The right financial moves during COVID-19 Pandemic

Five things you should consider making a move on:

1. Speak to your loan and services provider 

If the COVID-19 crisis has brought on financial hardship and you're having trouble paying rent, your mortgage, utilities or your loan repayments, the best move is to contact lenders and talk them through your situation – the banks and businesses in question have a legal obligation to work with you on a reasonable payment plan. 

The plan might entail making smaller payments for a longer term, or pausing payments altogether until you actually have some income coming through the door.

With home loans or any loan, lenders "have a legal obligation to consider and respond to reasonable requests for repayment arrangements," Financial Counselling Australia CEO Fiona Guthrie says. 

If that responsible request is rejected, people have the right to have that decision reviewed and decided for free by the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA).
 

2. Speak to your financial adviser

The coronavirus crisis may have thrown your finances into such disarray that some professional help from a financial adviser may actually be in order. Whether it is in regards to your superannuation currennt situation, or superannuation access or your insurances and claims you can make. You can slso contact your adviser to see whether or not you are eligible for any govenrment payment like JobKeeper or JobSeeker and other supplmenet packages by the government. 

Consider your estate planning situation and having a valid will in place can also be accessed through your financial adviser. 

If you have a Self-Managed Super Fund and not sure about its current status or need to do the annual returns of your fund your adviser can help get this done if they have an SMSF department in their business. 
 

3. Don’t panic over your investments 

News from the share markets has been particularly troubling: emotion-driven trades have the markets bouncing up and down like a yo-yo once again.

It's confusing trying to keep track, but one thing is clear: now is not the time to panic and make drastic changes to your investment portfolio, either inside or outside your super account.

Super accounts took a shellacking during the global financial crisis, but many fought their way back to strong returns over the long haul.

It's pretty much never a good idea to raid your super account for short-term financial survival and here's a reason there are rules against this in most circumstances.

Watch out for super-related scams. Since the government announced in March that people in financial straits can have access to part of their super accounts from mid-April, there have been 87 reported incidents of scammers cold-calling people and saying they're from organisations that can help them gain access to their accounts.
 

4. Apply for a home loan hardship package 

If you took out a home loan – or any loan – anytime after March 2013, the rules around hardship variations are simple: your lender will have to offer a hardship package if you can demonstrate you're suffering financial hardship. This shouldn’t be hard to prove I you have lost your job during this pandemic and or are suffering financially. 

"Financial hardship arrangements do not have to be short term," says FCA's Fiona Guthrie. "The main requirement is that the person can reasonably repay. Repayment arrangement in the pandemic will need to be flexible and may need to be reviewed and extended several times until we all get through the pandemic and people return to work."
 

5. Don’t take ‘Buy Now Pay Later’ (BNPL) deals 

With BNPL schemes you're spending money you don't have, and you'll face ongoing fees if you can't pay the loan back in time – something that happens to more people than you might think.
 

If you think that you need any help or advice about any of the above mentioned or general financial planning related matters, please feel free to contact us on 07 5602 6064.