From engagement onward, getting married is an exciting time. But it’s easy to get so swept up in the wedding planning that long-term financial planning gets put to one side. BUDGETING FOR THE RING When it comes to buying engagement rings, it’s best to be realistic about what you can and can’t afford. This is…
There’s an old saying, to only focus on the things in life that you can control. But that adage has been well and truly stress tested on just about every level over the past few months because of the uncontrollable events stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. On an investment portfolio management level particularly, it’s been…
Gone are the days of childhood watermelon seed spitting competitions, a customary afterschool summer tradition of times gone by. Our kids today won’t get to share these childhood memories, and in fact, most won’t even know that watermelons have seeds, let alone how to spit them. Meet the new ‘seedless watermelon generation’. A generation of…
While share markets have experienced some of the sharpest falls in history, amid the Coronavirus pandemic, savvy investors have been looking out for opportunities created by recent events. Travel, tourism, retail and universities are among some of the hardest hit sectors in Australia, due to Coronavirus.1 On the flip side, pharmaceuticals, video conferencing, entertainment streaming and…
In his book The Little Book of Common Sense Investing, Vanguard founder Jack Bogle included a very apt quote from Warren Buffet on the matter of market timing. And that is, “for investors as a whole, returns decrease as motion increases”. In recent times, this seems to be more pertinent than ever. ASIC last week published…
How often do you feel you are burning your candle at both ends? That no matter how hard you try to destress or what boundaries you set, the to-do list gets longer and you find it harder to catch your breath? Even with businesses shutting down and our usual activities ceasing, somehow we’re still just…
By Tom Stevenson, an investment director at Fidelity International. A new world Jim Callaghan, an under-rated Prime Minister, put it best just before the 1979 General Election. ‘You know there are times, perhaps once every thirty years, when there is a sea-change in politics. It then does not matter what you say or what you…
How much you need for a house deposit A great savings goal for a house deposit is: 20% of the purchase price of the house plus enough to cover the costs of buying a house Some lenders only require a 5% deposit. But a smaller deposit means a bigger loan and you’ll have to pay for lenders…
Understanding what the different types of investments are, and how they work, can help to explain why events like Coronavirus, may be impacting some peoples’ investment portfolios and super more than others. In this article, we’ll break down what constitutes a growth verses defensive asset class and what the benefits are for each. Asset classes…
In this article, John Rives of the Growth Mindset Institute provides his personal account of the outbreak of COVID-19, and how applying growth mindset theory has helped guide his business through uncertain times. No doubt, just like I did, you woke up a few months ago in an environment of constant uncertainty and threat —…