The Reserve Bank board meets on Monday and Tuesday, with the cash rate decision due at 2:30pm AEST on Tuesday 29 September. The target rate going in is 4.35%. In Finder's survey published on 26 September, 37 of the 41 panellists polled — about 90% — expect the board to lift it to 4.60%.
The number that matters more to a household budget is the one after that. Forty-eight per cent of the same panel expects at least one further increase before 2027. Stack the two moves together and Finder's modelling puts the extra cost at roughly $540 a month on a typical variable-rate owner-occupier mortgage.
Two 25 basis point moves are not dramatic on their own. What makes this week different is that they would land on a repayment already reset several times since 2022, alongside grocery, insurance and energy bills that have moved in the same direction.
It is worth being precise about what that $540 is and is not. It is a survey-based estimate on a typical loan, not a prediction of your repayment. A smaller balance takes a proportionally smaller hit, an interest-only loan less again, and anyone with a large offset is cushioned by the balance parked against the principal.
What a hike does to your statement
Lenders pass variable-rate changes through, usually within days and almost always within a fortnight. Your first repayment at the new rate typically appears a month or two later. If you pay by direct debit, the amount leaving your account changes on the lender's timetable rather than yours — and a debit that arrives before you have adjusted your own budget is how a $60 shortfall turns into a dishonour fee.
The cash rate does not set credit card interest rates directly. Card rates are priced off wholesale funding, risk and competition, and they have been sticky at the high end. But a card balance and a mortgage are paid out of the same pay packet. When the mortgage takes $540 more, the card gets the minimum — and a card on minimum repayments can take years to clear.
Which issuer you are with matters too. The big four hold the largest share of owner-occupier lending, and their economics teams have already moved to expect a September hike (ABC, 22 September). Smaller lenders and the challenger brands advertising sharp variable rates tend to follow in the same cycle — sometimes faster when they need to defend margin, sometimes slower when they are chasing volume.
The jobs numbers cut the other way
Fresh ABS data for August showed the unemployment rate rising to 4.6%, with full-time employment down 6.3k and participation at 67.1%. A loosening labour market is normally the argument against tightening, and it is the main reason a hike is not a certainty.
But the board's recent messaging, including Governor Michele Bullock's late-September appearance at CEDA, has kept the door open rather than closing it. That is why the Finder panel's 90% sits where it does — and why a hold on Tuesday would send mortgage holders, and the card balances they are carrying, into a different kind of waiting.
What to do with the next six weeks
The practical moves are unglamorous. Check the rate on your last statement rather than the rate you signed up for; introductory discounts expire, and plenty of borrowers are paying more than they think. If you are on a variable rate with equity behind you, ask your lender for a repricing. If they will not move, a discharge authority request is the cheapest negotiating tool available.
If you have an offset or redraw, park what you can against the loan before the change takes effect. If a card is carrying a balance, work out what the minimum payment actually covers — usually interest plus a small slice of principal — and what happens on a missed payment: a late fee, interest running from the purchase date rather than the due date, and a repayment that can be recorded as missed once it is more than 14 days overdue.
Fixed-rate borrowers can ignore Tuesday, at least until their term ends. Everyone else gets the answer at 2:30pm.