A recent survey has found many Australians have low financial literacy; don’t understand how mortgages work or how the RBA cash rate affects them.
The survey conducted by super fund-owned bank ME of 1000 people found that almost half of Australians admit to being uninformed about the mortgage market. Furthermore, 40 per cent of survey respondents did not know the right cash rate and how the cash rate affects mortgage repayments. Seventy per cent of 18 to 29-year-olds said they did know the cash rate. (I would say that most people dont understand what this meant to their mortgage repayment. A few conversations lately with property investors disturbed me because they didn’t seem to know that a rise in the cash rate from 2% to 4% meant that their mortgage repayments doubled)
Patrick Nolan, ME’s head of home loans reiterated the importance of the cash rate because of its significance in driving variable mortgage interest rates. While the RBA sets the cash rate, Nolan says there are other significant contributors to consider such as “the lenders’ cost of funding of the mortgages and competition between lenders.” Nolan says that, “financial literacy is a valuable asset and one of the biggest money savers over time.”
More here – Mentor Education
Great article.
That was me 10 years ago.
Financial literacy is more critical than anything.
Or you can easily loose everything.
Learning to trade was the first step in my financial education.
Thanks CT.
This figure of 40% is not to dissimilar to the overall population percentage who have below level 3 reading literacy according to the PIAAC data
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/4228.0Main+Features202011-12
Level 3 is generally considered necessary for reading full documents and drawing inferences and disregarding irrelevant information.
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/4228.0Appendix202011-12
Given the overall level of reading ability of the population, the low level of knowledge and comprehension of a specific domain such as financial literacy does not seem surprising at all.
Tye