Here’s what you need to know today

• Elon Musk has received his latest set of incentives from the Tesla board. If he is able to reach all 12 milestones, that include a market value of $8.5 trillion, 1 million robotaxis in commercial operation and 10 million full self-driving subscriptions, Musk would be paid almost $1 trillion. (AFR)
  
  

• Alan Joyce has picked up his final paycheque from Qantas. The former CEO was paid $3.8 million, taking his total compensation over 15 years leading the company to $117 million. (AFR)
  
  

• Meanwhile current Qantas CEO Vanessa Hudson had her bonus cut $800,000 due to the data breach that revealed the information of up to six million customers. Hudson was still paid $6.3 million for the year. (Capital Brief)
  
  

• Britain has a new Deputy Prime Minister. Angela Rayner resigned after it came out she failed to pay the proper tax on the purchase of an apartment. She has been replaced by Foreign Secretary David Lammy. (Al Jazeera)
  
  

• America’s first jobs report since President Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that just 22,000 jobs were added to the economy (below the expected 75,000) and unemployment ticked up from 4.2% to 4.3%. (WSJ)
  
  

• The US government conducted a massive immigration raid at a Hyundai battery plant in the state of Georgia. 475 people were arrested, most of them South Korean nationals. Hyundai recently pledged to invest $26 billion in manufacturing in the US. (BBC)
  
  

• The EU fined Google €2.95 billion for anti-competitive behaviour, alleging the tech giant abused its power by displaying its advertising technology more prominently than its competitors. US President Trump has threatened retaliatory tariffs if the EU enforces the fine. (CNN)
  
  

• Australian tech giant Atlassian has agreed to acquire The Browser Company, the maker of the Arc and Dia web browsers, for $937.5 million. This is seen as a move for Atlassian to get into the race for the next generation of AI-powered browsers. (AFR)

What the…?

Next time you’re in an awkward corporate bonding exercise, remember it could be worse. Companies in Japan are having staff watch sad movies in an effort to get people crying. Then, a ikemeso danshi (translated to "handsome weeping boy") comes around and wipes the employees’ tears.

The exercise is intended to get employees to show their vulnerability to each other. We’re pretty happy to stick to the icebreakers and getting to know you games. (BBC)

Investing is a lifelong journey

Here’s what you can learn today

Tips to get out of consumer debt

Community Question: What are some of the best tips to help me get out of consumer debt that I racked up at university?

We put this question to Ben Wauchope, Financial Advisor and Director of Wealth Health co.

It's important to define what consumer debt actually is first.

Consumer debt refers to the sort of debt incurred by individuals for personal or household consumption purposes. So taking out debt to acquire everyday expenses for major purchases, things like credit cards, personal loans, car loans or buy now pay later services which are quite popular these days.

So in terms of those debts, and tips to help get out of them - the first mistake I see a lot of my clients do is solely focus on paying down their consumer debt first at the expense of generating something like an emergency fund or cash reserve.

I always advise my clients to build a cash reserve first, before paying down their consumer debt because the issue is that you're going to make some progress paying down this consumer debt. But then if you are hit with any other unexpected costs, then you don't have any other savings to rely on to pay those expenses. And then you are just forced to rely back on other consumer debt, like taking out more credit cards. Then you just get in this sort of debt trap.

So I think the first thing is to make sure that you've got a cash flow plan in place. You need to be spending less than you earn, and then you start building that buffer initially. That might be five, or ten of fifteen grand.

Then you focus on paying down that consumer debt from there.

If you've already got that financial sort of cushion in terms of a cash reserve, that you're sort of stuck with this high interest debt that's accumulating over time.

I had a client and she had one of these payday loans and the interest rate was 49%. So she was just paying $100 a week to this. And it was just interest. It wasn't paying it down.

In that case, you could look at something like a balance transfer on a credit card that has an interest free period. So that generally you have 12 to 24 months where you can take over that debt with a new credit card and pay down the balance. You would only just use this as a way to clear that existing debt and then pay it off within the interest free period. So that's one strategy.

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