Financial Planning, Investment & Insurance Solutions

  • The Power of Fees, Saving & Markets

    The Power of Fees, Saving & Markets

    If you’re interested in financial matters, some of the most interesting and entertaining content on the internet can be found at Dave Ramsey’s YouTube channel. From the US, Dave is a southern gentleman who once went bankrupt. From there, he turned his life around and cleaned up his financial act. He started by publishing a book on his experiences, then built a publishing and media empire based on the principles he used to fix up his finances his life. What makes Dave Ramsey’s videos so interesting are his interactions with real people. All walks of life call in with questions…

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  • Wire Fraud

    Wire Fraud

    A few times a year market indices rebalance. ASX 200, 300, S&P 500, FTSE 100 etc. Happens all over the world. Companies enter and exit various indices. It’s a time when companies who might have had a roaring time of late get to move up in the world. For those who may have fallen on hard times, it’s unwanted recognition. They’re slipping down in the pecking order. No longer growing, but shrinking. One of the more notable exits from a major index recently was that of Wirecard. There’s a belief that capital markets are the best place to invest because…

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  • Heirlooms

    Heirlooms

    One of the staples of investment media and stock picking newsletters are the ‘if you had invested…’ stories. The writer will pick a well-known stock, go back to a point in time (usually the IPO) and inform us how many millions we’d have today, if only we’d invested a specific dollar amount into that stock. It’s meant to make us feel like buffoons. Why didn’t we jump aboard a stock than now seems completely obvious in hindsight? There’s even a website dedicated to the concept. Stock Time Machine. This tracks some of the largest listed companies in the US. Put…

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  • Stocks, Sectors & the Economy

    Stocks, Sectors & the Economy

    As the virus drags on, economies start to look bleak. Investors who rode the markets down to the depths of March and back out again, start to think… ‘None of this makes sense, surely the market is going down again.’ News lately hasn’t been positive. Wave two condemns Victorians to house arrest, and a seemingly never-ending wave continues to plague the US. So how do some stockmarkets keep moving up? Or at the minimum, keep levitating above where you think common sense dictates they should be? Government and Central Bank stimulus explains some of it. More importantly, the phrase ‘the…

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  • COVID-19 (NSW): stamp duty reduced for first home buyers.

    COVID-19 (NSW): stamp duty reduced for first home buyers.

    The NSW Government announced on 26 July 2020 that they will reduce stamp duties on newly built homes and vacant land for eligible first home buyers from 1 August 2020. The threshold above which stamp duty will be charged on new homes for eligible first home buyers will increase from $650,000 to $800,000, and concession on higher values will be reduced before phasing out at $1 million. The stamp duty threshold on vacant land will rise from $350,000 to $400,000 and will phase out at $500,000. The changes are part of the NSW Government’s COVID-19 recovery plan and will apply to…

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