Owen Raskovich

So that's a complicated long story to explain why oil prices have fallen.

It's because there's so much supply coming onto the market from countries that want to keep their production going so they can keep people employed.

The final thing is, and this is one that will hit home for you most likely, interest rates have fallen.

So interest rates here in Australia, interest rates overseas have fallen.

And so this is a response from not the government, but the central banks, so the people that control effectively the money flow in the economy.

They've said, we need to lower interest rates so people pay less on their mortgages, so people start spending more money because they feel a bit better about their budgets.

But the flip side of that is, while it's great for your mortgage, the flip side is that people who depend on their savings, so retirees, people that are investors who have a lot of cash sitting around, all of a sudden, they're getting nothing for their money, virtually nothing.

So we've already had what were record low interest rates here in Australia now drop to definitely record low interest rates.

And so it's a double-edged sword.

You have on one side, you have people wanting to take on more debt and do those types of things.

But on the other side, you have people that are trying to save that can't.

So the issue that we have from all of this, from interest rates dropping, while it's great for our mortgages, the issue that we have is people feel like they want to take on more debt or they think, hey, this borrowing power calculator said I could only take on 500,000.

Now it's saying 600,000 because interest rates have dropped.

Now, that's not exactly how it works.

There's a bit more science behind it, but you get the idea.

People think, okay, interest rates are down, now's the time to take on more debt.

As I'm going to get to in just a moment, I don't think that that's a very good thing right now.

In fact, I don't think that debt is a good thing at the best of times.

We've had the debts episode and how you can get rid of your debts like after pay, credit cards, excess personal loans, car loans, those types of things.

Debt is not something that you want to be taking on when you're in an uncertain environment, when you feel insecure about your job.