Tax tip – top 5 deductions to not miss

Tax time brings a bit of stress and angst for most Australians. So much work to prepare and then… oh the mystery of how much you’ll even get back.

No wonder the advertising you see around tax time is all about speed – “next day returns” and “30 minute consultations” – however to get the best out of your tax return experience, preparation is key.

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Here’s our top 5 list for spending that most people miss as possible deductions. But as always, do check with your tax agent before you submitting your return:

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Pocketbook Mobile App – way better than your online banking app

We’re very excited to announce the release of the Pocketbook mobile app on iPhone.

It’s been hard work for a few months, designing and building the app with the same ridiculous simplicity in mind as our website. We promise it will be the simplest spending and expense tracker, or budgeting app you’ve ever used.

You may even want to throw away your online banking apps too! … We have.

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Safely Spend – Ridiculously Simple Budgeting

In a recent guest post at Women In the Black, I referred to the TED talk where ad exec Rory Sutherland suggested that – the simplest way to help people save is with a red button on the living room wall. It’s all about the simplicity of the interface.

So, in keeping to this thinking, we’ve built Safely Spend – a ridiculously simple approach to budgeting.

Why Safely Spend?

Budgeting is hard, and often individuals get too wound up abut the big daunting number in the future (output), rather what could be done week-to-week (input).

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Want your bank in Pocketbook? Vote now!

You’ve asked us via our feedback tab why we haven’t supported your bank with feeds. We’re getting there as fast as we can. To help us prioritise, we thought we’d put together a little poll.

If you’re passionate about your bank being included, and want to stop using our manual account feature, get your friends to help!

It’s simple, the more Likes you get, the more likely we’ll do it next! Vote here.

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Bosco

Infographic – How we spent during Christmas

We implemented the Pocketbook Gift tag in time for Christmas presents last year. Now that December is well and truly dusted, the results are out! We decided to have a look at how we all spent during Christmas. You should find this interesting.

Christmas gift spending

Summary of findings

We Aussies are all very generous gift buyers:
– 75% of users spent over $500 on gifts in total
– 8% spent over $2,000 on gifts in total

We buy a lot of different things, but experiences, groceries and bottle of wine are becoming common:
– 55% of gifts were from department store items, including books, clothing and electronics
– 25% are experiences like trips and meals
– 10% are gourmet food items or bottles of wine

December spending overall was also some interesting differences:
– 80% of users bought from online or offline department style stores
– 68% spent some money on entertainment with drinks
– 23% spent more money on petrol than in November – we think perhaps this is family roadtrips?

Have you had a look back at your holiday spending in December? Try Pocketbook and get the answer instantly!

Bosco

Buying a Car with Pocketbook

I turned 30 a couple of weeks ago, and in an effort to reward myself for making it. I decided to buy myself a car as a present.

This time round, I wanted to be a little smarter with my purchase decision. Instead of just setting myself a spend limit on the purchase price, I wanted to consider the entire picture of affordability – really analysing my regular vehicle expenses.

What I used to do

I imagine the way I used to figure out what car I could afford was very much like how everyone else does it:

Total savings in the bank – debt commitments + trade-in value for existing car = Total room to spend

However this isn’t the full picture, especially in today’s world of high petrol and insurance prices. I could do much better.

Getting a full picture

The first thing I did was to analyse my current costs for the car. This was really easy via looking at my “Car” category of spending in Pocketbook.

I figured spending for parking and speeding fines would still remain, however, petrol and insurance may change depending on the car I purchase. Perhaps registration fees would too if I got a newer car.

So looking at Pocketbook, I was able to see that I spent $1,400 for comprehensive insurance and around $35 a week for petrol in the part year. That’s over $3,000 for the year.

Then the first thing I did to figure out what I could afford is to gather similar information for my shortlisted cars. There are plenty of online car insurance quote websites and fuel economy information was easy from websites such as Redbook. I used this information to set up data sets for all my options.

Using this information, I soon figured out the car I really wanted – a 2010 Volkswagen Polo GTI – was able to to save me around $1,300 a year! That’s spending $750 for comprehensive cover and $20 a week for petrol. This made going over my original budget really easy, especially as the numbers told me I’d be making up most of the difference in that first year.

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Getting exactly what I wanted

My lesson here was by really studying my historical spending habits, I was better informed to make the right big purchase decision. What I got out of it was exactly the car I wanted, which originally I thought I couldn’t afford at all.

So how much are you paying for car insurance and fuel? Can you save more with a different car? Find out with Pocketbook

Bosco

PS. Another tip to hack is to overdraft on your home loan at substantially lower interest rates for the purchase, rather than take out other forms of financing.