Most people would have read about the skiing accident that former formula one driver Michael Schumacher suffered about a month ago. He is still in a coma and his future health is very uncertain. Apparently, Michael took care of his health and was very fit. However, of course, accidents can happen to anyone and we …
I ate a mandarin recently and got annoyed at the number of pips in my fruit (an average of 3 pips per segment…that’s a lot of pips). I wondered how much more enjoyable that mandarin would have been had it not had any pips. It struck me later that those pips, those little seeds, are …
Firstly, I have to warn you that this newsletter diverges from the traditional financial topics that I usually write about. My advice is to read this newsletter with an open mind and be prepared for something different. I had the pleasure of recently seeing Shawn Achor, a Harvard-trained researcher and an expert in happiness and …
It’s the year 2022 (September). Collingwood has won 3 premierships in a row and are looking good for a fourth. Geelong hasn’t made the eight in 7 years. I am considering using Grecian 2000. Stuart is hosting The Apprentice and the number one news item that night is that the stock market just made a …
Doing some reading recently, I came across US Congressional Budget Office (CBO) forecasts made in 2002 for the US economy in 2012 (a ten year time horizon). Now you would think that an economy is equivalent to a very large “tanker”. It doesn’t move much. Growth rates don’t vary much over time, there are cycles, …
Over the last couple of weeks, I have been helping a number of clients (that use an array of different lenders) as their interest only repayment periods were approaching expiry (an interest only term is typically only used with investment loans and allows the borrower to only repay interest, not principal). Most lenders structure their …
One of my favourite sayings following the GFC was ‘when the tide goes out you can see who is not wearing swim shorts’; another great metaphor we can thank Warren Buffet for. In fact I think he prefaced this with ‘the rising tide lifts all boats’; equally true. Back in 2005 everyone was making money, …
Recently, I spent a day listening to many of the technicalities around estate planning. Kate, the presenter, called the will the “last financial plan”. It’s a great term. Most people spend their life developing plans to create wealth, yet on death few consider the correct way to distribute their wealth. Simply, there is no plan! …
Absolutely everything! Many people get excited about doing projections and seeing their wealth rise exponentially over the years on paper. Use a higher projection rate you get a steeper graph and a better result. It’s exciting stuff! Start to talk about risks and managing them, and it is human nature to start to “glaze over”. …
My passion for the financial services industry started very early in my career while auditing some large credit unions as a graduate accountant. When I moved to work for two of the big 4 Chartered Accounting firms (not at the same time of course) I ensured that I was working on as many financial services …
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