Book launch: Investopoly
The below video is a recording of my live-stream book launch I conducted on 4 April 2017. To learn more about the book, click here. To buy your copy of Investopoly, go here.
Financial Planning
One simple rule to avoid all financial advisor horror stories; go independent (here’s 5 tests)
We have all read the horror stories in the newspapers or seen them on television: Mum and Dad put their trust in a financial advisor. The advisor ‘sells’ them an investment that paid him a substantial commission. The investment was poor quality. Mum and Dad subsequently lose their life savings and the advisor goes unpunished. …
Evidence-Based Investing reduces risk and maximises returns
The best way to define investment risk is the probability that your investments do not achieve the desired investment returns. What if there was a way of guaranteeing returns i.e. reducing the risk to zero, you would be interested, right? Unfortunately, you can never reduce the risk to zero, but you can dramatically reduce risk …
Why you don’t need a financial plan
It stands to reason that not everyone needs a financial plan or relationship with a financial planner. There might be various reasons for this. However, perhaps the best way to answer this question, i.e. “who doesn’t need a financial plan” is to discuss what’s involved in a plan and then you can draw your own …
How bad does an investment property need to be to warrant selling it?
If you sell a dud investment property, you may have to pay capital gain tax (CGT), selling costs and then stamp duty again when you reinvest… it can be a very expensive exercise! And if you have owned the property for a while, it is probably putting money in your pocket each month (i.e. more …
Beware of a wolf dressed up in sheep’s clothing!
I have written about the importance of considering both investment risk and returns when assessing the viability of an investment. In fact, the world’s best investors tend to have a very low tolerance for risk – they only invest in ‘sure things’. In my experience, novice investors can talk themselves into believing that an investment …
The ‘opportunity’ cost of private education and an alternative to consider
Parents always want their children to have the best education. For some people, that means sending their kids to a private school. Of course, private schooling can be expensive and can have a big impact on your cash flow. But I’d like to suggest that the ‘cost’ is a lot more than the initial cash …
The pursuit of ‘quality’ advice
Our core goal at ProSolution is to exceed our client’s expectations in the quality of advice that we provide. Of course, our fees need to be competitive and fair, our service caring and attentive but it’s the quality of the advice we give that we must continually improve. Why is quality so important? Quality financial …
It’s easier to spend money than save it
Spending is easy and fun. It gives you an immediate hit of pleasure (the chemical dopamine). The problem is that it never lasts. That’s the difference between pleasure and happiness – happiness tends to last longer. To add to this, we know that we should curtail spending as much as possible, so we can save/invest …
Investment and super fees: Don't cut off your nose to spite your face! (Hostplus Indexed Balanced)
Each year, we write an update to this article – see here. It is very important to minimise investment fees and I have written about this previously. However, it is equally (sometimes more) important to ensure you invest in such a way that positions you to enjoy superior returns. I believe that you can do …
