About rental car excess insurance - Apex vs Jucy - New Zealand holiday

Rental car insurance is a rip-off. Be careful of excess insurance reduction from rental car companies as the list of exclusions are difficult to interpret OR easily manipulated to fit into their definitions.

We have narrowed down 2 rental car companies that gives real value for money in New Zealand.
Apex car rental and Jucy. These are considered 2nd tier rental companies. 1st tier ones would be Hertz, Avis e.t.c who generally uses very new cars with little mileage but the prices are easily 20-40% more expensive.

Apex and Jucy prices their cars  roughly the same but here is why Apex beats Jucy hands down.

Roof damages

Apex Car Rental (top)

Jucy (bottom)

For full excess reduction insurance, it cost $20 per day for both companies. Apex will cover any roof damages, period. ( standard tncs apply). However, for Jucy, it doesn't cover any roof damages regardless of any circumstance . This was quite shocking to me as Jucy further elaborated that hail and falling of a tree branch, both being quite possible and through no fault by the driver, is not covered.

Claim Administration fee

Jucy also charges NZD 75 bucks per claim, irregardless of having full excess reduction insurance or not, or whether one is at fault or not, while Apex doesn't have such a fee. This fee by Jucy feels very ridiculous to me.

Authorised driver

Apex allows one to add authorised drivers for free while Jucy charges $2 per day, per additional driver. While this cost is not a deal breaker ,do note that the rental insurance is only valid if the driver was added.

Toll and infringement administration fee

Jucy charges NZD$60 for each toll/infringement claim incurred but Apex charges NZD$10 for each toll claim and NZD$25 for each infringement claim.

Opening an Australian bank account by a Singaporean

I have been getting some queries on my post on opening an Australian bank account. I guess the reason is because the aussie dollars have reached parity with the Sgd lately and people are becoming more interested.

I have kept my Australian account for about 2 years 5 months just purely for holidaying and have not been taxed a single cent on my interest income. I will summarise the way to avoid taxes legally or at least minimise the tax incurred.

1)  Put a non-Australian address ( a.k.a put your Singapore address)

If you put an australian address, maybe because you have an investment property there, the Australian Tax Office (ATO) will deem you a resident and tax your interest. As you are not working there, you have no tax file number ( TFN) and so will leave this field as blank. That's spells disaster!

The bank will, by default, charge you the highest tax of 46.5% on your interest earned.

By putting a Singapore address, your interest income is subjected to 10% tax.

2) Keep the total annual interest income lower than $120

With my National Australia Bank (NAB) earning about 2.5% pa annually, my full interest income will be taxed once the deposits reaches about $4800 ( interest is compounded monthly since interest is credited monthly so the threshold is actually slightly less than $4800) . 

Now, knowing this, i would open in my wife, father, mother, sister, helper, mother-in-law, father-in-law name, friend name, so that i have many accounts to squirrel into to be below the threshold. BUT, one need to be there in person to open. Haha... no free lunch!

3) Open the account in your children's name

The annual interest income threshold for a child is $420, which is deposits less than $16,800 ( the threshold is lower based on the reason i cited above). They still have to be there in person to open.

Anyway, i will gladly pay the 10% anyway if i were to invest in Aussie dollars while waiting for the commodities super cycle since, i will still be getting 2.25% pa NETT interest without the many hoops i have to jump across of local banks and the caps that each have. (UOB one, DBS multiplier, BOC smartsaver, Citibank Maxigain, SCB bonus saver).

Are you Return-focused OR Return on Risk Focused?

Taking the opportunity to sell into strength! Please go higher and higher!

Which would you rather pick? The bigger apple may not be better - Nasdaq.com