Comfort with Money

“Debt” is undoubtedly a four-letter word. In recent years the terms “good debt” and “bad debt” have entered the vocabulary with, unfortunately, far more than their fair share of meanings. These meanings range from tax deductible/non tax deductible through affordable/beyond budget and can include value judgements (by outsiders) that if you can’t afford to buy something that you want without borrowing you are committing financial sin. I do not know of any really wealthy family

When I first started as a financial planner I would ask those clients aged over 50 to answer the simple question “when are you going to die?” and "how much property, including cash, do you want to have at that time?" I got some funny answers! Of course it’s possible to control the expenditure of your money well after you die but an essential determining factor of whether you make an investment or not should have a clearly determined time line. It’s not simply enough to buy so

Now that Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day are once again behind us and eager shoppers can’t wait till the Easter sales are upon us to snaffle yet more bargains, it’s interesting to clarify just what constitutes a “bargain”. British law long ago defined “fair value” as that which a willing but not anxious buyer would pay to a willing but not anxious seller, so it appears that bargains are the result of a business deal being done where at least one of the parties wa

Einstein, among others, has been credited with commenting on the “magic” of compounding and one of the ways this can be captured in the investment world is to take part in the dividend reinvestment plan which is offered by a significant number of companies listed on stock exchanges, including the ASX. Hand in glove with this magic is the system of dollar cost averaging which in the past I have described as a foolproof method of investing. If you invest the same amount of mone