Bushfires are a nasty side of the Australian landscape.

Did you know that predicting the severity of a given bushfire season is a very challenging responsibility?

One of the biggest issues beyond the destruction they leave is that many people fail to prepare for them, and when the threat becomes real, it can be too late and too emotional to make safe and critical decisions.

With bushfires occurring regularly across the country, no matter how small (remember embers can fly great distances to create new outbreaks), the best thing you can do is be bushfire aware.

The combination of high temperatures, low relative…

While we all have different priorities, we can all benefit from making some financial resolutions at the start of the new financial year.

Here are five tips that can put you in better financial shape for the financial year ahead.

Revitalise your goals

This tip is all about dreams and lifestyle objectives.

Goal setting is the engine room of your financial plan and provides the motivation and drive behind any of your financial activities. That means that regularly reviewing them can help keep you motivated.

The key to great goal setting is to make it concrete.

That…

A little-utilised option but one with significant potential in Queensland is the granny flat.

Granny flats are becoming much more common in Australia as homeowners looks for ways to keep loved-ones closer or earn rental income.

Granddad is close to the grandkids without living inside the cacophony of sound that a young family often produces, adult kids are able to keep an eye on ageing parents without being seen as nosy, and not to mention the possibility of an on-site babysitter built in to the property!

If southern trends are any guide, the growing granny flat market in western Sydney will be echoed…

Debt consolidation loans can be beneficial if you are juggling multiple debts and want to pay them off quicker, saving you money in the process.

What is debt consolidation?

Debt consolidation is a process where you take multiple debts – like credit cards, store cards, and personal loans – and combine them into a single personal loan.

This allows you to better manage your debts and gives you just one repayment to focus on, while saving you on debt repayments.

The benefits of debt consolidation

There are several benefits when you consolidate debt. You can:

• Save…

We have all heard the term ‘location, location, location’ when it comes to buying a property.

Well, what happens when you have found the location – the perfect suburb – where you want to live, but it’s out of your price range?

Well, there are ways to still buy in your perfect suburb, but you will need to do your research, be realistic, and have a little patience.

Do your research

You really need to understand the suburb you want to live in if you are to find a property you can afford. A great way to do this is to be on the ground there – get to know the suburb by driving or walking around the streets.

Try…