How To Set Up A Portfolio From Scratch
Truth be told most of us want double-digit returns on our investments each year, and we don’t ever want to lose money. And in our naive way we try to achieve this aim by randomly choosing fast-moving stocks, blindly following trends and generally taking on too much risk. When we don’t earn double digit returns…
Disastrous retirement strategies
We all know that there is no such thing as a low risk, high growth investment product, which provides a guaranteed return. And we also know that in order to maintain a good lifestyle in retirement, our super savings need to be fairly substantial. But many Australians continue to play Russian roulette with their retirement…
Measures of happiness tell us less than economics of unhappiness
John Quiggin, The University of Queensland This article is part of a series, On Happiness, examining what it means and how it might be achieved in the 21st century. All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. – Tolstoy, Anna Karenina Money doesn’t buy you happiness, but it does…
Borrowing to invest a risky solution to a savings problem
By Wealth Foundations Borrowing to invest has appeal to some high income professionals The Global Financial Crisis clearly revealed the dangers of attempting to accelerate wealth accumulation by borrowing to invest. Many were left owing considerably more to their lenders than their investment assets were worth. However, for many high income earning professionals in their…
Explainer: what are safe haven investments?
By Richard Heaney, University of Western Australia Safe haven investments are investments that provide a low level of risk during periods of extreme economic uncertainty. The problem is that a safe haven investment is a safe haven investment until it is no longer a safe haven investment. There are a number of assets that are…
Retirement planning: more than a financial exercise
By Wealth Foundations The non-financial aspects of retirement planning may be critical In our work with clients, our primary focus is the effective accumulation of wealth over the period to a nominated retirement date (or desired date for financial independence) and then the drawdown of that wealth to meet a desired retirement lifestyle. It is…
Borrowing to buy property within Super: Buyer Beware!
By Wealth Foundations Just because you can doesn’t mean your should Borrowing to buy property within a Self Managed Super Fund (SMSF) has been promoted by many within the advice industry as an exclusive opportunity you should seriously consider. And, while there can be occasions where this strategy makes sense, as a general rule the…
Cash Vs Shares – Which Is Best?
By Wealth Foundations Most investors should hold a combination of defensive and growth assets In our last article, we explained why we don’t think that the past five years of poor share market investment performance provides sufficient evidence that the investment world has changed i.e. we don’t yet believe there has been a paradigm shift….
Should I borrow to invest or dump money into super?
By Wealth Foundations I don’t want to lock my money into super Two alternative strategies that many investors consider are: • borrowing to invest (i.e. entering into a gearing strategy), outside super; and • increasing pre-tax contributions to super and investing in the superannuation environment. Which is best? The comparison is not straightforward, but is…
Accountants Are Not Always People You Can Trust
Something seems out of whack when you can buy a new push bike for your child for the same price it costs an accountant to leave ‘please call me back’ messages on your voicemail. Push bike versus empty voicemail messages? Hmmm…which offers more value? Something seems out of whack when an accountant can bill indiscriminately…
