My mum was allergic to animals, following a nasty incident with a cat when she was pregnant. Consequently, animals weren’t part of my early childhood. My parents eventually relented and got us two cats, Steak and Kidney. Kidney Kitten got his name because his first feeding bowl was an old kidney specimen vase, a relic […]

“Wax on, wax off.” If you don’t know what that means, you’re not Generation X. Try a column to the left or right. Daniel-san, aka The Karate Kid, was taught the wise ways of the martial art by Miyagi, a teacher with odd-ball methods, but who got his point across. And Danny-boy, by learning to […]

I call it “rewiring my brain”. And I’ve had to do it a bunch of times since 1999 – when I first decided an aspect of my life needed an exorcism. While none were bad money habits per se, all were destructive behaviour patterns with financial consequences. I tended to focus on the financial outcomes […]

Well, it’s your money. When do you think you should start caring about it? Your answer should be “now”. Followed by: “Okay, so what do I do next?” Australians, on average, couldn’t give a toss about super. I blame Government. Firstly, they’ve never run a public education campaign, despite making super mandatory. And secondly, they […]

Are you talking about a little inflation? Paying a bit extra each year to buy the groceries? The cost of fueling up the car jumping a few bucks? Bah! They’re the least of Gen X’s spending concerns. When it comes to rising living costs, we’ve got far bigger pressures smashing our finances every day. Like […]

                          OUCH! Cupid’s arrow, right in my soft spot. Ain’t nothing quite like property to get me all steamy. My first true investment love was property. Oh, when the light finally dawned for me, I was besotted. Since then, it’s been an ongoing, […]

Cue Bryan Adams: “It was the summer of ’69”. Dad was a journalist. Mum was a nurse. They’d been married a year. Awww, shucks. Super special times for them, I’m guessing, given I wasn’t on the scene yet. It was a time of “Free love”, the Vietnam War and … a nickel mining boom. My […]

ABBA was far more cluey when they sang that “Money, money, money, must be funny, in a rich man’s world” than the cheesy lyric suggested. People spend infinitely more time stressing about money than they do laughing about it. My guess is a ratio of 99 to 1 per cent. Billionaires stress about money – […]

“Get your cheap investment debt here!” When said like that, it almost sounds alluring, like “shoe sale”, or “golf club clearance”. But the cost of borrowing money for investment isn’t the most important factor in whether you should or not. It’s well down the list of the “rules for gearing”. First: You only ever gear […]