Empower Blog Inflation

RBA Rate Decision – May 2018

Note: To download the Money SMARTS Checklist, go to www.empowerwealth.com.au/money-smarts or click here. Today Governor Lowe and the Board met and they kept the cash rate on hold for a 21st consecutive month. So we haven’t seen a change to the cash rate since August 2016. So let’s take a look at what’s happening in the positive side of the ...

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RBA Rate Decision – April 2018

Today, Governor Lowe and the Reserve Board met for April and they kept the ash rate on hold at 1.5%. No surprises there as both the Reserve Governor and the Board are flagging to industry and business that they're in no rush to move the rates higher anytime soon. The reason for that is they still want to see stronger economic growth; they want to...

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RBA Rate Decision – March 2018

At the March 2018 RBA board meeting, we saw the cash rate remain on hold at 1.5%. No surprises there — we know that the rate has been widely tipped to stay on hold from most economists around the country. This is an interesting point because what Governor Lowe made mention in February was that he doesn't see any strength in moving the cash rate ...

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RBA Rate Decision – February 2018

Today Governor Lowe and the Board met for the very first time in 2018, and they kept the cash rate on hold at 1.5%. Again, no surprises there. The reason for that is because inflation numbers came out last week and the overall year-to-date number for 2017 was only 1.9%. We all know that they want to keep the inflation bandwidth between 2% ­– 3%...

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RBA Rate Decision – March 2017

Today Governor Lowe and the Board met, and they kept the cash rate on hold at 1.5% for another month. Now it was an interesting February in regards to what's been happening globally, and I want to talk about that story because we start to see GDP numbers from around the globe starting to be reported. Let's start with the US. We saw some very good ...

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RBA Rate Decision – February 2017

At the first board meeting of 2017, the Reserve Governor and the Board met and they've kept interest rates on hold. It's been a while since we last caught up you know. We last met in December so there's been a lot of data that I've wanted to share with you and talk through, and a lot of developments that have been happening in the housing market. ...

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Variables to Consider when Modelling a Property Portfolio

In this advanced "How to..." session, I want to talk to you about all the sophisticated cash flow variables that any good cash flow management and property portfolio planning tool should have. So let's start from the top in terms of cash flow management. Naturally, we need to do our budget, and we need to assume that value of the money will increa...

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RBA Rate Decision – October 2016

Today the new Governor, Dr. Phillip Lowe and the Board met and they've kept interest rates on hold. Now this was widely anticipated by most economists. There were, however, a couple of economists who were looking to see a rate cut. I think that had a lot to do with our stubbornly high Australian Dollar with the Fed Reserve in the US not moving on i...

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RBA Rate Decision – September 2016

The Reserve Board met today, and they've kept interest rates on hold. That's after dropping the cash rate by 25 basis points last month. Now they are looking for a lead in terms of where they go next, and most people are predicting that it is going to go down. In fact, before this announcement, 38 economists were surveyed, and they all anticipated ...

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RBA Rate Decision – August 2016

As I anticipated last month, the Reserve Bank has moved on the cash rate by dropping the cash rate lower. We are now in a stage where we are effectively in an uncharted territory with the cash rate as low as what we've got. It's an interesting time. So on balance, what they've looked at is the inflation data. Now, usually what they like to see is i...

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RBA Rate Decision – July 2016

Wow, to be a fly on the wall at the latest RBA Board Meeting. It would be fascinating as the conversation would have move to the political uncertainty that we currently got in federal politics. Really important to understand that this 'circus' that is happening in Canberra and this new structure of our government, the lower house and the upper hous...

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RBA Rate Decision – June 2016

Today the Reserve Governor and the Board met and they kept interest rates on hold. So the cash rate remained at 1.75% leading into the federal election on July 2. So there’s a couple of things that I want to talk about. Firstly is negative gearing. We know that the Liberal Party is not making any changes to negative gearing but the Labor Party i...

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RBA Rate Decision – May 2016

On this budget Tuesday, the Reserve Governor and the Board met and they’ve dropped interest rates. Now this is the first interest rate drop since May of last year. So it’s been 12 months but they've decided to pull the trigger on the cash rate and lower in that cash rate. Now what’s interesting about this is, if we actually go back two weeks...

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