Take for instance the ING Direct Orange Everyday account: it costs nothing to get it and you can and will earn $60 for free by simply depositing money into the account, making a purchase with your Visa Debit card, and debiting money from your account ($20 each). On top of this, every time you withdraw $200 or more from an ATM, ING Direct will pay you $0.50.

Perhaps you’re the kind of person that likes credit cards rather than debit cards? Not a problem! Sign up for the HSBC Credit Card and you’ll be credited with $50 when you make your first purchase. Or the Woolworths Everyday Money Card, which gives you a $50 shopping card after you make 3 purchases. If you’re smart about these types of deals then you could be making yourself a tidy little sum for about half an hour’s work of filling in application forms. The banks are obviously hoping you will stay with them, but if you wanted you could simply then pocket the money, pay off the purchases and then cancel the card. However be careful doing this, because if you make lots of applications for credit this will show up on your credit history – and that may make it harder to get credit in the future!

Perhaps a better way of getting something for nothing from a credit card is via rewards points on a card that has no annual fee. If you always pay off your card in full, of course! There’s not many cards out there like this, but they include the American Express Gold Ascent Rewards Card, American Express Blue Sky Credit Card, the Bank of Queensland Blue Visa and the Coles Group Source Mastercard. There are also a few rewards cards that waive the annual fee if you spend more than a certain amount each year, including the Amex cards offered by AMP, HSBC and Suncorp.

If you’re the kind of person that can walk past a $50 note lying in the street then this blog isn’t for you. If not then enjoy your free lunch. I know I did.

(Note: the offers mentioned in the article were valid at the time of writing, but they may not be by the time you read it. And of course, there may be terms and conditions on each offer that we’ve not reproduced here.)

Compare credit cards at mozo.com.au
compare bank accounts at mozo.com.au

The bank was pressured both by ongoing complaints and the Reserve Bank’s disclosure that the industry raised almost $1 billion in dishonour and exception fees. While the cause was taken up in defence of underprivileged account holders, small business will also enjoy the fruits of fee free accounts, which come into place this week.

At this stage, none of the other big banks have followed NAB’s move, but it’ll be interesting to see whether more consumer agitation drives changes that also benefit small business. We’ll keep you posted.

Compare banks accounts at mozo.com.au

It was always a disappointment to me when the millennium rolled in and nothing happened. Kevin Costner had a large part to play in this, my desire to live in a barren post-apocalyptic wasteland piqued after watching Waterworld. I bought the canned goods and the bottled water. I sacrificed an entire summer’s worth of backyard cricket so I could construct a fallout shelter in the garden. So it was with glee and perhaps the tiniest glimmer of hope that I read about this latest development.

Were there irregularities in the time space continuum in Queensland and Western Australia? Should I be expecting a drive-by visit from a Delorean? More importantly, should I evict the 20 Israeli backpackers from my bomb shelter? They’ve been a real cash cow through the recession.

The whole saga got me thinking about what the world of banking will be like 6 years from now so I’ve constructed a basic timeline of events:

2011 – Gail Kelly becomes a blender jockey at her local Boost Juice after getting the heave-ho from Westpac on the back of a failure to glean a single home loan application in 2010.

2012 – In a bloody coup, the two American marketing gurus in the Commonwealth Bank ads take over the bank and install basketball hoops in branches and hand out money box transformers to kids, actually making going to the bank somewhat enjoyable. This popularity springboards them ahead of the competition and they take over an ailing Westpac, re-branding themselves as ‘Compac’.

2013 - NAB forced by the Australian government, led by a Hologram of the late John Howard, to annex ANZ when a financially crippled New Zealand becomes an Australian state (South Tasmania) and the unifying moniker of National Australia Bank was deemed to suffice for both.

2014 – Compac flourish for a couple of years till they are successfully sued for billions of dollars by American computer manufacturer ‘Compaq’ for copyright infringement. Daily Telegraph headline reports that the outcome has put the ‘Bank back into bankrupt’. Daily Telegraph headline writer fired.

2015 – With ‘Compac’ in dire straits, all their concerns are taken over by NAB. NAB renamed ‘The Bank’.

2016 - Nationwide backlash to what Howard labels a “perceived lack of competition”. Financial markets crippled as investors lose faith in “The Bank” after a 0.25% Reserve Bank increase is met with a 15% rise in the mortgage rate.

Year 0 – Former ANZ upper management turned radical New Zealand nationalists hacked into the software controlling the Howard hologram, and through a series of poorly thought out foreign policy moves, make North Korea unleash three nuclear warheads. Only those of us with fallout shelters remain. We have no oil or water, but luckily I have Gail Kelly with me to make me smoothies, fruit whips and juices. And there isn’t a financial institution in sight.

I guess the apocalypse ain’t so bad after all…

Compare banks with Mozo.com.au

I strolled down to a Westpac ATM and, upon instructing the machine to dispense my last $20, was greeted with an additional screen asking if I wanted the personal details of the bank manager. Partly intrigued and mostly bored, I wasted no time in pressing yes. I found out that the manager, Peta Cruickshank is, amongst other things, “pulling out all the stops”, “for blitzing fees” and is “dedicated to giving me fast answers”. In need of a fast answer as to what to buy my Dad for Christmas, I decided to call Peta on her mobile number. It went straight to: “you have reached the voice mailbox of ‘private number’. Beep”. She still hasn’t got back to me. Personal touch indeed.

It seems that this strive for customer service is rearing its ugly head at every turn. A friend who works for the financial services union told me that an unnamed bank’s renewed customer service push has seen quite a few complaints from staffers. Apparently the bank calls customers at random and asks them how the service was last time they were at the bank. If the rating is under 9/10, it impacts the staff member in question’s performance review. Here’s a particularly disturbing example: a customer was attempting to withdraw money and the ATM jammed so he had to go in to the branch to sort it out. The staff were very nice and helpful, but the customer gave the bank’s customer service a ‘0′ due to the ATM inconvenience. The helpful staff member got given a ‘0′ and a mark on her customer service record despite the incident being a result of a faulty machine. Don’t you just love it when the system works?

As an aside, would anyone else who’s seen the Commonwealth Bank’s most recent TV ad actually prefer their branch to have a basketball hoop instead of a customer service promise? Customer service should be a given and a basketball hoop would be a nice way to bide the time while the old woman in front of you counts change at the teller. Speaking of which, a male colleague of mine walked into a Commonwealth branch the other day, spoke to a young female teller and upon completing the transaction was asked to rate her out of ten. Cue awkward pause. He smiled, told her “11″ and bemusedly strolled off.

Ratings out of 10? Mobile numbers? Perhaps these lonely bank managers are fostering some kind of dating scene at branch level. Christmas is a time to spend with people you love after all!

Compare banks at Mozo.com.au

Well, we kinda suspected…

But the big surprise has been the vices themselves, with Gadgets taking the lead on $77 million, closely followed by Shoes & Clothes.

Seems we’re a nation of chic geeks.

So what ever happened to the party-hard Aussie yobbo? After a strong start, Booze has drooped to a groggy $15m, and Ciggies are only coughing up $4.5m.

Of course, it’s early days yet, and having stepped over more than one xmas reveller on the way to work this morning, Mozo thinks there are a few sinners holding out on us…

So pop an aspirin and join the race to become Australia’s first VICE President.
http://mozo.com.au/vice-calculator

That five grand – and limitless kudos – could be yours!

Do you know how much your Vices are costing you? If you’re anything like us, you’ve got no idea just how bad it is. All those coffees each week, the shoes clogging up your cupboard, the night on the drink that mysteriously drained your whole bank account – and let’s not even get started on Christmas and New Years.

Truly, we are a viceful people.

But here’s the good news: We’re looking for Australia’s First Vice President! That’s right, we’re going to reward the vices you try so desperately to hide!

Simply head to our Vice Calculator, tot up that vicious spend and come up with a campaign promise to smite your vice. The candidate with the best promise will win $5000!

Follow the campaign trail on Facebook and Twitter to read and vote on your rivals’ promises, and be sure to boost your supporter base — get your friends to vote for you.

The VICE President will be inaugurated on Australia Day — so join the race and start campaigning today!

Team Mozo

Electoral Regulator

St George are matching the Westpac term deposit offer, so no prizes for guessing what their home loan rates will do.

Now watch the other sheep follow the leader.

Compare home loans at mozo.com.au

Compare term deposits at mozo.com.au

A 1 year rate of 6.8% is an enormous rate, bigger than any 1 year or even 2 year term deposit rate in the market.  Yesterday the best 1 year rate around was an online special from Rural Bank of 6.25%, and the best the Big 4 offered was 5.5%.  You couldn’t get any more than 6.5% even if you locked your money away for 2 years!

It’s true that term deposit rates have been on the rise for a while.  Even before today’s announcement, the average 1 year TD rate was 1% higher than 12 months ago, even though the Reserve Bank rate is still much lower.  But up to now, it’s been the smaller players leading the charge on Term Deposits rates: yesterday’s leading 1 year deposit rates came from Rural Bank, AMP, Bank of Queensland and Bendigo.  That’s primarily because they’ve struggled to fund their lending compared to the Big Banks, and therefore need to attract more deposits.  So the fact that today’s aggressive move has come from Westpac is a real eye-opener.

We’ve been blogging here at Mozo for a while about the emerging savings account rate wars.  Now the conflict is spreading.  The other players will need to sharpen up their own term deposit rates in order to keep money coming in.  This is a great time to be saving!

But we have to wonder, at what cost to loan rates?  Last month, Commbank CEO Ralph Norris was blaming higher term deposit rates as one of the things driving up home loan funding costs, and one of the reasons why he wouldn’t rule out increasing variable home loan rates by more than the RBA increases.  This certainly isn’t going to help homeowners!

Compare term deposits with mozo.com.au

In light of this startling revelation, we thought it would be a good chance to gauge the thoughts of the mortgage community who are, unfortunately enough, staring down the barrel of 18 months of gradual pain.

To make this amazingly easy for us, The Daily Telegraph have put together a short survey around Tuesday’s meeting, which can be completed at this very clickable green link. For those of you in the community who think the Reserve Board is out of touch, or would like to pen an imaginary message to RBA overlord Glenn Stevens, then you will find this a convenient, interwebs based soap box.

So despite the cash rate reaching 50 year lows, and staying that way almost long enough for even the most indecisive property owner to fix a pretty special rate, the Monetary powers that be are again falling back on their old tools. Now it appears people must brace themselves for a good, healthy dose of monthly electroshock therapy. Let’s just hope it ends better than it did for Jack Nicholson.

Need help with the pain? Compare Home Loans with Mozo to find a better a deal.