About to retire. What should I do re Credit Cards and other messy bits?

[boomy]

Retiring or not the AMEX Explorer is a must in every Aussie wallet. Earn is 2pts per $ and annual fee that practically pays for itself with the travel credit. Burn is 4:3 (can be linked to Ascent for better 1:1 burn).

 

[Renato1]

Well done.. Never passed my mind to gross up our pension income with notional tax on a cc application.
The really difficult part for me is setting out our budget/living costs as I have not a clue.
I put some very wild guesses on the last application.
We always receive more than we spend ( a lifetime of parsimony is impossible to discard).
Over time that translates to gross personal ignorance about everyday stuff like the cost of milk bread petrol and rates.

Living expenses can be easily done in one of two ways.

a. Just add up what you spend on Council rates, electricity charges and water rates. and on insurance for car, car registration, insurance for house and what you spend on petrol and groceries (just check your credit card statements over the last couple of months) and any mortgage repayment or rent. Everything else - like purchases of clothes, buying jewelry for wife, private health insurance etc is discretionary - no need to count them. Get the monthly figure.
or
b. Enter $2500 a month.
Regards,
Renato

 

[burmans]

Living costs. I’d heard there was some ‘per monthly’ figure they use as a flag, and if you report below that figure they know you are just guessing.

Its not so much a flag as a minimum. The Responsible Lending laws require them to assess your monthly spend with a reasonableness test which is based on statistical research of "normal" spending. If you quote less than this by a significant amount there is a fair chance you are understating and many lenders will then just ignore your figure and substitute theirs.