Latest / Money Grows on Trees / #256 - RBA Rate Predictions For Australia in 2025
Transcript
- 0:00If you want lower interest rates in a full employed economy, then
- 0:03be prepared to pay for $8 coffee. The change in your mortgage repayment
- 0:07in interest for the year is $2,000. So it's about 200 bucks a month
- 0:10or 50 bucks a week. So of course, if you need the RBA to cut to
- 0:14save 50 bucks a week, I would encourage you to look at your expenses. It's
- 0:18a challenging time to have a lot of mortgage debt and to have a family because
- 0:21you're spending money on family, groceries, entertainment, cars
- 0:25that's actually going to work, childcare, and then you also got a mortgage where
- 0:28you need the mortgage rates to fall because you bought it potentially at the wrong time
- 0:32when they were super low when the banks let you buy them and now you're in a bind. I'm
- 0:35Lloyd James Ross, seven-figure investor and entrepreneur, and I've helped thousands
- 0:39of business owners and professionals turn financial stress into
- 0:42success. If you're stuck in old money habits, overwhelmed by investing,
- 0:46or unsure where to start, this is for you. I'll give you the mindset
- 0:50and strategies to take control, grow your wealth, and achieve
- 0:53financial freedom. It's time to make your money work for you. Will
- 0:57the RBA cut rates hard in 2025? That's
- 1:01the question. You'll get an answer on this episode and of course, stay
- 1:04to the end because I'm going to explain to you how to benefit the most or position yourself to
- 1:08do the best when it comes to rates and how to handle that. The
- 1:13RBA stands for the Reserve Bank of Australia and whether it's the Reserve Bank or
- 1:16the Federal Reserve in the United States or the Central Bank of any particular country,
- 1:20the objective of the Central Bank is to provide full
- 1:23employment or encourage full employment and provide stability to
- 1:27the economy. The reason why they're around is because before Central
- 1:30Banks existed, there was a lot of boom and bust cycles and
- 1:33a lot of panic. And with panics come bank runs. And
- 1:37that's when people go to the bank and they take all their money out and they run and put it under the
- 1:40mattress because they're in a panic. There's an absolute drop in confidence and
- 1:44that has happened many times in the past. Bank runs have happened and
- 1:47banks have actually gone out of business. So they introduced central banks
- 1:50to manage that, the stability of an economy. And the
- 1:54objective of the central bank is to manage the expectations of
- 1:57employment. So the objective is to create full employment. Their
- 2:01objectives are to manage interest rates, to dictate the speed or
- 2:04the growth or the retraction in the economy, so
- 2:08it makes sure it doesn't overheat and doesn't underheat. That's
- 2:11the objective. They do that with interest rates and then effectively just provide the stability and
- 2:15prevent panic. In Australia, the Reserve Bank of
- 2:18Australia is in charge of those things, but interestingly too, The
- 2:22Reserve Bank sets the rate, the interest rate, at
- 2:25which other banks can lend and borrow money from each
- 2:28other. That's the actual rate that banks borrow
- 2:32and lend. So when I say the Reserve Bank interest rate
- 2:35or the country's interest rate, I mean the rate that the Reserve
- 2:38Bank sets for banks to do that. That's also called
- 2:43the cash rate. So there's
- 2:46different names for the interest rate, the cash rate, the reserve rate,
- 2:49it's the same thing. In finance, it's funny because there's a
- 2:53different name for the same thing, just because I like to confuse people. So recently,
- 2:57the Reserve Bank of Australia, the interest rate, so again, when
- 3:01they set that rate, banks borrow and lend in that rate, but then they
- 3:05lend to you. So they'll borrow for 3.85%, for example,
- 3:09the reserve rate, and then they'll lend out. to the
- 3:12retailer, the customer, you the bank customer
- 3:16at 5.8 and the bank will make the
- 3:19margin, so they'll make the difference. That's called the net interest margin. Net
- 3:23interest margins are how banks make money. If you look at our banks, Commonwealth
- 3:27Bank makes the highest net interest margin generally. It tends
- 3:30to, but they were very similar because they borrow at the same rate. They lend
- 3:34out at a similar rate, so it's very, very similar. You
- 3:37usually see net interest margins during interest rate rises
- 3:41tend to expand. That's why banking businesses like Westpac,
- 3:45ANZ, and if you're in America, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, whoever it might be,
- 3:48banks tend to do better as businesses when there's rate increases because they end
- 3:52up being able to widen their net interest margin
- 3:55as they go. Whereas when the interest rates are cut, the net
- 3:59interest margin is squashed down. And back in 2017, 2018, when they
- 4:03did a banking royal commission, interest rates were a lot lower, and the net
- 4:07interest margin of the banks were getting squeezed. And so that was potentially
- 4:10a reasonably good time to be buying bank stocks. And now they've very
- 4:14much widened. Commonwealth Bank just hit a massive high of like recently
- 4:17of $191, which is four times book value, which means
- 4:20it's like way overpriced. in my opinion, and
- 4:24that's because they've had this wonderful run of increasing interest rates since
- 4:27they came from like 0.1 all the way up to, it was
- 4:30like 4.1 and of course they've come down since then
- 4:33to 3.85, right? So now you understand that, you
- 4:37have to kind of realize that that's the rate at which banks borrow and lend, and
- 4:41it does have an impact on you, because if the cash rate or reserve
- 4:44rate goes up, bring back inflation, provide
- 4:48stability or full employment, whatever it might be, then
- 4:52the banks will then lend to you at a higher rate. So when interest rates go
- 4:55up, it'll certainly, if you've got a mortgage, it'll hurt your back pocket. And
- 4:58if they fall, if you have a mortgage, it'll help your back pocket. And that's why people
- 5:02are getting so excited and doing, I've seen people doing little dances on
- 5:05TikTok and so forth and social media when the RBA reduces
- 5:09rates. If people are doing dances when the reserve bank drops their
- 5:12interest rate by like point something percent, And people are doing dances,
- 5:16that tells me we're in a real estate bubble, as far as I'm concerned. So that's a
- 5:19very good signal that if people are dancing on that stuff on a very small rate rise,
- 5:23we're in trouble, I think. We've certainly taken on a lot more debt
- 5:26than we should have. Doesn't mean it's going to end badly, but it probably doesn't mean
- 5:29we've got much room to move upwards either. So how the RBA works
- 5:33is that once a month on a Tuesday, they'll meet together, the Reserve
- 5:36Bank Board will come together and they'll vote on
- 5:40whether they should reduce rates, keep them the same or increase
- 5:43them based on what the economy is doing. So they'll take
- 5:47signals from the economy. They look at employment primarily and
- 5:50they look at inflation primarily. So two things, inflation, they look at
- 5:54employment. They're the two important things for them because what they don't want to happen,
- 5:58they don't want employment to go up because they want people to be in jobs. Because
- 6:01I know if there's less people in jobs, the GDP will fall, we'll go through a recession and
- 6:05they also don't want massive inflation. Inflation is where prices of things go
- 6:08up because there's so much money in the economy, people are spending so much, it's bidding prices
- 6:12up. It's also flooding the marketplace with money. So
- 6:15there's an oversupply of currency and also a lot of spending. So
- 6:20they look at that as well and they determine the
- 6:23rate cut or rise will stay the same decision once
- 6:27one Tuesday every month. So they do vote. So it's not like
- 6:30some person just goes, that's what we're doing. So it's very, you know, I would say
- 6:33it's a democratic process. The chances of a rate cut will be
- 6:37dictated by those two things I said before, the inflation rate
- 6:40and the employment rate, right? So recently, like, Only a week
- 6:44ago, from when we're recording this anyway. There was a high expectation in
- 6:47the marketplace. It was like, the betting markets were betting without
- 6:50a doubt, yes, they're going to drop interest rates because we're
- 6:54all hurting from our mortgages that we bought in 2021 when interest rates
- 6:58were at all-time lows. And now they've gone up, which we never thought they would, but they
- 7:01did because we don't understand financial education that
- 7:04much. They wanted to go down again. But the thing with interest rates
- 7:08is if you look back in the last 100 years of Australian interest rates,
- 7:13last hundred years of Australian interest rates. The average interest
- 7:16rate, the reserve rate, has been 5.5%. That's
- 7:21the average interest rate. And right now, and
- 7:25for the last five years, we've been below the average
- 7:28rate by a lot. We actually went so far below it, down to almost zero, that
- 7:33the average, to get back to 5.5% now, we have
- 7:36to increase them up like further than 5.5% but
- 7:39of course that's not what's happening. What's happening is because of the debt loads
- 7:42of households, the RBA is going to find it
- 7:45difficult to increase the rates back up where they should be to
- 7:49prevent inflation. That's why your coffee is now almost $8 and
- 7:52that's why beers now at the pub are $12 is because interest
- 7:56rates were too low for too long. Remember,
- 8:00the RBA has to watch inflation, make sure it's not usually above the 2% mark,
- 8:04and they have to make sure there's a full employment. We've had full employment for a long time.
- 8:08It's a bit over 4%. It's pretty good. And then on the other side, inflation was
- 8:12really high during COVID because of the low interest rates. It's like,
- 8:15that's what caused it. And so you have to understand when
- 8:18they reduce interest rates and the economy is doing well. So it would tell
- 8:22me that in the 4%, 4.5, 4.7% range, that's
- 8:26full employment. That's good. The economy is doing well, right?
- 8:30And now if the economy is doing well and they reduce rates, inflation
- 8:34spikes. And so if you want lower interest rates in
- 8:38a full employed economy, then be prepared to
- 8:41pay for $8 coffees. Because when you have
- 8:44low rates, it floods the marketplace with money. And so everyone was betting
- 8:48recently that the RBA would drop rates. Without a doubt, oh my God, they're
- 8:51going to drop rates for sure. Of course, they had their meeting and then bang,
- 8:55it came out. They left rates exactly the same. They held
- 8:58rates at 3.85%. And
- 9:01everyone expected a cut. And what happened to that was when they left it,
- 9:05the Australian dollar rose in value because if you have a
- 9:08higher cash rate or interest rate in the country, you end up attracting
- 9:11a lot more investment from abroad into our bond market. And that increases
- 9:15the value of our dollar. So you see an increase in the Australian
- 9:19dollar against other currencies, not in itself, but against other
- 9:22currencies when there's a high interest rate here. So you saw the Australian
- 9:25dollar move from say 60, 61 US cents up to 65 US
- 9:29cents because rates stayed the same. They didn't drop. Everyone was expecting a
- 9:32drop. So when you drop rates, you also devalue the local currency.
- 9:37And that helps our terms of trade when that happens. So for our export market,
- 9:41that really does help our terms of trade. So we bring in a lot of US dollars. That's
- 9:45great for our economy and our GDP growth. But of course, it's
- 9:49not the be all and end all. Just quickly, if you're ready to take control of your finances but
- 9:52feel stuck on where to start, I have a solution. My
- 9:55book, Money Bias Happiness, simplifies investing and
- 9:59wealth building with practical steps to help you achieve financial peace.
- 10:03Get your copy via the link in the show notes and let's get your money working for
- 10:06you. Now back to the episode. So because they kept rates the same, now
- 10:10they're expecting over the course of say next
- 10:13month in August, they are expecting the rates to fall and
- 10:17drop. Some people are anticipating a 3.6% interest rate.
- 10:21But I want you to know that there's two things on the RBA's mind. Since
- 10:26the decision to keep rates at 3.85% since
- 10:30then, employment data came out after and it showed unemployment
- 10:34rising a little bit. That's interesting. And
- 10:37now people are saying, we'll see, the RBA got it wrong. But on
- 10:40the other side, Consumer Price Index went up to
- 10:442.4%. So they've got a problem here, the RBA, because containing
- 10:48inflation is more important than
- 10:51maintaining employment. Because if you inflate the current, it's so difficult
- 10:55to bring inflation back because it gets sticky and gets stuck at the top. If it
- 10:58went up and got stuck at, say, 5% or 6%, interest rates will go to
- 11:0110%, probably, and everyone will default on their
- 11:04mortgage. Well, not everyone, but a lot of people. So they're more interested in
- 11:08containing inflation than they are containing and maintaining full employment.
- 11:12They want to do both, of course. But if they had a choice right now, they've got to watch
- 11:15it. Because if they drop rates further and interest rates spike, are
- 11:19in a bit of trouble. So they're watching the inflation rate more
- 11:23so than the employment rate. But the employment rate will have an impact now on
- 11:26how they approach the next cut or remain the
- 11:29same or interest rate rise. And people are suggesting too
- 11:32that if inflation ticks up again and spikes up, and you're probably seeing inflation
- 11:36at your coffee shop, when you go to the grocery store, your lettuce, how
- 11:40much is lettuce? You probably saw it with eggs, like why eggs?
- 11:43Well, because you want low rates. And so if you want low rates, you've got to pay for high
- 11:47priced eggs. I bought some eggs the other day, it was 11 bucks. So they're
- 11:50watching that and they gotta be careful. So if
- 11:54you are someone who wants a rate cut, fine, I understand you want that to
- 11:57reduce your mortgage balance. By the way, if they took a 3.85% rate cut
- 12:02down to 3.6% rate cut, the change in your mortgage repayment
- 12:05in interest for the year is $2,000. So it's about 200 bucks
- 12:09a month or 50 bucks a week. So of course, if you need the RBA
- 12:12to cut to save 50 bucks a week, I would encourage you
- 12:15to look at your expenses like coffee, like grocery, What are
- 12:18you spending your money on to save that 50 bucks yourself so you don't have to rely on the RBA
- 12:22for all your financial decision-making? I think if you have to rely on the RBA to
- 12:26cut rates, to survive financially, you have made some incredibly
- 12:30poor decisions in your own finances, which include maybe buying a
- 12:33house at the wrong time. I had someone message me the other day on Instagram and say, Lloyd, I
- 12:36bought my house in 2021, now interest rates have gone up, now I can't afford to do stuff. What
- 12:40did you think was going to happen? This is why it's important to understand history,
- 12:43because if you know the rates in history have been all around
- 12:475.5 to 6% on average, you knew that it probably wasn't
- 12:51going to last a zero. At some point it was going to go up. How did
- 12:54you not think that? It's because people have People aren't reading things. They're not staying up
- 12:57to date. They're not watching this podcast like you are because you're intelligent and
- 13:01you're trying to improve yourself and understand these concepts. These
- 13:05are very important economic concepts that I'm explaining to you that you must
- 13:08know to see when is a good time to buy a house. What does
- 13:12get people in trouble? Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's business partner has this
- 13:15great saying, show me where I'm going to die so I never go there. I want to show
- 13:19you why these economic signals are important for
- 13:22you in your finances. If you want the
- 13:26RBA to cut rates, fine. If they cut them, okay. But
- 13:29watch inflation because if that ticks up to 3%, 4%, 5%, we're
- 13:33in a lot of trouble. And I know you don't want to pay more for your groceries, okay? So
- 13:36we have to be watching the cost of living crisis as well as the
- 13:39employment issue. So I personally think the employment the
- 13:43unemployment numbers going up, more unemployed people slightly,
- 13:48because the net migration is high. If you're pulling
- 13:51people into a country and there's only a finite amount of jobs at
- 13:54the current time, then of course the unemployment rate is going to go up
- 13:58because you're pulling people into a country and they're going to lose their job and not get another job.
- 14:01I think the data is distorted with
- 14:06the employment number. I'm more conscious of the, and I'd be more conscious
- 14:09of the inflation number because Yeah, if that gets
- 14:12out of control and they have to increase rates again, you are
- 14:15going to really hate having a mortgage by then. So
- 14:19let's hope it doesn't come to that. Let's hope the RBA, and they seem to be very sensible because
- 14:22they're the ones that kept it steady. And if you look at the history
- 14:26of 5.5 on average, I would anticipate that we
- 14:29really could have kept rates at 4.1% for
- 14:33a lot longer before dropping. But you got to look at, you got
- 14:36to understand too, like the RBA is thinking of people and their back pocket. And in Australia,
- 14:40property in this country is religion. And so if everyone owns a property, and
- 14:44the whole country is one big tribe, and the RBA said, nah, we're going to
- 14:47keep rates at 4.1%, people like to send them death threats. So
- 14:51they've got to balance this careful thing of like, oh, we all know these
- 14:55people have got way too much debt on their hands because housing has gone mentally out of control because of
- 14:58the immigration policy. But they're not going to reduce that because why would they bother doing
- 15:01something so sensible and common sense? They're not going to do that. They're just going to do the
- 15:04uncommon sense and just keep pulling people in. So if that's the case, they've
- 15:07got to manage this very delicately, the RBI. And I feel sorry
- 15:11for them. I don't know how they're going to do this. So hopefully, with less
- 15:14government spending, if that's possible, we'll see inflation fall enough
- 15:17where they can actually start reducing rates. So it's really funny. Folks
- 15:21want all this relief. They want welfare. They
- 15:25want NDIS support. They want the government to fund new infrastructure.
- 15:29They want the government to spend all this money, which increases inflation. They
- 15:33then want the RBA to drop interest rates on their mortgage so they can afford it,
- 15:36which, guess what, increases inflation. And then they whinge and
- 15:39whine about the price of eggs. You want your cake and you want to eat it. You
- 15:44can't. You're going to have to choose. What do you want? This is the problem
- 15:47we're in at the minute in our country. It's a bit of a challenging time. It's
- 15:51a challenging time to have a lot of mortgage debt and to have a
- 15:54family because you're spending money on family, groceries,
- 15:58entertainment, cars, et cetera, going to work, childcare. Then
- 16:02you also got a mortgage where you need the mortgage rates
- 16:05to fall because you bought it potentially at the wrong time when they were super low when the banks
- 16:08let you buy them. And they're in a bind. And I think a lot of Australians, and
- 16:12for that matter, a lot of people across the United States and UK and so forth, are in
- 16:15the same boat. And this is why I have some fun
- 16:19real ads running at the minute. You may have seen me pop up and talk about real estate and
- 16:23against it, because I'm against people rushing out to follow
- 16:27the crowd into property. And I'm against the banks lending
- 16:30to people at low record interest rates when they knew, even though they've
- 16:33got buffer rates they apply to the situation, They
- 16:38were letting people borrow money at the bottom of the rate market knowing
- 16:41full well it was going to increase. I'm against that. I'm against just following the crowd into
- 16:45a property because you think you have to own one to be a sensible, to
- 16:48be what I call a non-peasant of Australia. That's why when people call me
- 16:51up, I get sometimes a telemarketer might grab me on my phone and I answer it.
- 16:54I'm like, hello. They go, we'd like to talk to you about solar. I said, no, no,
- 16:57don't worry about it. I'm a peasant. They go, what? I said, I'm a peasant. They go, what do you mean? I said, I don't own
- 17:01any real estate in Australia. They can't sell me
- 17:04anything. You know, I think it's this weird societal thing that we think about at the
- 17:07house. Anyway, this is why the focus has
- 17:10been on the RBA, because people
- 17:14have found themselves in a position where they need to depend on it. Where I think it's
- 17:17going to go now is, I would hope, personally, for
- 17:21inflation control, I hope they stay at 3.85% for
- 17:24longer. But of course, I'm not the one making the decisions for everyone else in the country,
- 17:28and you might see the RBA fall a little bit. Let's just hope that inflation doesn't
- 17:32go up. And I believe that the unemployment numbers, if
- 17:36they keep rising, they may dictate that the RBA drops rates just
- 17:39to maintain full employment. That could be a possibility. And
- 17:43we're not even factoring in the effects over the next, let's
- 17:46say, 10 years. There's a couple of big macro trends happening at the
- 17:49same time. No one's probably factoring in the rate at which jobs
- 17:53will be eradicated in some respects by
- 17:57artificial intelligence. We don't know the rate at which they'll disappear or
- 18:00robotics will start to do that. Usually, technology doesn't take as—it's not as
- 18:03fast as what you think. It takes time to adopt technology, but
- 18:07AI is being adopted pretty quickly. How many jobs will be taken by
- 18:10AI? How many are taken because our immigration policy
- 18:14is set wrong? And how many will be just the natural attrition of
- 18:19the employment cycle? That's what we have to consider.
- 18:23And we have to also make it effective for businesses to hire. So how
- 18:26is our regulation set with government as well? So those things do have
- 18:29a huge impact on the employment numbers. It's just, is
- 18:32it a long-term trend or is it something that's only short-lived? And hopefully it's short-lived. and
- 18:37we can have a sensible, steady interest rate at around the 4% mark,
- 18:40which is probably where it should be, and maybe even 5%, because that's
- 18:44the long-term average. And I would be shocked if it didn't move back to the average at some
- 18:47point. But let's see. And if you're someone who's praying for
- 18:51the rate cut, I would encourage you to look internally at your own
- 18:54personal finances, understand why you're in a position where the government
- 18:57decision will dictate your financial future. And have a real good look at
- 19:01your bank statement and what you're spending money on and start to take control of it yourself
- 19:04instead of relying on the government. If you're someone else who doesn't have
- 19:07a mortgage and you're praying for rates to fall so you can get into the market,
- 19:11I would encourage you strongly to make sure you've got enough cash equity, you
- 19:15understand exactly what you're doing, you've done your numbers, it's in the detail and you're not
- 19:18just trying to FOMO your way into the real estate market because by all accounts, if
- 19:22inflation goes way up, rates will follow it and that can get you in
- 19:25a lot of trouble. We
- 19:29don't know where it's going to go. The likelihood of a 3.6, a cut
- 19:33to 3.6 is there. It may happen. And
- 19:37if it does, fine, let's just hope that inflation doesn't go up. And people are
- 19:40saying like, oh, it's going to be three big deep rate cuts. And they're only saying,
- 19:43I know they're only saying that because they've got a mortgage and they don't want to pay more. I
- 19:47know. They're incentivized to want it to fall, but they don't know the other side of
- 19:50the coin. They don't understand inflation rates and how bad that can be. We
- 19:53don't want to turn into a place where it costs $1,000 for a flipping carton
- 19:57of eggs. It happened in Germany. It's happened in Zimbabwe.
- 20:00It's happened where we don't want to inflate away. the currency. And
- 20:04that's why people are flocking to Bitcoin and these other speculative
- 20:08assets because they're afraid of their money disappearing in value. And
- 20:12we're causing that as a country to happen. So we're causing people
- 20:15to speculate because they've got no other option. That's another episode. So
- 20:19I'm going to do another episode on that topic. So if you want to learn about what I think the
- 20:22uncertainties of what's causing people to move to things like Bitcoin, Buckle
- 20:26up for that one, I'll come and give it to you. But hopefully you've learned something in this episode about
- 20:30what the cash rate is, why it's there, what the RBA does,
- 20:33what their objectives are, the likelihood of a cut, the impact it
- 20:36will have on you if they cut or stay the same, what the long-term averages
- 20:40have been. This is all very important information and
- 20:44financial signals to equip you with the ability to
- 20:47make great financial decisions. So if you've enjoyed the episode, pop
- 20:50a comment below as to what you took away from it the most. And I'll come back and I'll reply
- 20:54to almost pretty well every comment on our YouTube channel. And of course, if you're listening on
- 20:57Spotify, share this with a friend, hit the subscribe button so you get the next episode as
- 21:00fast as you can. And thanks for tuning in to the Money Grows on Trees podcast. Thanks
- 21:04for listening to Money Grows on Trees. If you enjoyed the episode, leave a
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