Financial Planning, Investment & Insurance Solutions

  • The Times Not to Make Mistakes

    The Times Not to Make Mistakes

    It’s said one of the great benefits of mistakes is they are a learning experience. While they aren’t welcome, mistakes being a learning experience is somewhat true. Mistakes can be an opportunity to understand where we went wrong and revise our thinking. Hopefully, becoming wiser in the future and putting us on a better path. Yet there are some disclaimers. Specifically, what type of mistake was made, how much damage the mistake did, and at what stage of life the mistake was made? There are some mistakes you don’t want to make at any age. Certainly, none that involve injury…

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  • Will We Be Replaced by AI?

    Will We Be Replaced by AI?

    If you haven’t heard, many industries and professions are said to be under serious threat by the rise of artificial intelligence or AI. It certainly makes for a good story, and there’s a financial angle. Lately the financial media have started doing stories on how investors are using AI to pick stocks and guide their financial decisions. It’s gotten around to stories asking can you replace your financial adviser with AI? It’s all good fun. And we don’t feel the need to defend ourselves with this one. We’d say financial advisers being replaced by AI is still a long way…

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  • Trouble Spending it?

    Trouble Spending it?

    As tends to be the case these days, a large number of people head to the internet to ask questions. Sometimes anonymously, sometimes not. While more and more of these questions will likely be asked of AI as we go forward, plenty of people still like to ask questions and converse with each other online. The questions range across a lot of areas, but money, home maintenance, cars, medicine and health are popular categories. This is evidenced by the fact all of these areas have multiple forums on the internet set up to cater for discussion. If you’ve started a…

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  • Money as a Measure

    Money as a Measure

    It’s a well-worn anecdote, but if you haven’t heard it before… authors Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller were at a party held by a billionaire investment manager. Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, “Yes, but I have something he will never have…enough.” It’s a two-part commentary. Heller is inferring that internally he has a contentment with his status, success in his chosen field and his financial position. At the time, this…

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  • The $3 Million Questionaire

    The $3 Million Questionaire

    And here we go again. More proposed superannuation changes. The Albanese government is planning to impose a higher tax rate on superannuation balances above $3 million. This is set to take effect from July 1, 2025, and has been sold as increasing fairness and sustainability in the system. However, it just adds to the complexity, specifically with the most alarming of the proposed changed: taxing unrealised gains. The main component of the proposed reform, known as the Division 296 tax, is to increase the tax on earnings in the accumulation phase of super from 15% to 30% for balances above…

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