Posts Tagged ‘how to save money’


What are your financial questions?

Posted in How to, Save money on October 6th, 2010

alicia@heaps.co.nz

By Alicia

1 Comment

Have some questions about your finances but not sure who to ask? Well now you have the chance to have your questions answered for free!

heaps! and Lisa Dudson from Money.tv are teaming up to answer your financial questions. This Friday, heaps! will be meeting Lisa in Auckland to discuss questions you’ve been asking and the fantastic crew at 90seconds will be filming her response so you can watch it again and again.

Lisa Dudson specialises in personal financial planning and is the co-founder of www.moneytv.co.nz, a site dedicated to offering free tips and information on personal finance and investing. Not only has she written for numerous publications, including Women’s Day, Nz Property Magazine, YahooXtra and msn, she has also written a few bestselling books, including The Complete Guide to Residental Property Investment in New Zealand, Get Your Head out of the Sand, Winning the Money War and Property Investment that Stacks Up. Not only that, Lisa Dudson is a respected seminar speaker and also runs courses on property investment and personal financial planning.

So take advantage of this fantastic opportunity by adding your questions below in the comment section.

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Income Tax Cuts on the Way

Posted in How to, Save money on October 1st, 2010

christina@heaps.co.nz

By Christina

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Now that tax cuts are in effect, you’ll potentially have a few extra dollars in your wallet each week.  It’s an excellent opportunity to create a goal in heaps! and save up!

We’ve done some number crunching, and the graph below will give you a rough idea of exactly how much more you can expect:

Annual Income (before tax) Fortnightly income (after tax) before 1 October 2010 Fortnightly income (after tax)   after 1 October 2010 Extra income per fortnight Extra saved for one year
$25,000 $805 $831 $26 $665
$30,000 $957 $990 $32 $840
$40,000 $1,261 $1,307 $46 $1,190
$50,000 $1,556 $1,615 $59 $1,530
$80,000 $2,310 $2,411 $101 $2,630
$100,000 $2,787 $2,926 $140 $3,630

This means that a person earning $50,000/yr will get an extra $29 per week.  Imagine how much this adds up to over the course of a month…or a year!  Oh the possibilities!  Even though GST will be going up at the same time, there is a very real potential to save more and reach your goals faster.

Kiwibank supports you

heaps! and Kiwibank are really keen to help you save your extra money so that you can spend it on something you really want.  In fact, Kiwibank is giving away $2,000 savings top up to one lucky winner who does just this:

To enter the competition, all you have to do is open a Kiwibank savings account between 1 October and 15 November 2010 and deposit at least $40 into it.  If you already have a Kiwibank savings account, you just need to make a deposit of at least $40 into your current Kiwibank savings account. It’s that simple!  (Read the official word here.)

Online Call and PIE Online Call accounts can be opened through your Kiwibank internet banking. If you don’t have internet banking, or want to open a Fast Forward or Back-up Saver account, call Kiwibank on 0800 11 33 55 or pop in to your local Kiwibank to talk to someone in person.


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Categorise your life with heaps!

Posted in heaps! updates on September 1st, 2010

alicia@heaps.co.nz

By Alicia

4 Comments

How can you make it easier to understand your finances? By adding structure and getting organised! When it comes to understanding your spending, for some, a general overview is good, and for others, the more detail the better. You’ll notice the next time you log into heaps! that we have implemented a new look to the categories’ interface. We’ve added new style and effects so that when you categorise a transaction, you no will no longer have to scroll down and find your place again.

Also regarding transactions, there are new abilities for marking transactions as regular. When you categorise a transaction you will be able to mark an income transaction as being regular, and you when you mark any transaction as regular you will be able to enter a custom amount of how much you expect it to be each time. If you would like to allocate money towards your goal you can now do that on this page. Just click “I spent it on a goal” when you are categorising a transaction and heaps! will allocate this money for you. Too easy! Log in now to check out the new changes!

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New and Improved!

Posted in New features, heaps! updates on August 30th, 2010

Bobby

By Bobby

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The team here at heaps! has been working hard to improve things for everyone and our latest upgrade is going to be implemented Tuesday night, so unfortunately you won’t be able to access heaps! from 10pm. You can look forward to the following new features once the site is back up and running at around 8am on Wednesday morning:

New look interface during categorisation You’ll see new style and effects when you go to categorise a transaction, and it will appear under the transaction so that after you save, you won’t have to scroll down and find your place again.

New abilities for marking transactions as regular When you categorise a transaction you will be able to mark an income transaction as being regular, and you when you mark any transaction as regular you will be able to enter a custom amount of how much you expect it to be each time.

Goal templates With our new templates you’ll be able to choose a goal such as “Buy a car” or “Get out of debt” with the name, description and tasks already filled out for you.

Add a new goal from categorisation If you click on “I spent it on a goal” when you’re categorising a transaction you’ll be able to add a new goal without going on to the goals page first.

Goals progress display Your goals graphs will constantly update to show how much you’ve saved and spent on your goal.

Easier editing of goals You’ll be able to edit your goals easier and faster, mark a goal as spend or investment, and see your goal picture instantly after uploading.

We’re also releasing fixes for some bugs that we’ve found throughout the site, so heaps! will be running smoother than ever. These include mending the goal calculator, fixing up the way that categorisation remembers bill payments and income, stopping the budget start date from wandering for those of you who budget fortnightly, making the graph and figures on the homepage consistent, resetting sub categories when you go back to “All Spending” on the spending page and fixing a couple of bugs in our welcome wizard.

So bear with us on Tuesday night while heaps! is down during our upgrade, then log in on Wednesday and check out the new improvements!

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