Buyer’s regret: the purchases we wish we hadn’t made are on the rise
New data shows more Australians are having second thoughts about racking up certain kinds of debt
2 min
One in two credit card holders regret a purchasing decision they’ve made using plastic, with Australians racking up a record $34 billion on their cards per month.
Research by Finder found 52 percent of Australians have felt buyer’s remorse, with the top categories of rued expenditure being clothes, shoes and accessories (12 percent), gambling products and services (8 percent), other expenses (6 percent), holidays (5 percent) and entertainment including concerts and sports events (5 percent).
The findings come amid a cost-of-living crisis caused by the highest inflation rate in decades and the highest official interest rates since 2012. Consumers are tightening their belts, with the latest retail trade figures showing turnover is still rising but at the slowest annual pace in 40 years, as we begin to see the typical lagged impact on household budgets of 12 interest rate rises since May last year. The retail data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows people are restricting their spending on household goods but are still happy to pay for meals and drinks at cafes and restaurants.
“Considering how high inflation and strong population growth has added to retail turnover in the past year, the historically low trend growth highlights just how much consumers have pulled back in response to cost-of-living pressures,” said ABS head of retail statistics, Ben Dorber. Other ABS data shows household savings ratios have fallen to their lowest level since 2008, with Australians having now depleted record savings amassed during the pandemic due to stimulus payments and periods of lockdown.
Latest figures published by the Reserve Bank of Australia revealed consumers spent a record $34.4 billion on their credit cards in August, up 6.8 percent on the same time last year. The Finder research showed Australians charge an average of $2,584 on their credit cards per month.
Finder’s credit card expert, Amy Bradney-George, said Australians should focus on their long-term patterns of spending rather than one bad purchase. “Millions have experienced buyer’s remorse, but the repercussions could be far reaching if these regrettable purchases become a habit. Many of us have bought something without considering our household budget, but with the rising cost of living, a bad buy now can hurt more than it might have a few years ago.”
Bradney-George said impulse buys or other unplanned purchases “can wreak havoc on your finances, especially if you don’t pay your credit card off in full each month.” She advised consumers to “sleep on it” to avoid impulse spending. “If you still want the item 24 hours later, it can be easier to justify and manage the cost.” She points out that some credit card issuers allow consumers to set spending limits or blocks on certain types of transactions, which could help reduce temptation.
It is crucial that consumers pay off their credit cards in full every month, said Bradney-George. “This could mean timing repayments to match up with your payday, setting up automatic payments through your credit card account or putting reminders in your calendar. If consumers are struggling with credit card debt, it might be time to shop around for a 0% balance transfer deal which will allow them to pay off their debt without drowning in extra interest charges.”
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2 min
The recent budget has forced a reckoning for property investors.
Negative gearing now restricted to new residential builds, the CGT discount gone and on paper, the numbers look different.
And many investors are responding by pivoting toward yield, prioritising cash flow over capital growth in a way that property strategists say misses the point entirely.
“The debate has shifted to yield versus growth as if they are opposing forces,” says Abdullah Nouh, founder of Melbourne-based buyers’ agency Mecca Property Group. “But that framing is itself the mistake.”
Nouh, who works with high-net-worth families and investors on long-term acquisition strategy, argues that capital growth remains the primary driver of genuine wealth creation and that the post-budget environment has made quality assets more important, not less.
The numbers make his case plainly. An additional $500 per week in rental income is welcome. A prestige asset appreciating by $1 million over a market cycle is transformative.
These are not equivalent outcomes, and portfolios built around yield at the expense of location and land value tend to generate income while wealth stands largely still.
The more nuanced shift Nouh is seeing among sophisticated investors is a move toward assets where both outcomes can be engineered simultaneously – established homes on substantial land in quality locations, where the existing dwelling can be repositioned, rental returns improved, and the underlying land value compounds independent of what sits on it.
For investors with existing equity, commercial property is also entering the conversation in a more serious way.
Prestige industrial assets, medical centres and long-leased essential retail offer income profiles that residential property in most capital city markets cannot currently match: longer lease terms, tenants covering outgoings, and greater predictability than the residential tenancy cycle.
“The investors who build lasting wealth are rarely the ones who chased yield or growth exclusively,” says Nouh.
“They are the ones who built a strategy they could sustain – one that generated enough income to hold quality assets through multiple cycles while those assets compounded in value.”
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