here at Equity Mates is, you know, should I start investing or should I pay off my debt first? Now, everyone's personal financial circumstances are different, so there's not a blanket answer to this question. But I guess, how would you generally go about approaching answering this question? This one also depends on who you ask. I presume when you speak to kind of your investments editor, she's going to give a different answer to what I would give in this situation. But I would just. To really say it's a good idea to pay off your debt before you kind of get involved in any other investments. But it depends on the type of debt, you know, if it's credit card debt, that's going to make a big difference to the cost you're paying every single day to your home loan. You're not going to pay that off very quickly. So it depends on the type of debt. But again, there's no reason why this is not necessarily. This isn't a zero sum question. You can pay off your loan and you can cut a little bit to the side and you can also invest. That's probably the best way forward, but generally it's best to try and stamp out debt as quickly as you can. I'm very diverse myself anyway. 

Bryce: [00:22:09] Just bought a house, though, so. Well, yeah, that's true. But I'm trying 

Graham Cooke: [00:22:15] to try to trying to pay that off as aggressively as possible as well. I don't need to pay it. Still paying this home loan in 30 years, you know, show such as the phone. I just bought a house and also plays the credit card balance transfer point game. 

Graham Cooke: [00:22:29] spending there has gone down a little bit since the mortgage kicked in.

Bryce: [00:22:33] Yeah. So, Graham, there's no doubt that find helps a lot of people, you know, understand more about debt, compare credit cards, compare opportunities to consolidate finances and that sort of stuff. So from what you're saying, if you are in a position where you might be struggling a bit with debt or looking for ways to at least improve the situation that you're in? What are some of some of the strategies to help with debt consolidation paying off high debt? First, those sorts of things? 

Graham Cooke: [00:22:59] Yeah, you hit the nail on the head with those two kind of suggestions there. It's basically that it's basically look at the interest that you're paying currently and try and find a way to translate that into another form where you're paying less interest. So, for example, credit card debt, the average credit card balance is about three grand. Most people have somewhere around one point eight cards. Let's say two cards at six grand, nineteen point four percent is the interest rate. If you were to pay that balance off over two years, you're paying about thirteen hundred dollars in interest. That's the cost, right? If you were to transfer that to a personal loan and get a good value personal loan, about seven percent is kind of good right about now that paying it off would only cost you for fifty rather than 13:00. So really, trying to get rid of all that high, expensive interest debt first and consolidate is the way to go. But if you are running into difficulty here, there is the National Debt Hotline, which is eighteen hundred dollars, seven seven. And those are the guys that can provide you with, you know, straightforward help and advice if you are getting anywhere near being in financial trouble or need significant amount of debt. If you are that, it's probably best to steer away from investing. Sir Graham, I was speaking to someone in the Equity Mates community and I was asking them about investing because honestly, that's that's all I talk about. I'm a pretty boring guy off site outside the podcast, and I was asking them if they'd started investing because I was saying they were interested. And they said they wanted to pay off their hexed at first. 

Alec: [00:24:21] Now a lot of Australians have HECS debt for those listening overseas its student loans, essentially, but from the government rather than a private lender. How do you think about hecs debts when it comes to that choice of paying off your debt or investing? 

Graham Cooke: [00:24:38] Hecs debts is not something I'm massively across for two reasons. One, it's not something we really compare financial products with and find out. And also, I went to university in Ireland, where university is free and we don't have any debt. So no university. A certain proportion of your wages going forward for many years just seems very daunting to me and must be an awful situation to be in when you're entering the market. But while I understand the fact that is that there's generally no interest charge on it, so it's not like it's it's costing you more as it's ageing. So it's probably best, you know, with any debt to pay it off as early as you possibly can. But it's not as risky as credit card debt or how long that our personal loan debt. I think that's a key thing that's coming through in a lot of these answers is when you do when it comes to debt, like the critical thing is the interest rate and we've with investing, then if you build in an expected return, you know you're not paying any interest with when you invest in property or shares or even bonds or anything, there's an expected return. And so you're better off getting that expected return when investing. If you're not paying interest and like comparing the interest rate versus the expected return is how a lot of those decisions are made. Yeah, that's actually key. I mean, the one way most people can save the most amount of money and the least the shortest period of time is by refinancing their home loan. That's the interest rate that's in your life that is going to cost you the highest amount of money. If you apply three percent to four percent, the amount of money that's on your home loan over the course of your loan, you know the amount of interest you're paying back is massive. So, you know, the easiest, quickest way to save for most people is not to invest is actually to to to look at trying to get a lower rate home loan. And right now, with all this competition in the market for home loans and all coming from owner occupiers, the banks are falling all over each other to fight and to acquire those Australian owner occupier customers. So right now is a really good time to be looking at refinancing your home loan. If you do have a whole another year paying off. 

Bryce: [00:26:26] So Graham, another part of debt that is often, I guess, often has some myths around it is the credit score and and like, what does it mean? Is it important? Should you be looking to improve it? Or I guess, holding to a certain position, but let's start at the top and I guess say what, what is a credit score and do they matter? 

Graham Cooke: [00:26:46] They matter and they will matter more going forward in Australia than they do now. So your credit score basically is a metric that banks use to determine how risky you are to lend to. It's a score that generally goes from zero to a thousand with some providers, some go from zero to 12. But it doesn't really matter what the scale is. But the higher the score, the less risky you are. Ask somebody to lend to for a bank, so the higher your score is. That will determine how likely you are to get approved for a loan or a credit card or a housing loan. And it can often change the interest rate that you might eventually get charged. So if you're a low risk consumer, you'll generally get a lower interest rate. You want it approved. And any credit you get going forward will be lower cost than if you were a higher risk consumer. Having more costly for you then. So it's a very important thing for people to know. In Australia, I don't think most people know their credit score, but thankfully it is available for free via what you mentioned earlier. The Finder app, which you can use to check your credit score for free and also you can use to relieve yourself of the burden of this lazy tax of not comparing your financial products that you're using with other products on the market. To find the app can look at your bank account, look at how much you're spending on certain outgoings, and then potentially recommend better value products in the market. So credit score checking and product checking in to find out 

Bryce: [00:28:10] something we often hear within the Equity Mates community is the phrase you should get a credit card just to show that you can manage a credit facility so that you come out with a good credit score when you actually go to take out a loan later on down the track. Is this fact or fiction? Bryce I love your question. 

Graham Cooke: [00:28:26] I love your question because we get this question a lot and we didn't ever have the ability to answer this question until recently until fine to start providing credit scores. We were able to then collect anonymized credit score data from Australians across the market so we can see how credit cards have kind of changed over time and have changed depending on what's in people's credit reports. And we were then able to kind of crunch the numbers and have a look at people who have had credit cards and have had lines of people who haven't. And how that's affected their average score. And based on that research, I'm able to tell you that having had payment history, having had a card and pay it off successfully or a loan and paid off as a society tends to increase your credit score by somewhere between 10 and 15 percent, which pushes you into the next bracket in terms of how appealing you look to a lender. So it definitely does help to take out some sort of credit product and pay it off regularly and loans. You can do that. You're building up good credit history and therefore a better credit score. Yeah, well, I never knew that. So, Graeme, one when I think credit scores, I think the US because you know, you hear about it in a lot of like personal finance experts from the US, but their relationships with credit scores is probably a lot different to us in Australia. It feels very adversarial over there. You're really fighting your credit score. And one thing that seems to be a feature of the US market is if you check your credit score, it hurts your credit score. Is that the same in Australia? In the US, it's the credit score is a much, much bigger deal than here. You know, I've spoken to people over there who've had their credit score checked when they go to rent an apartment, for example, which is not something you're ever going to generally experience in Australia here. It's only when you go and apply for a financial product, but it is becoming something people are more and more aware of going forward. So I think it will become more and more important to answer your question directly if you check your credit, score yourself. If you go to find your app and you get your score or you go to the Finder website, check a score that's not going to affect your score. But if another company checks your score, that can affect your score. So, for example, if you apply for several credit cards through the course of the year, every time you apply for a credit card, that credit card company is going to check your credit file and that will be recorded. And the more checks you have on your credit file that can have a negative effect that can push your score down. So you checking it is fine. But if you apply for multiple types of loans, then that can definitely potentially put stand your score even if you don't actually go for those loans in the end. So, Graeme, a lot of people are probably hearing about credit scores for the first time or, you know, the very, very new to Earth's. So they now know how they can check it by going to the finder up. They know it matters, and it's going to matter more. I guess the final question is how can we improve it? That kind of links to the last answer, really. If you can have a if you can show a constant credit history where you've been able to borrow money and pay it back regularly and on time, then that is what will improve your credit score. So if your credit score is too low, maybe consolidate your debt, start paying off that debt regularly and your credit score should eventually go up over time, and you can check it every single month. Gets updated every single month. The final thing to mention here, where it's useful to check your score, is actually in relation to ID theft. I did a of a long piece on Finder where I interviewed somebody. Around a year ago, I think. Who actually works in works in digital ID for a pretty big player in Australia. This their whole career was working at digital. And they managed to get scammed and somebody broke into their bank account or somebody stole all their money and they had to then go through a whole series of loopholes. Together, they'll pay it back and it was a nightmare and multiple. I was on hold and all of that. The one thing checking your credit score can do is give you an early heads up if somebody has potentially hacked your identity because you will be able to see in your credit report. Depending on where you go, whether people have applied for credit under your name. So somebody's identity and they apply for a personal loan of their name that will affect your credit score could go down and you can then investigate why it's gone then. And that can reveal, potentially if anybody's messing with you behind the scenes. That's one of the reasons to check it there. 

Bryce: [00:32:25] Yeah, that's really interesting. I'm not sure if the Finder app is at the point of sending notifications on if your credit score has been pinged. But I did say on Instagram recently, another another podcaster has signed up to a service where they actually send you a notification immediately. If your credit scores pinged for that exact purpose. Yeah, they'll define rapport. 

Graham Cooke: [00:32:46] Give you your updated score every month so you can. You can see how it moves through time, and I think you'll get an email as well via the Find a website. But it's definitely something we're keeping an eye on because if it's going down and you're not doing anything, then there might be something suspicious going on. 

Bryce: [00:32:59] Yeah, very interesting. So, Graham, to close out, we should just have a quick chat about what you guys have built at Finder. You know, you've got an app that is centred around comparisons, knowing where your money is going, credit scores, savings and also crypto. I think, more importantly, what are some of the key insights around sort of personal finance that perhaps we haven't discussed that went into actually building this up and and making it, as you know, for for you to find your audience? The app was 

Graham Cooke: [00:33:27] kind of our attempt to build a one stop shop for financial awareness for Australians where you can, you know, one of the things we say is don't be afraid to open a second savings account where you might get a better interest rate or or look for a different financial product. Don't pay the lazy tax of sitting with the same product, and better products are available on the market. You do that a lot. You could end up with I mean, I have three savings accounts, and that's a lot to kind of keep an eye on. I know where your money is all about because you want to find out job so you can collect all of that together and see it all in one space. But you can also then use the app to track your spending over time so you can categorise your spending into different brackets and see how much you're spending. One of the things I was dismayed to see on the fund track when I signed up and connected on my account was that I'd actually spent way too much money in bars and restaurants. So you can you can track that type of thing over time, and maybe you can tell you're spending a little bit better, but you can. Also do is find the app can connect to your account and look at your spending and see how much you're spending on things like energy and other financial products, credit cards and potentially offer better value products in the market. So it removes a little bit of that effort that's required to switch where the Finder app will be able to go. Well, here's a here's a better value product than you're currently using, and you know you could look at potentially switching in future. We're going to build more smarts on top of this, and the Finder will become more automatic in this regard. But right now, I was trying to collect all that information together and provide Aussies with a little bit more background information and knowledge to help them make better financial citizens moving forward. 

Alec: [00:34:53] Now, Graeme, I've got to ask. It feels like there is more and more fintechs coming to market every day. It feels like there's so many different money ups to choose from budgeting apps. Neo banks are coming out with apps. There's a lot of choice out there. So I guess why did find a choose to enter this crowded space? And probably more importantly, what's different about the find? 

Graham Cooke: [00:35:14] Well, the Finder app is trying to do what all of those apps are all doing together collectively. Essentially, your bank app will tell you how much you're spending with a particular bank, you know, and I know are financial spending app will tell you you're spending divided over time, but not there isn't an app that will put all of that together, but one portal and also look at the products that you're using to find your house data on and potentially show you better value products in the market. So we're just trying to pull as many tools as possible into this one toolbox and put that on the App Store, and that's what's available to consumers in Australia. Also, it's free. We're never going to charge anybody. We're not charging anybody for the Finder app. So that's another benefit too. No, no, no. We got you on. We got you on the record saying you'll never charge anybody, so they're going to hold you to. I'm not aware of anything coming over the horizon, but it's a free service right now for Aussies to use and you can plug your account in and kind of use all those tools and avail of all those bells and whistles moving forward. 

Bryce: [00:36:07] Now, Graham, you bought a house in lockdown. You have half a million frequent flyer points. You're head of consumer insights at Finder and Consumer Research. Sorry, so there's plenty of advice and and research at your fingertips to close out our conversation today. What would be your number one personal finance tip?

Graham Cooke: [00:36:31] OK. My biggest tip would be and this is pretty boring, really, right? But it's get a good savings account because if. You look at the savings accounts at the big banks are offering, they. Well, they're not. No savings accounts that go to the market right now, but they tend to be offering introductory rates for three or four months, then drop, so you'll get one or two percent. But it often drops to basically next to nothing and you're not really earning any money on your savings going forward. One of the reasons I was able to afford to buy a house is because I built up a deposit, and I did that by maximising the savings that are available in Australia. So what you need to look for in a savings account in Australia is a good ongoing savings rate. Not an interest rate. Not a bonus, right? A rate that you're going to get continuously, always going forward. And the smaller online banks are the ones that tend to offer those rates to the likes of ANZ, the likes of ME, Bank and even the new neo banks like open 86 400. All of those guys will offer usually better rates and the big banks always going forward as long as you fulfil some certain criteria. Usually that means that you just do your spending with the bank or you have a transaction account along with your savings account, or you use your debit card two or three times a month or whatever. But once you fulfil those criteria, you can get a savings account with these banks that can be two or three times what you get with the main banks. And that's the easiest way, the lowest risk way to make the most out of money and build that nest egg isn't forward. Mm-Hmm. 

Alec: [00:37:53] I like that piece of advice. Graham and I felt like you were speaking directly to me that I am the picture of apathy when it comes to personal finance. We've just done a series on superannuation and that gave me the spark to move my super. And you may have just given me the spark to move my savings account is loading Ren step by step mother. All these series in interviews. I might actually get my finances sorted. 

Bryce: [00:38:20] Neither of you should download the app, but you're right where you can actually have 

Graham Cooke: [00:38:23] download the app. I use it. Oh, all right. 

Bryce: [00:38:25] Let's go there we. We went to get a savings account for the business, and they gave me a savings rate of 0.01 percent. Now it's just like your children 

Graham Cooke: [00:38:38] to even bother. That's not even 

Bryce: [00:38:40] I know I didn't just log nine. Oh, it's not worth the paperwork. But anyway, look great. Tip there, particularly if you are, you are saving for a house or whatever. And I think the key message is that it's not too hard to actually put in a bit of work and use the app. 

Graham Cooke: [00:38:53] So there's no reason why you can't have multiple accounts and you know you can sign up with one of these guys and they'll offer a better rate what amount that it might switch. You can switch your money, your Ren. They're always free. The savings account. So it's pretty easy to to kind of maximise whatever money is sitting. You might all be working for you to some degree. 

Bryce: [00:39:08] Well, if you feel like you want to take more control of your money and actually know where it is or going, it might be worth checking out. Find this app you can sign up at Finder dot com dot you slash Equity Mates, so it is the ultimate money app now featuring bitcoin trading as well. Effortlessly manage your money in the palm of your hand. You can see all your accounts in one place, buy bitcoin and track your credit score as well, which we have just found out is an important step in your financial journey. So, Graham, that brings us to the end of our first episode on sorting your money with find a very much appreciate your time today. As always, it's incredibly interesting listening to what you have to say, and we look forward to checking in at some point on how our our savings rates are going over time. 

Graham Cooke: [00:39:51] Thanks, guys. Always a good conversation to say anyone who's interested in finding out more. You can check out the Insights blog on find out where we talk about consumer issues. You can follow me on Twitter at tik-tok. 42. GC OK. Forty two and where I send links to various different news articles and stuff that we is going forward. If you're interested in any of this in the future and if you if you want to say grains face, if you flick on sunrise or today in the morning because there's probably a 50 50 chance that he'll he'll appear at some point. 

Bryce: [00:40:21] Well, that is the end. But stick around because next episode, we're going to be talking about getting your money right, checking in with some of the key tips from financial experts around Australia. And then the third episode is all about what you can do once you've sorted your money and turning your thinking to investing. So plenty of content to go here with. Find us, so we'll pick it up next episode Ren. 

Alec: [00:40:42] Sounds good!