Month: August 2017

Do you have an emergency fund? Yes, that’s right, an emergency fund; a pool of cash that can be easily accessed in the event of an emergency. (No, your parents don’t count!) Why do I ask? Well, I have recently been reading some research suggesting that 40% of us can’t even raise $750 without going into debt. If so, it would suggest that many of us are living in a precarious state financially and at the mercy of short-term lenders.

Income investing remains one of the primary investment goals for a lot of investors, particularly retiree’s. So not surprisingly, the boom in listed bank issued ‘hybrids’ continues unabated, with new issues popping up at regular intervals.

Over the past 15 years, it would be fair to say that the quality of financial advice has been somewhat wanting. The big banks have certainly gone out of their way to ‘dumb’ it down. As most often, the profession was used by them to just channel money into their fund’s management divisions

Strangely, this year had been quite slow for any corporate scandal watchers out there. Yes, I know,

During my career as a financial planner, I must have seen just about every type of investor there was. There were investors that preferred property, investors that preferred only stocks and investors that chose safety over all else, and stuck with cash. Oh, and absolutely everything in between.

It’s said that you can’t avoid death or taxes. Well, under current superannuation law, accumulated benefits left to a financial dependent are treated as being tax-free. But look a bit closer and you suddenly see a cunning trap set by the Government.