Australians Would Cut Schooling Before their Mobile Phone to Make Ends Meet

Media Release: Thursday, 26 February 2020

More Australians would cut back on their education expenses than their mobile phone costs to try to make ends meet if they were unable to work for a long period of time due to illness or injury, according to the latest findings in NobleOak’s annual Life Insurance industry survey.

With 65% of respondents saying they would rely on eating into their savings, there were a few surprise findings in regards to where they would make savings in their daily expenses.

“There’s no surprises that Australians would look to cut the obvious costs like entertainment or holidays, and they would prioritise meeting their mortgage or rental repayments if they needed to reduce their spending due to loss of income,” said NobleOak CEO Anthony R Brown.

“But where we do see a few surprises are that many would trade off their Life Insurance covers, some of which are designed to support them in this situation, and that mobile phone usage would be so fiercely protected to the extent that they’d rather trade off education costs.”

In addition to cutting costs, 26% of respondents said they would sell assets such as investment properties and 16% would be forced to sell the family home to enable them to meet their day-to-day expenses.

The full 2020 report is available at https://www.nobleoak.com.au/news-and-media/whitepapers/