Every topic I can think of that’s related to banking and finance has been covered, including buying your first home, taking Christmas holidays on a budget, helping children understanding savings, to a cost-effective white wedding and many many more.

The 2008-09 financial year and the months following will, no doubt, go down in the history books as months which were packed with surprises for the finance and business sectors, and hopefully some of the topics I’ve covered have made these record-breaking times a little easier to understand.

The cash rate peaked at 7.25 per cent and began its rapid decline in September 2008 with a 0.25 per cent drop which was followed up by a Melbourne Cup Day win for borrowers with another 0.75 per cent cut.

The following months saw the cash rate continue to nose dive to a 45-year low of three per cent, but economists now say it’s on the up, with last month’s rise of 0.25 per cent expected to be duplicated again today at 2pm prior to the ‘race that stops the nation’.

While these rates resulted in low repayments for borrowers and the front pages of the papers saw home owners revelling in the savings, we also saw chaos on the sharemarkets as investors suffered big losses.

Direct charging was also introduced by the Australian Government and resulted in the user of the ATM being charged at the time of transaction if the ATM being used was not owned by the financial institution you banked with.

This introduction lead to the credit union and building society industry joining a national venture and forging the RediATM Scheme, which later was boosted by all National Australia Bank ATM’s joining the scheme.

The nasties of the finance industry also caught some of us unaware, with fraudsters and online attacks targeting bank accounts like never before.

Skimming account details at ATM’s, sending mass fraudulent emails claiming to be from your bank and other tricky campaigns led to the need for increased security such as second factor authentication for online banking like security tokens and SMS passwords.

Visa also increased its product offering and now we see Visa debit cards and the new chip cards being implemented across the country, both of which are designed for greater security than the traditional credit card.

All in all, I hope your year has not been so glum and that the year ahead brings you prosperity and good financial health!

*Sara Morrison is the client services manager at South West Credit.