Teaching your kids to save is child's play

As parents we're constantly looking for ways to teach our kids. Whether thats through sharing our own culture, our beliefs and our understanding of how the world works or unconsciously by what we do, it seems that nothing teaches an impressionable mind, like watching.

But simply talking about savings money, can feel like a drag.

It's so important to remember that what and how we teach our children about money when they are young, will impact on their financial future. It's our responsibility to raise money smart kids.

So how do you actually start setting financial goals?

By now you’ve had a chance to read the ‘thinking’ part of making financial goals and decisions, it's time to start the ‘doing’.

It's no secret the COVID19 pandemic has hurt many Australians and has either derailed many of us from our financial goals or has forced us to re-prioritise our current situation.

With historically unusually low interest rates, many Australians are now prioritising their debt and looking for strategies to consolidate and pay down credit card debt much faster than they previously had planned.

This is a great step, but how do we make sure it's just not just another stand-alone opportunity to take and miss the chance to pause and refocus our thinking about what we all actually want to be doing?

Living happily ever after — in a rented house, maybe

At a recent business conference the presenter, a young speaker from Generation Millennial, made some insightful comments about changes he saw occurring in Australian - the rise of the sharing economy (ride sharing, home sharing and job sharing) and how these new approaches to ownership were changing the way people thought about traditional forms of ownership.

Some interesting insights I thought.

He went on to list emerging business examples of the new sharing and rent-on-demand economy including renting music through Spotify, accessing movies on demand from Netflix, renting a community car (or van) from the Car Next Door and renting movies online direct from YouTube.

Add to this ever growing list of rentables the prospect of renting a driverless car in the future and it was a great high level presentation; all until he made the rookie mistake and said,

‘So what's the point of owning a house today, when I can just rent one or rent an Airbnb whenever I want?’

Boom!

With that potentially naïve comment to a room of financial advisers his presentation fell off a cliff into irrelevance, all because he didn't understand the place family home ownership holds in the Australian economy.

Three high-stakes risks of being a Sole Trader

Most people going into business for themselves cite a desire to provide more opportunities for their family and greater personal freedom.

But working for yourself involves more personal decisions, greater risks and depending upon your business structure, greater personal liability.

And if you're making this decision based simply on cost alone, this is the question you need to answer, ‘What could possibly go wrong?’