BUDGETING

Grow a surplus of your own

Nina Hendy The only way to get off the treadmill of living from one pay packet to the next is to commit to a household budget.

INSIGHT

Rising debt weighs heavily on any future boom

Clancy Yeates When confidence is building in the property market, as it has been lately, it can be easy to get swept up in the hype.

Creative ways to reach your first million

David Wilson The average savings accounts now only offer moderate to measly interest. The going rate hovers at about 3 per cent – unimpressive bang for buck.

SAVING

Savers notice option beside term deposits

John Kavanagh A new type of savings account starting to appear in the banking market will give people more options when it comes to organising their savings.

Credit Ratings

Clock is ticking on new background checks

Penny Pryor Changes to privacy laws to be introduced in March 2014 mean paying your bills late could seriously damage your credit rating.

Insight

Publicised savings rates can be deceptive

Clancy Yeates Which type of savings accounts pay the best returns? Until recently, term deposits tended to offer the best deal for savers.

Keeping out of the red

Penny Pryor Five key additional data fields will be collected from March 2014:

SAVING

Prince Charming won't help you

Nina Hendy Women need to rid themselves of the 'Cinderella complex' and take control of their financial future.

Pocket Money

Balancing home, work and homework

Sylvia Pennington Teens need their own money but how can they earn it, and how can parents help them make the right decision?

Insight

The cards that are running out of pals

Clancy Yeates Until recently, Australians seemed determined to spend more on credit cards, despite the well-known disadvantages of doing so.

SAVING

Seven rules for financial success

Nathan Bell The problem with recent market rises is that it encourages us to forget the lessons of the global financial crisis.

Mice-chewed cash must be reassembled, Chinese saver told

A bank in Shanghai has told a migrant worker he must "reassemble" hundreds of dollars worth of savings after mice chewed his cash "into thousands of tiny pieces".

Insight: Savings interest rates

Clancy Yeates Hundreds of billions of dollars have poured into high-interest deposit accounts since the global financial crisis, as savers exploited the relatively strong interest rates.

Home ownership less pie in the sky for Gen Ys

Chris Tolhurst If you don't want to struggle to pay off a mortgage later in life, the best time to enter the property market is in your early to mid-20s.

How to lock away your hard-earned

John Collett Only two years ago, financial institutions were bending over backwards to attract depositors' cash with interest rates on term deposits of more than 6 per cent.

Listen up: it's all gold

Barbara Drury The summer holidays are a time to kick back and relax, but they are also a perfect opportunity to ponder the future and make some New Year's resolutions.

ANZ bids to capture capital

Madeleine Heffernan Does a big bank deserve (more of) your money?

Households struggle to save cash

Chris Zappone More than half of households are cash-strapped at the end of the month despite the higher pace of savings in Australia.

Change for peace of mind

Annette Sampson While Australians are saving more, almost half of the working population only have one months' savings or less in the bank to tide them over if something goes wrong.

Beat the cuts for a good return

Banks have been wooing depositors since the global financial crisis made the wholesale market an expensive place to source funds.