Financial Autonomy Blog
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The focus of Financial Autonomy is to help you gain a choice in life. That might be chosen as to how many hours a week you work when you retire, what you do to earn your income, or where you live. My focus is on providing helpful and actionable information and advice so you can set effective goals, optimize your cash flow, develop an investment strategy, and stretch your entrepreneurial wings.
Financial Autonomy Blog
2M ago
We all want to build wealth and have financial security, have choices in life. This week I wanted to explore the basic framework for how you can make that happen. Your home, your super, your investments, and the financial decisions that sit around those all play their part. Before we dive in, a reminder that …
The post The Blueprint for Wealth Creation in 2024 appeared first on Financial Autonomy ..read more
Financial Autonomy Blog
9M ago
A somewhat emotional episode this week as I sit down to record. After 6 and a half years, and 342 weekly episodes, I’ve decided to take a break from producing the Financial Autonomy podcast. Truthfully, at this point I don’t know if this is the end of the podcast or just a pause. It could be that I’m back in a few months. Perhaps we change things up somehow and Financial Autonomy morphs into something new. I just don’t know right now.
I started this podcast in 2017 with the desire to put myself out there on what I felt was important in money management and wealth creation, gaining choice. My h ..read more
Financial Autonomy Blog
9M ago
It’s not uncommon I find, for people to arrive at the desire to achieve Financial Autonomy in their 40s or 50s. Particularly for those with kids, until this point in life it’s largely just been survival mode. Money in equals money out. First it’s saving a deposit for a home, then it’s getting the mortgage under control. Usually either the first home isn’t the forever home, or else renovations and improvements are required. Then you’ve got the costs of raising children.
Layer on top this is the potential for divorce, and it’s not uncommon for me to have people reach out wanting to achieve finan ..read more
Financial Autonomy Blog
11M ago
Today’s post is prompted by two separate discussions I had with new clients this week. In one case, there was a recent inheritance, the other, the couple had recently paid off their mortgage. In both instances, multiple options existed. I heard about things like home renovations, private school for the kids, cutting back to four days a week, early retirement, buying an investment property, paying off an investment property, going on a big family holiday, topping up super. And on it went.
The problem in both cases wasn’t not having any goals, but rather, the opposite. Complete overwhelm with to ..read more
Financial Autonomy Blog
1y ago
This week’s post is inspired by a question I got for my Ask an Expert column in the Fairfax press.
A reader asked whether it was worth adding extra money to super given the balance goes up and down. She can put $5000 in one day, only to see the balance drop by that amount the next, causing her to feel like those savings just got flushed down the toilet.
There’s several different elements that are important to get your head around in thinking about this question, and the word count limit in the newspaper makes giving a complete answer challenging. The podcast format however offers far more flex ..read more
Financial Autonomy Blog
1y ago
This week’s post is inspired by a question I got for my Ask an Expert column in the Fairfax press.
A reader asked whether it was worth adding extra money to super given the balance goes up and down. She can put $5000 in one day, only to see the balance drop by that amount the next, causing her to feel like those savings just got flushed down the toilet.
There’s several different elements that are important to get your head around in thinking about this question, and the word count limit in the newspaper makes giving a complete answer challenging. The podcast format however offers far more flex ..read more
Financial Autonomy Blog
1y ago
You’ve almost certainly heard of index investing, also sometimes called passive investing. Here investment portfolios are constructed to replicate I given a market. The weighting given to each individual stock is determined by the size of each company, its market capitalisation. So for instance in the Australian market, the largest allocation would be to BHP, then Commonwealth Bank, CSL, etc.
The main alternative to index or passive investment is active investment. Here fund managers deploy various strategies in an effort to outperform the market average.
Factor investing sits in between these ..read more
Financial Autonomy Blog
1y ago
When does it make sense to move your superannuation savings into a Self Managed Super Fund? Is not shifting to an SMSF a wasted opportunity? Who should have a self managed fund?
This week we’re going to get you answers to all these questions. So if you’ve ever wondered whether a Self Managed Super Fund is right for you, hopefully this week’s episode we’ll set you straight.
Let’s start by covering off the key foundations. Self Managed Super Funds are a legal structure set up to enable you to manage your own retirement savings. As with regular super funds, any money held within them is pr ..read more
Financial Autonomy Blog
1y ago
Annuities are a product most people have heard of, but don’t know exactly what they are, or when to use them. With interest rates returning to more normal levels, annuities are coming out of the deep freeze. So this week I thought I’d take you through the basics of annuities so you have an appreciation for where they might have a use in your financial plan.
Let’s kick off with a definition. An annuity is a fixed contract product that produces income. The easiest way to think about them I find, is as a term deposit with extra functionality.
At its simplest, you might for instance take ou ..read more
Financial Autonomy Blog
1y ago
We all know that interest rates have leapt up quickly in the past 18 months. Whilst many people have been protected thus far by fixed rate mortgages, as these roll off, more and more of us are starting to feel the pain. That being the case, paying off debt has bubbled to the top of the priority list for many. This week I wanted to explore some of the ways that you might be able to accelerate paying down your debt.
Debt Snowball vs Debt Avalanche
Debt Snowball and Debt Avalanche are two popular strategies for paying down debt. The difference between the two lies in the order in which you ..read more