A recent survey of banking customers across eleven Asia-Pacific nations, by the financial services company Citi, found that fully 66% of Australians no longer take their finances for granted, and 42% were forced to make difficult financial decisions in the twelve months now past.

This was a common theme among the survey’s respondents. In Thailand, the number of people having to make difficult choices was 68%, making them the hardest hit of all.

One of the difficult choices facing respondents across borders was rebuilding savings lost to the global financial crisis. In Australia, 65% said they’d like to put some extra aside each payday, in preference to investing or purchasing life insurance. Among Koreans, that figure was 77%. But no other nation came close, with Australians’ drive to save more than 10% greater than that of all the others surveyed.

But translating that drive into fact isn’t easy. Only 36% of Australians say they’re successful in putting a bit aside each payday, compared with 52% of Koreans, 49% of Indonesians, and 46% of those surveyed in Singapore.

The same problem can be seen in credit card repayment habits. An astonishing 87% of Koreans pay the full balance on their credit cards each month. That figure is high amongst Chinese and Taiwanese as well, at 78%. In Australia, it’s only 58%.

Source: http://www.smh.com.au