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Sue Carmichael shoots through a skirt rack at her local operations shop in Goulburn, New South Wales. Longtime savers don’t have to look at brands to know which one is from “one of those chains”. He took out one to demonstrate. “The elastic goes down and sits well, but your eyes can tell,” he says. The 58-year-old almost exclusively buys second-hand goods. Today, she was looking for a pair of white shoes for an event in Brisbane, but she said it was getting harder and more expensive to find good quality items at the op shop. The advent of fast fashion has disrupted the traditional life cycle of clothing with fewer clothes designed with the second or third owner in mind. Laura Washington encourages her students to look for second-hand clothes. ( Provided: Laura Washington ) Laura Washington, head teacher at The Fashion Design Studio at TAFE NSW, says fast fashion is the opposite of the heirloom clothing that thrifters cherish. “The life of these garme...

Are you one of the many savers who cheer when interest rates start to rise? For years, record low interest rates meant anyone with money in the bank got little or no interest. The Reserve Bank this week raised the official interest rate by 0.5 percentage point, its third increase in as many months. If you’re having trouble paying the higher interest rates on your mortgage, we’re here to help. But if you’re a saver (and don’t want to invest), here are three options for parking your money. First, what will happen to the interest rate on my savings account? Depends. The official cash rate has gone up, but that doesn’t mean everyone will earn more interest on their savings. It is up to individual lenders to decide how much of the Reserve Bank’s rate hikes to pass on to savers (and mortgage borrowers). Some lenders have already started going through the July hikes. In June, the big four banks were slow to pass rate hikes to their savings accounts and not a...