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2021 Q3 September Quarter Review
Read more: 2021 Q3 September Quarter ReviewEconomic Overview Labour and supply shortages, shipping bottlenecks, COVID delta variant, inflation, vaccine hesitancy. There were plenty of worries in Q3, but markets remained mostly positive across the quarter as economies continued to open and society resumed some normality. This led to an increase in demand in many areas and a struggle to supply that demand. Something governments, businesses and central banks will be dealing with in the year ahead. In the US, the Fed Reserve stated tapering of quantitative easing will be announced at the November meeting and will finish by mid-2022. Interest rate expectations also moved higher. The…
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Home Sweet Home
Read more: Home Sweet HomeIt is the great Australian dream to own your own home. But how does your home affect your age pension or the aged care fees you can be asked to pay? Eligibility for an age pension and liability to pay aged care fees, are both impacted by your assets and income. This includes an assessment of where you live and your ownership status. The Centrelink (or Veterans’ Affairs) assets test starts by identifying you as either a homeowner or a non-homeowner. A higher threshold applies to non-homeowners but homeowners receive an exemption for the home. At first glance it may…
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Wade Vs. Plunge
Read more: Wade Vs. PlungeThe eternal investment question – “do I invest my money all at once or do I invest smaller amounts at predetermined intervals?” Otherwise known as lump sum investing vs. dollar cost averaging, or as our US colleague Jeff Troutner once termed it: wading vs. plunging. What’s the best option? Before that, what’s behind the question in the first place? Fear and uncertainty. Fear of making a financial mistake because of uncertainty about the future. Both losing money and making a mistake can make us feel a little silly, but we need to acknowledge uncertainty is merely life we haven’t yet…
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YourSuper Comparison, Super Bad
Read more: YourSuper Comparison, Super BadAustralia’s worst superfunds have finally been placed in the village stocks for all to see. The YourSuper comparison tool was released earlier this year, it offered investors the ability to sort through various super fund options who have a MySuper default option and compare fees and returns over a 7 year period. While the tool has been available for use for a few months, it was only last week that funds were categorised on their investment performance. Either “Performing” or “Underperforming”. This kicked off a flurry of excitement in the media about who the worst were and how the members of those…
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The Rich & The Lure of Alternatives
Read more: The Rich & The Lure of AlternativesNovelist F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, “The rich are different from you and me” to which Ernest Hemingway responded: “Yes, they have more money”. As with many famous anecdotes, there was some embellishment and it didn’t quite happen the way you might expect. However, Hemingway was right. One of the clear differences is the rich do have more money, but not only are the rich different because they have more money, it’s also been suspected they tend to invest differently to us average folk. We finally have some conclusive proof on that. A study titled “Asset Allocation and Returns in the Portfolios of the…
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