Latest news with #AndrewGrant
Yahoo
13 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Company's play for Coles, Woolworths, Aldi sparks warning for millions: 'Very concerned'
Afterpay is keen on getting into the Australian supermarket sector now that buy-now, pay-later (BNPL) services are more regulated. Under the revised law, these platforms have to follow the same rules and practices as credit card companies and lenders. Afterpay's co-founder Nick Molnar believes this update will give Woolworths, Coles and Aldi the confidence to accept BNPL as payment. But UNSW finance expert Andrew Grant told Yahoo Finance allowing shoppers to pay for their everyday shopping in instalments could be a slippery slope. "It is very easy to get in a hole if you are frequently buying things outside your budget," he said. "When it comes to groceries, am I going to spend more at the supermarket if you're offering Afterpay? That's something to be a little bit worried about." Afterpay, Klarna, Zip warning for Aussie users as major BNPL overhaul arrives Rare $1 coin worth 10 times more due to 'unfortunate' detail Woolworths shopper reveals little-known price tag trick Afterpay is already accepted at certain IGA and Drakes supermarkets. Grant said the majority of BNPL users keep on top of their repayments without a hassle. However, Domenique Meyrick, co-CEO of Financial Counselling Australia, believed a line needs to be drawn in the sand to prevent people from going into unnecessary debt. "We're very concerned about the possibility of these products being used in supermarkets," she told Yahoo Finance. 'Using credit to make ends meet is often a recipe for disaster — BNPL providers and retailers should not encourage people to do so." She added that financial counsellors have seen many people struggle to manage their finances because they're juggling multiple "unaffordable" BNPL loans and late these services have been used for big purchases, with shoppers more comfortable spreading out a $1,000 TV over four instalments. However, the cost-of-living crisis has pushed some into using BNPL to pay for much smaller items because they don't have the money to cover bare essentials. Before today, Aussies who wanted to use a BNPL service faced little opposition. They only had to fill in a few details before the cash advance was in their accounts. However, now providers will assess your ability to repay this money before approving your request. They will follow the same rules as credit card companies and lenders by looking at your income, expenses, and existing debts. BNPL platforms will also forward your payment history, whether it's good or bad, to credit reporting firms, which could harm your ability to get a credit card, personal loan, or mortgage in the future. Molnar believes having this type of regulation means BNPL services will be viewed more legitimately by the big supermarkets. 'Some of the biggest industries in [Australia] have been holding out to offer Afterpay until a date that we are regulated. We are now starting to scale into more everyday spend," he told the Australian Financial Review. Coles and Aldi told Yahoo Finance they had no plans to introduce Afterpay as a payment option in the future. Woolworths was a slightly vaguer, with a spokesperson telling us they had nothing to add. Grant told Yahoo Finance while the answer might be no right now, he believed they would consider it if they could negotiate with Afterpay the cost of acceptance. At the moment, it costs the merchant 2 to 8 per cent to take a BNPL payment, which is far higher than the 0.5 to 2 per cent they pay to accept debit and credit cards. The UNSW finance associate professor also highlighted that supermarkets might be be reticent in jumping on BNPL services because they could take a "reputational hit" if they're seen to be inadvertently plunging shoppers into debt. While these big supermarket giants don't technically allow people to pay with BNPL services, there is a loophole used by many. You can buy a Coles, Woolies, or Aldi gift card on several BNPL platforms and then use that card to purchase your groceries. Compare Club found nearly 31 per cent of Aussies surveyed had been using BNPL for essentials like groceries and fuel. However, the biggest proportion of users (66.67 per cent) reserved it for everyday non-essential items like clothing and gifts. Nearly a quarter of respondents to Compare Club's survey said they owed between $1,000 to $5,000 to a BNPL service. A further 20 per cent of users admitted to paying late fees every few in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data
Telegraph
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Lee Child: I returned to Britain the moment Trump was voted in
Coventry-born, raised in Birmingham, James Grant (AKA Lee Child) is the second of four sons. He studied law before joining Granada Television, where he worked for 18 years as a presentation director and union shop steward. After redundancy in 1995, he started writing, and published his first Reacher novel, Killing Floor, in 1997. He moved to the United States in 1998 with his American wife, Jane, with whom he has an adult daughter, Ruth. Since 2020, he has moved back to the Lake District and has been writing with his younger brother Andrew. Best childhood memory? Growing up, the times were such that we peeled out of the house after breakfast and probably didn't show up again until dusk. Roaming around, that freedom, that self-determination, especially during summer vacation, day after day, that's about the last time you have it like that because pretty soon you're in secondary school, and then work, with every day a minefield of duty and responsibility. Those were the days when you had absolutely nothing to do other than please yourself. Strangely, that feeling came back during the pandemic. I was on my remote ranch in Wyoming, with months of nothing to do, infinite space and no guilt of saying no to people. I was a Booker Prize judge in 2020, so I had 153 books to read between January and July. I read non-stop and loved it. Best part of writing with your brother? While there are four of us boys, it was really like there were three of us, who were each three years apart, and then along came Andrew when we were all grown up, so effectively it was like he was an only child. With my two other brothers, there's no way it'd have been possible to write collaboratively because we experienced all the stresses and irritations of growing up together. But Andrew and I never did. He never wrecked my toys, none of that sort of stuff, so there's no negative history. That's why it's worked so well. He's still based in Wyoming – I think he'll stay. He's much younger, more obstinate and won't be chased out. I'm older, I'm tired, and I can't deal with the hassle of the US right now. Best thing about Reacher being adapted for TV? I feel like I'm getting to relive my career all over again by focusing on the TV series and watching the public's reactions. The casting was fantastic. It's great fun working with Alan Ritchson, who's born for the part and is a genuinely nice guy. Best part of moving back to the UK? I loved my life in the US, but I had a growing homesickness and jumping back and forth on a plane was impractical, especially as I got older. Ruth has stayed on in New York. She's stronger and braver. I feel simultaneously really happy and positive about starting out again in the UK, and really sad about quitting the US. But I just want to take it easy, not worry and concentrate on daffodils and stuff like that. I love the peace and isolation here. I've sold my prized Jaguar and gone are my performance V8 cars, replaced by a more practical hybrid for countryside terrain. I can't wait to get a dog; we haven't had one for a long time. And I'll get to watch my beloved Aston Villa in person. They're doing great; a lot of money is being pumped into the team, and they have the potential to be a top-four club. Best personal trait? Diligence. It comes from where I grew up in a manufacturing city like Birmingham. They got the work done, no fuss, no drama. Do it once, do it right. Best lesson you've learnt? You've got to do it your way. When it comes to writing, the book has to have a beating heart of its own, and the only way to get that is for it to be a product of your imagination. You may run into a million doubts; John Grisham doesn't do this; Stephen King does that. If you start listening to these voices, then it becomes a committee decision, and the life is beaten out of it. So that's why you have to do it your way, even if you're certain that people will hate it. You've got to step back and think, if I love it, there's bound to be other people like me that will love it too. From the publishing side, while writing is incredibly personal and can be lonely at times, there's a huge team behind any product, so you have to become very defensive of your own point of view while being a team player. You always need to be the person they want to back that year. Best advice? Very early on in my writing career, I ended up in a little group of writers, including Michael Connelly and Harlan Coben. We were all completely obscure at the time. We had two sayings – 'Keep showing up' and 'One of us will eventually make it'. And we all did. Michael was the first, illuminating the ladder for the rest of us. Harlan also told me: 'If you've got a choice, go where the love is, not necessarily the most money.' I've always done that. I want to work with people I like and who respect me, not just people who want me because they think I'm going to be commercially successful and make them lots of money. Best thing about your success as a writer? I was 50 before I had any sort of prominence or money. And by then, your personality is set, you know who you are. It's really that old cliché; I really haven't changed a bit, except now I can afford it. I grew up close to the Jaguar factory, and it was a period when we didn't have much stuff. I'm like any other boomer; I buy what I secretly wanted when I was a teenager. I desperately wanted a guitar when I was younger, but couldn't possibly afford it. Now I have a collection of them, although admittedly I'm not a good player! And books – I was probably 40 years old before I would buy hardcover books because they're expensive. I'd always wait until the paperbacks came out or growing up, they made it to the library. Worst thing about the US right now? Right after Trump won the election, we came with just our suitcases and a few boxes to start over. We'll eventually ship some books and a few paintings. I know I've made the right decision because you can't really escape the news, and if I'd stayed, it'd have been 24/7, and my face would have exploded. The whole world is a potential victim of someone with unbelievable egotism and insecurity. It's incredible that we've reached this point. Insane is the only word. Worst habit or trait? I'm too rational. It's just my nature. I don't do any spontaneous romantic things, all the traditional things guys are expected to do, like buy their wives flowers. If I buy Jane flowers, they're never going to be as nice as the ones that she grows herself in the beautiful garden she's created. I clearly don't understand her frustration. I'm also a reformed workaholic – I used to feel pre-programmed just to work, work, work. Like a lot of entertainers, we're doing it to seek the love and approval we didn't get when we were younger. When I did step back, people asked, 'Are you happy now you've retired?' and it's actually the reverse, I retired because now I'm happy. After all these years, I finally accepted that I have done something worthwhile, I am a good person and I'm a success. That was quite a revelation in my mid-60s, and my workaholic drive went away. By that time, my parents had passed away (dad in 2016 and mum in 2017), and in a way, I felt my life was truly beginning again. Worst challenge? Being broke and having a family to support after I was made redundant at Granada. Reacher was born out of frustration at my dining table. A lot of writers may take five, 10 years to craft their first novel. For me, it was an absolute necessity that I write something quickly, and something that really focuses my mind. It makes you do it in a way that you cast aside all your worries. Ruth was already 15 when I wrote Killing Floor. Unlike my father, Ruth never had any doubts at all because I was her dad, I could do anything. The success of Reacher is beyond my wildest dreams. Being a writer is great, if you're successful, it often happens late. Worldwide, between the books, TV and films, Reacher is a multi-billion-dollar franchise. My mum only realised I was successful when she overheard people talking about my books at the hairdressers. When they moved back to Wales and needed a bridging loan unexpectedly, I became the bank of the black sheep. But I was happy to do it for them. Worst part of your job? The personality type that migrates towards being a writer, we're generally shy. Writing is show business for shy people. It's an isolating job – there is no automatic connection between you as a physical person and the consumer, not like an actor or a football player. The promotion style that we cope with these days is very performative and requires people liking you as a speaker. That's difficult for all of us, even if we have become good at it. I went through a long middle period in my writing career where I felt very self-conscious about what I looked like and what I sounded like, even what I was wearing. I felt scrutinised. Worst day at work? I've loved giving myself a cameo in each of the Reacher series. In the first series, I'm in episode eight, right at the very end. Reacher goes to the diner to have a last cup of coffee with Finlay, the detective, before hitting the road. As he enters the diner, I'm leaving it, and we collide in the doorway. I was due to film my cameo in the second series in January 2022, in Toronto, just as the region was hit by an awful polar vortex. The actors were in heated tents with heated suits and gloves, and then a second before the take, they would strip that kit off. The conditions were hellish for everyone, and it slowed filming right down. Worst thing in the news? All over the world, not just the US, the assumptions that we grew up with – that progress was inevitable, even if it was two steps forward, one step back – are being decimated. Growing up in the post-war era, I remember the feeling that no one ever wanted to go through that ever again, but now we're seeing a dramatic reversal because people no longer remember that time and the lessons from it. Now it's just like 'What the f--k?' while watching the news. It's absolutely insane. 'What the f--k?' is the only possible reaction because it's a waste of time to try and figure out the endgame. Everybody is just seizing what power and spoils they can. It's profoundly unsettling when a basic assumption you've held all your life is apparently not true. I've met a lot of these mega-billionaires in Trump's court, and the idea that they're invested in something as fundamentally unstable as his presidency seems unlikely to me. I'm wondering if the 25th Amendment [a mechanism that can oust a sitting president from office] will get invoked, Trump will get removed, and they'll put in Vance, a total puppet, and they'll be able to run it more efficiently. Trump is trying to create an illusion, with these nasty childish insults about other nations, that he knows best, he knows the inside scoop, and is more plugged in than anyone else anywhere. He makes ludicrous statements that no one calls him out on. The only upshot is that we in the UK and Europe need to encourage a reverse brain drain, so we can attract the quality scientists and other talented professionals who want to leave. Worst pet peeve? This may sound trivial, but as a words person, it really annoys me that assembly instructions for everything now are done in ridiculous pictograms, placing the burden on the consumer to decipher them, so you've got to invent your own way of building it without losing your mind. Not only is the labour being dumped on the consumer, it's about saving money. It's part of the systemic loss of literacy.
