Last year (see Who cares about the budget?) I made the point that it was silly for us to get excited about budget forecasts (and surpluses) that were likely to be horribly wrong. My guess was that there was an … Continued
Coalition catches a bout of fiscal madness
I’ve been out of touch with the news this week so yesterday I took the opportunity to catch up. And boy had I missed out on some excitement. Firstly, the big news in Sydney is the very public stoush between … Continued
What should be on Julia’s budget table?
In Who cares about the budget? I said it was silly to get too hung up on the budget figures when they had a likely error factor of plus or minus $50bn. Turns out this year it’s looking like a … Continued
Super: A promise that was meant to be broken
In February, the Prime Minister promised the Government would ‘never remove tax free superannuation payments for the over-60s’. I thought at the time it was an oddly worded commitment and so it proved last week, when the Government announced it … Continued
Costs of moving off platform
Colonial First State recently commissioned research which apparently highlighted the costs of advisers moving their clients off platforms. I say apparently because, whilst CFS was keen to publish the conclusion that it was vastly more expensive (it appeared in both … Continued
Don’t be captive to your adviser
I have spoken previously about the concept of ‘captivity’ (the financial type), where investors put themselves in the position of being completely reliant on their lender or other service provider. Decisions made by the service provider can have costly, or … Continued
Europe shoots itself in both feet?
The financial news is awash with news of Cyprus and the ‘levy’ on bank deposits agreed as part of the EU bail out package. Looking behind the official statements, it looks like this deal was more about pinching Russian assets … Continued
More media misconceptions
In ‘Don’t take financial advice from a newspaper‘ we highlighted some of the ridiculous nonsense the mainstream media can come up with from time to time. I hope Jessica Irvine doesn’t think I’m targeting her (I’m really not) but earlier … Continued
LOST AND FOUND: Finance industry seeks ‘basic morality’
Reading the following Money Management article reminded me that our finance industry really has lost its way on basic questions of morality. Now I haven’t used the Choosi site referred to (and deliberately avoided doing so prior to writing this post … Continued
Fixing our ‘not so super’ system (Part 2)
Last week we discussed some possible fixes for our current superannuation regime. But what if we had a blank canvas? Could we design a better system? The possibilities are endless, so I will just focus on some of the high … Continued