No matter the situation, time of day or location – at a BBQ, at a bus stop, in a lift or on a plane – the first question I’m asked when people discover I work in finance is invariably the same: What’s going to happen to interest rates? They see I’m a woman in what’s traditionally a man’s gig but assume for a second that I have crystal balls. I’m a most reluctant oracle, but the mansplaining is suspended and replaced by attentive ears, because if anything captures undivided attention in this country – other than where your kids go to school, or the postcode lottery of homeownership – it is interest rates. It didn’t use to be, but so many of us have borrowed such Everest-like sums that a quarter of a per cent in either direction means so much more than before.
Oh, AND in an Uber...
Credit: iStock This was abundantly clear when Jim Chalmers delivered the federal budget a couple of weeks back – a 30-minute summary of thousands of pages, but within five minutes there was only one thing we all wanted to know: what would it mean for interest rates? Had the treasurer over-spent or were cuts still on the cards? Everyone is annoyed at the RBA. Even restaurateurs. Yet, this is where we find ourselves, packed to the rafters (even mid-week!) with cocktail prices we baulk at but are still prepared to sip while contending with the interest rate conundrum.
Like your $25 margarita, a bit of perspective might help. People are applying old-fashioned thinking to a new-age.
