PORTFOLIO POINT: Like none before it, superannuation will be a hot button for this year’s federal election. Many Australians might choose to vote on super itself. There comes a point in most people’s lives – and it tends to be some time after turning 50 or 55 – that superannuation becomes the most important financial […]
“Learn the rules. Then play them.” From birth, say my parents, I wanted to know what the rules were, so I knew the boundaries. My brother Dirk, however, liked to know where the boundaries were so he knew what to jump over to get to where the fun started. Every game, every workplace, every relationship, […]
PORTFOLIO POINT: Detail is desperately required from the Rudd Government on its extension of the new contribution rules for the over 50s. Following a major news event, it’s usually only a matter of days before the first jokes come out. That is, “insert previous applicable joke here”. Towards the end of last year, it was […]
Billy Joel claimed his Boomer generation “didn’t start the fire”. Maybe, but they certainly fuelled it. Gen X will make it worse. And our Gen Y and Z kids will add to it also. Progress has meant that more and more wants can be satisfied immediately. From pay-TV to i-Phones, from digital cameras to the […]
PORTFOLIO POINT: Halving the tax on interest earned outside super creates some more scales that need to be finely balanced for trustees. If SMSF trustees watching last night’s budget felt another headache coming on, then you don’t need me to say that reaching for the painkillers would have done you no good. A second or […]
Nothing quite feeds an “us versus them” mentality as voraciously as cutting down tall poppies. It’s as Australian as tax evasion, bagging politicians and drinking cold beer in Bali. And the Henry Review makes all these national past-times related. So let’s tie them all together. Rudd’s tall poppies are very successful small business owners (who […]
Three months before my wedding, I had a nasty accident. Let’s just say: extreme sport, bad turn, torn knee cartilage. Actually, this is embarrassing. The “extreme sport” was golf and I don’t have a macho explanation for how it happened. I bent down to retrieve the ball and r-r-r-ip! Sober, too. I had two choices. […]
If there are any Gen X readers wealthy enough to retire now, let them raise their hands, so that the rest of us may bow down before them and give praise! Sacrilegious? Only in a Life of Brian sense. We don’t worship money here. But as the eldest of our generation is only now in […]
PORTFOLIO POINT: People can’t take their eyes off property. But the banks are reacting with typical glacial speed to the “new” rules for SMSFs. Have you considered being your own banker? If, like Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens, you find the current bouyancy of Australia’s residential property market a little hard to fathom, be thankful […]
On our South American backpacking honeymoon, Mrs DebtMan and I wrote an email from a Bolivian internet cafe with this subject line: “Tear gassed in La Paz!” The student peasants were revolting (of course, says Mel Brooks) and police had tried to disperse them. Wind had pushed the vapours up the hill to where we […]
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