Yahoo Finance HOLIDAY OVER HOUSE: Australians reveal their true priorities
Australians would much rather save for their next holiday than save up a deposit for a home purchase, according to the financial goals set by Commonwealth Bank customers.
More than 250,000 financial goals have been set since the February launch of the bank’s Goal Tracker tool, revealing that saving for the next big trip was the most popular (27 percent) objective.
Saving for a home wasn’t far behind though, with 19 percent trying to become property owners. The third most popular goal, at 15 percent, was for the vague purpose of “significant purchase”.
Building up an emergency fund rounded out the top four goals, with 13 percent going towards that purpose.
The Goal Tracker online tool was formed after feedback from CommBank’s behavioural economics team.
“We know the main barriers to saving are related to a lack of self-control, not having a formal plan in place or people simply forgetting to put money in savings,” said Commonwealth Bank digital banking general manager Kate Crous.
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“We’ve created Goal Tracker to help customers who struggle with the process of saving itself create better financial habits.”
The bank revealed that 44 percent of people who use Goal Tracker have chosen to automatically put money aside into their savings account as their salaries come in.
Crous said that customers tended to pay more attention to mobile app notifications, as opposed to text messages.
“This has opened a whole lot of opportunities in terms of how we can help them with their finances,” she said.
“Our credit card repayment alerts have helped more than 2 million customers save on late payment fees.”
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