Online Personal Finance | Online Personal Finance Blog for NZ

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.

In the latest release deployed this morning, we’ve focused on improving the user interface – making a few changes here and there that will make getting around heaps! a little easier.

Here’s what you’ll find:

Skip Set up wizard link

For new users (and for those who use the Restart set up wizard function), you can opt to skip the wizard by clicking the link at the bottom. heaps! will remind you to set up your accounts at a later time if you haven’t already done so.

Subcategory Column

Instead of seeing just Home, Food, Fun, Travel, and Other in the ‘Category’ column on your Home and Spending pages, heaps! now displays the subcategory. This makes your categorising a bit easier because you can decide at a glance if you need to do any re-categorising.

To the spending page…

As always, the blue pencil is there for you to click if you want to edit a category. This is now separated from the subcategory name. Clicking on the subcategory will now take you to the spending page so that you can see a breakdown of your expenditures from that subcategory.

“Only Change This Transactions” is the Default

Many of you wrote in wanting this, and here it is. Instead of “Change all transactions like this” being the default for categorising, we’ve left the box unticked. This way, if you accidentally forget to look at the box, all your hard work in sorting out which BP transactions were ‘Petrol’ and which were ‘Snacks’ won’t be lost. Instead, just that one transaction will be affected and you can go back and tick the box if that’s what you had intended.

In reviewing our options for customisable categories we considered how a new system would change the overall usability of heaps!. Ultimately, we wanted something that would address your needs of a more flexible budgeting tool yet still provide effective and accurate reporting. We’ve decided to develop a more extensive list of categories that will make categorisation and analysis of spending much easier.

How it works:

The new list of categories give you a lot more choice. You can categorise at a high level or in more detail. The list of cateogories will be organised into two tiers. The first tier allows you to categorise your transactions at a higher level, while the second tier allows you to categorise your transactions much more specifically. Among our increased list these we’ve included Gas in our Power & Gas category, Legal and Financial Services, and Home Improvements categories that have been requested by the heaps! community.

We’ll be incorporating a great synonym search tool that suggests categories as you type. For example, if you start entering ‘Children’, heaps! will recommend the existing category ‘Kids’. This will help maintain consistency for your budget.

Having this expanded list has given us the opportunity to improve how you analyse your spending and allow you to budget more efficiently. You will be able to breakdown your Eating Out spending to see how much you spend on Coffee, Lunch, Takeaways, Snacks, or Restaurants. And we’ll be improving how this data is displayed as well.

When will this be released?

We’re targeting early October 2010.

What’s next?

We are considering a tagging feature for those who want to track and compare their transactions in a more comprehensive way (husband’s spending vs. wife’s spending, expenses for child 1 vs. child 2, petrol costs for using car 1 vs. car 2, etc). Any thoughts you have on this idea would be greatly appreciated.

Buying a car doesn’t necessarily have to drive you crazy. There are steps that you can take to make getting on the road much easier. New or used, there are some very basic steps to buying a car. Take a quick look at these tips, and my personal story, to help you on your journey to owning a car.

Things to Consider

Research! I cannot stress this enough. If you think you know what you want, be sure to do as much research on the vehicle as you can. Read blogs from those who actually own the car, read reviews, and get a history report on the specific car you are looking to buy. Knowing about the car’s history is very helpful. You can find out what repairs the car has had, and then you are aware of what issues you may come across with the vehicle.

Planning is also very important, and somewhat of a broad concept. You want to plan for a down payment, or full on cash payment. If you are going to be taking out a loan you will want to budget and be sure you know what you can afford to pay monthly. You need to remember that you will also need to budget in licencing and sales tax, insurance, and it’s a good idea to budget an emergency fund (for repairs). There are other expenses to remember when you buy a car; obviously you will need fuel, you will need to change your oil, and you might want to wash your car every now and then.

Save, save, save!

Once you have your goals set, start saving. Never buy a car, or anything for that matter, unless you are financially stable enough to make that purchase. You will want to save for your down payment, your licensing, insurance, a repair/regular maintenance fund, and budget for your monthly payments.

Here are some other tips for buying a car I found online:

1. One rule of thumb is that you should spend no more than 20% of your household income to buy and operate car.

2. If you don’t have a car payment now, consider whether you’re willing and able to take one on. Try putting aside a car payment, say, $500, each month for three months and not touching it. Are you able to live easily without that money? Would you really rather do something else with it?

3. Call your insurer for full-coverage rates on the cars you’re considering.

4. Contact your local motor-vehicles department to see what registration and licensing would cost.

5. Before you hit the showroom floor, take a hard look at the kind of driving you do. Don’t assume you need a brand-new car, and consider keeping a driving journal for a week, or even a month, to chart exactly when, where and how far you drive each day. Then buy a vehicle according to those needs.

6. Get financing approved in advance. If you have a pre-approved loan elsewhere, the dealer then is motivated to compete against the deal you already have.

My Story

Coming from a rural part of the States, owning a car was necessary for me. While I was living at home and attending high school, my parents allowed me to use one of their vehicles to travel to and from school (for extra-curricular activities). I also started working while I was in high school, and my parents allowed me to use one of their vehicles to go to work. When I went off to study at the University, my family was kind enough to let me use their car until I could buy my own. So this is where my journey began; all the planning, saving, researching, and expectations I had for buying my own car.

My First Shot was a Fail

After a couple years of studying and working, I had saved enough to buy a used Volkswagen Beetle. It had high mileage, somewhere around 90,000, but was a fairly current model and was super cute! It had all of the things I thought my car would need, fake leather interior, sunroof, CD player, and a really large (somewhat humorous) decal on both sides. I purchased the car, with cash, for $7,000. I thought that I had made a pretty smart buy, and it might have been if I had done a bit more research. After two months of owning the car, a timing belt broke and destroyed the engine. It was estimated $3,500 for repairs. I also had the local scrap yard give me an estimate on what they would buy it from me for. They quoted me $4,500, as is. So, I was faced with the decision to live without a car, in order to save the $3,500, or sell it for $4,500 and use the cash for a down payment on another car. I had to decide to either pay an additional $3,500 for the car to work or take a loss of $2,500.

My Second Try

I chose to take the loss of $2,500. In this case, it was the best alternative after doing more research on my first purchase. The Volkswagen’s had some timing belt issues, and the timing belt would need to be replaced regularly. This time I decided to do more research on my prospective purchases, get advice, and have a plan for the next time disaster struck. I saved the money from selling my Beetle, and began saving more, as I shopped around. I set goals like; I want to have at least $5,000 for a down payment, I need to be sure that I have enough extra to pay for licencing, tax, and insurance, also I need to be sure I can comfortably pay my monthly payments.

I had different requirements for my new car. My new car needed to have a warranty, in case something happened. It needed to be fuel efficient, comfortable, and reasonable. I had to kiss my ridiculous decals and leather interior goodbye. After 3 months of searching, I found my nearly new car. It had previously been used by a business for travel, they had put a hefty 30,000 miles on it in one year, but it was still under manufacturers warranty. It was in my price range, according to my budget of what monthly payments I could afford. The newish Saturn was very fuel efficient and somewhat stylish.

One Happy Car Owner

I purchased my car two years ago, I haven’t had to put any money into repairs (thanks to my warranty). I only had one issue, it was quite small and the dealership fixed it in a matter of hours. I am very pleased with my purchase, and am relieved that it was much easier than my first attempt. I think that researching, planning, and saving really helped me to make this a better experience. So I would like to go into more detail about the actual process of buying a car.

What tips do you have for those looking to buy a car, and what are you experiences?

Looking to buy your own car? Make it your goal in heaps! and you’ll be on track to saving up for that big purchase.

What inspires you? What makes you want to change your life?

Is it the people around you? A historical figure? A story you saw in a book or film? There are so many inspiring stories about achieving goals, especially in films. You know the ones: the dancer who auditions for the role of a lifetime, the underdog sport team winning the final against all odds, the discriminated outsider who rises up to become a social hero *cue dramatic orchestral music*. These films are inspiring and teach us, you can do anything! If you just believe and follow your heart (oh, and work your ass off).

However, despite all this inspirational material, only 20% of the population set goals and of those people a whopping 70% fail to achieve the goals they have set for themselves. Why is that? There are a number of reasons why this happens, such as not committing to the goal, not wanting to change, not understanding the goal setting process or setting too many goals. Well no more! We are here to help you set goals you can achieve. Booyah!

Why set goals?

Goals give you something to work toward, they give purpose and ultimately make life more interesting and challenging. People who set goals have higher self-esteem, confidence, and control in their lives. Goals come in all shapes and sizes, whether it is buying a house, winning a race, getting promoted, losing weight, or learning something new. No matter the size of the challenge, achieving goals is always rewarding. The feeling of success when achieving your goals is like no other. Not only does it better your current situation, but also boosts your moral, confidence, and self-esteem. What reasons do you have for setting goals of your own? What types of goals do you have, and which do you struggle most with?

When to set a goal?

Setting goals will help to achieve something that does not come easily. Learning a language, running a marathon, moving to Japan are huge investments, not only in money but in time, effort, commitment and planning. Setting milestones in order to achieve these goals will help to make the situation less stressful as it breaks up the massive goal into tiny little goals that seem easier to achieve step by step.

If you find yourself asking someone for advice on something, realize that you have the perfect opportunity to set a goal. Goals are best for situations that require guidance. Consider setting goals with a partner as working together makes achieving goals much easier. For example many people prefer to reach their fitness goals with a friend for motivational reasons.

How to set a goal

When setting a goal you need to have a clear idea of what you want and why you want it. Your goal needs to have purpose, as this will make it a high priority in your life, and therefore more likely to be achieved. Try using the SMART model: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Reasonable, and Timely goals. Take a look at the SMART model below and answer the following questions in terms of your goal:

Specific:

1) What are you going to do? (What is it that you want to achieve? Visualize your goal, and your success!)

2) Why is it important to you? (Define compelling reasons for achieving your goal. Why do you want to achieve it?)

3) Define the benefits you expect to gain from achieving your goal. (How will you feel if you achieve your goal?)

4) Consider the consequences of not achieving your goal. (What will happen if you don’t achieve it? How will you feel?)

5) How are you going to do it? (What steps do you need to take in order to achieve your goal?)

Measurable:

If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Choose a goal with measurable progress so you can see the change as it occurs. Set measurable tasks or milestones towards your goal, so that by achieving each step you will feel like you are moving forward. Also, be sure to plan for the obstacles you may come across. Obstacles are unavoidable, and when you plan for solutions to them you are more likely to overcome them.

Attainable:

Goals that are out of your reach won’t motivate you, your goal should stretch you slightly.

Don’t do it alone, ask for help! Share your goal with friends/family (they will keep you motivated).

Reasonable:

Set goals that you can attain with some effort. Set the bar high enough for satisfying achievement.

Timely:

Set deadlines to motivate you and make sure you are actively working towards your goal. Be sure that your deadlines are attainable and reasonable.

So go on goal setters, start completing your goals with confidence using these tips! If you have more tips for setting goals we would love to hear from you, so just comment below. Stay motivated and good luck!

“Your goal should be out of reach, but not out of Sight.” – Anita DeFrantz

Make setting goals easy in heaps!

By now you may have seen that heaps! has some sexy new goal templates. These are fantastic for setting financial goals as they are full of tasks and milestones to break up the process for you. Whether you are saving to buy a house or planning a trip to Bali, putting it as a goal in heaps! takes (most) of the work away for you. You can see your progress and heaps! will keep you on track so that you can achieve that goal faster. You can also customise templates by adding notes and tasks or by creating your own. Whatever the goal, set in heaps! and get there faster! Whoo!

Was achieving your goal in heaps! but not being able to ‘complete’ it, a bit of an anti-climax? Well, get your party hat on because now you can! When you’ve reached your goal, heaps! will display a message on your home page to let you know it’s time to celebrate.

heaps! will also display your completed goals at the bottom of your goals page so you can feel a warm sense of pride every time you check it. Then if you find that you haven’t saved as much as you thought you had or that your goal actually costs more than originally planned, you can reactivate a completed goal by clicking on reactivate and decreasing the amount saved or increasing your goal target. You can also allocate or deduct money from an active goal anytime you like.

We’ve also done some background maintenance so that your heaps! runs more smoothly. We know that you’re all quite eager to see some of the bigger, more exciting changes, and rest assured, they’re on their way.

We are excited to announce that heaps! has been nominated as a finalist for three categories in this year’s New Zealand Internet Industry Awards that will be held in Wellington on the 28th of July.

The New Zealand Internet Industry Awards was launched in 2009 with the aim to celebrate the achievement of companies who have successfully used the Internet as a platform for business, education and society enhancing organisations. By showcasing excellence to the wider community, the Awards hopes to improve people’s understanding of Internet technologies and encourage Internet entrepreneurship in New Zealand.

The Awards are run by the Liz Dengate Thrush Foundation to encourage Internet entreprenuership and other positive uses of the Internet in New Zealand.

Finalist in three categories

Kiwibank & Social Capital have been nominated for the launch of the first free personal finance management tool from a New Zealand bank for customers www.heaps.co.nz.

Positive Societal Impact
Development of the application, product or services provided on the Internet likely to have the most beneficial impact on New Zealand society.

Best Education Product or Service
The application, product or services provided on the Internet that is likely to have the greatest impact on learning and/or teaching in New Zealand.

Best Business Application
For those that transform their methods of doing business, or change our way of doing business with them.

Thank you so much to Kiwibank, the team at heaps! and the New Zealand Internet Industry Awards! We’ll see you at the banquet!

Kiwibank has been announced as a finalist in, not one, but…three categories for the Telecommunications Users Association of New Zealand (TUANZ) Innovation Awards! AND every single one of these awards is for their part in bringing heaps! to their customers.

TUANZ is a not-for-profit membership association that has led the charge to improve competition for telecommunications services in NZ. Their vision is for a New Zealand with a world-class communications system, with all Kiwis enjoying affordable, readily available connectivity. This prestigious annual awards ceremony recognises outstanding innovation within the telecommunications arena in New Zealand.

Kiwibank is a finalist in 3 categories:

TUANZ Initiative of the Year Award Finalists (Pictured: Richard Westlake on behalf of Kiwibank, Michael Foley - Voco (sponsor) and Maxine Elliott - Vector Communications)

TUANZ Education Award (sponsored by Aurecon): For the most innovative education or training product, service or initiative developed in New Zealand, and delivered electronically to New Zealanders, which contributes to general education (applicable to whole life learning, e.g business, community, primary, secondary, tertiary, etc).

TUANZ Initiative of the Year (sponsored by Voco): For a product, service or application facilitated or enabled by the innovative use of technology in New Zealand, or by a New Zealand company overseas.

TUANZ Commerce Award (TUANZ’s own): For the most innovative financial product, service or initiative developed in New Zealand, and delivered electronically to New Zealanders, which enhances the customer’s experience.

The winners will be announced at the award ceremony on Thursday, 2 September at the Langham Hotel in Auckland. Congratulations to Kiwibank, and thank you for being such a supportive partner!

Understanding how much you spend on a daily basis is key to making positive changes to your finances. Setting (and sticking to!) a budget is essential when saving money as it will make you aware of where your money is going, find your money leaks, and help you change your habits so that you can achieve your financial goals. But how to start? When setting a budget, here are a few tips when dividing your income:

1. Pay yourself first

One of the most important things you can do for your financial well-being is to develop a habit of putting money into a savings account. It’s not so much how much money you put aside, as long as you do it on a regular basis. Savings accounts also allow you to earn interest (a percentage of money) off of your money so it will slowly grow, especially if you keep adding to it. Those in debt are also encouraged to put money into savings, as well as regularly paying off their debt.

After the tax department has taken their share, move at least 10% of your monthly earnings into savings before you can do other things with it. Many workplaces make it easy to move a portion of your income directly into your savings account. Ideally, you should put another 10% into your super fund (on top of your employer’s contributions). No matter how far off retirement seems right now, it is wise to start preparing for it now, especially since the cost of living has been known to double every 15 years. Total: 15-20%

2. Set aside money for your essential expenses

Only allow 60% of your salary for essential expenses like rent, bills and groceries. Consider getting a checking account for these day-to-day payments and keeping your saving account for long-term savings (emergencies, big purchases and holidays.) Look out for tips on how you can cut back on your daily spendings and reduce bills with cheap deals.

Total: 60%

3. Extras

The rest of your income goes to luxuries like entertainment and holidays. If you are overspending, this is the area where you will need to make cuts. By tracking your spending you can find where those ‘money leaks’ are: is it the daily bus fare or buying your lunch during the week? How can you cut back and save money in these areas? Finding these leaks in your budget makes you more aware of your spending and allows you to fill the money leaks without too much disruption. Total: 20-25%

Do this in heaps!

Heaps! categorises most of your transactions for you so you can see exactly how much of your income is being spent on various categories. You can also re-categorize your transactions to suit your lifestyle. Heaps! will then look at both your regular payments and daily spending to work out your total spending for that week, month or fortnight. Once it has calculated your surplus, or debt if that is the case, you can work with heaps! to create a budget that will suit your lifestyle and help you save money.

heaps! categorises a percentage of your transactions automatically, which saves you time. We’re giving you, the heaps! community, the power to decide which category a business belongs in.

The Categorisation Engine

Previously the heaps! team sat in front of long lists of business names and decided which category each of your transactions should be assigned to. But now, if a business is not currently in our system, it will automatically be assigned the category that a majority of the first customers to categorise it have selected for that business.

For this example, lets say that ‘McDonalds’, as a business, is new to heaps!. If the first few heaps! customers choose to categorise their McDonalds transactions, as ‘Takeaways’ and the next few select ‘Snacks’ instead, then no automatic categorisation would be applied. It needs a certain number of customers to select the same categorisation for the automation to take place.

How This Helps You

With this new categorisation system, it means that more of your transactional spending will be automatically categorised and categorised to how the majority of heaps! customers would want it. As always, though, you can manually change your transaction category, if it isn’t right for you.

Posts Tagged ‘online personal finance’

Income Tax Cuts on the Way

Kiwibank supports you

What’s New? (Released 29/9/2010)

Skip Set up wizard link

Subcategory Column

To the spending page…

“Only Change This Transactions” is the Default

Categorisation Update

How it works:

When will this be released?

What’s next?

How to Buy a New (or Used) Car

How to set goals so that you can achieve them

Goooaaaalll!!!

heaps! is a finalist for three categories in the New Zealand Internet Industry Awards!

Finalist in three categories

Kiwibank heaps! Named as Finalist for 3 TUANZ Innovation Awards

Kiwibank is a finalist in 3 categories:

Saving Money with Budgets: How to Divide Your Income

More Transactions Pre-Categorised for You!

The Categorisation Engine

How This Helps You

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