Blog
Welcome to our Personal Finance Blog
Money bewilders most of us. How to spend it, how to save it, invest it, and how to best protect the person who makes it.
These questions we all face daily — a puzzle we all attempt to understand and solve just about every day. Yet despite money's centrality to our lives and businesses, it's something we all grapple with, and mostly in private.
Money is the 'Lord Voldemort' of topics; feared by most and mentioned by a few. It's oddly uncomfortable to discuss socially and rarely even with our partners, parents, and children.
Perhaps that's because managing our money and life's risks inevitably involves the fusion of both the emotional and practical aspects of our decision-making processes. The most difficult of questions are those with both economic and emotional answers.
Our educational Personal Finance Blog is for people who want to grow and remain wealthy. And while the journey toward wealth is clearly marked, you still have to be looking in the right direction.
At Sapience, we're all about The How.
The question every blended family wants to be answered is often 'Does a child in a blended family lose their rights to an inheritance if their step-parent dies?
A Contractual Will Agreement might provide the answer to this difficult question.
Many blended Australian families wanting greater certainty in their estate planning choose to make a Mirror Will with their spouse - effectively leaving everything to each other.
Get clear on what's at stake when you borrow with others
Understanding 'joint and severally liability loans' and what it means for you.
You might think when you take out a joint mortgage with someone else you’re only responsible for your ‘half’ or share of the loan.
Think again because this is not the case.
- By signing a mortgage contract with someone else, you’re each agreeing to pay off the whole debt if the other can’t – or won’t – pay it.
Refinancing isn’t for everyone or every financial situation.
Refinancing a mortgage can put you at a better interest rate, but still, increase your debt. Before you jump on the refinance-the-mortgage ride; so here are six occasions when it might not be right for you
Both successful people and unsuccessful people have very different patterns of thinking about money.
Not surprising I hear you say, but where do these money attitudes come from?
Is it about finding new ideas or more about losing the old ones?
LMI: the good the bad and the ugly.
Using lenders mortgage insurance (LMI) is one way to buy a property without having the 20% deposit which is typically required by most lenders.
Quick Federal Budget Summary.
The 2018-19 Federal Budget has an emphasis on retirement planning and contains several important considerations which may affect both retirees and pre-retirees, explored further below.
Severity Based Insurance (SBI) is a more comprehensive high-grade alternative to the traditional 'all or nothing approach' to Crisis/Trauma and Income Protection insurance.
How is it different to traditional Crisis/Trauma and Income Protection insurance policies?
The question is more about 'when', not 'if'. Financial life is, well complicated.
We all experience a dry spell from time to time and if you're in business a cash flow squeeze. It's the part of life that happens to everyone.
But then to make matters worse comes slow debtors, perhaps sickness or accident forcing time off work, supporting frail aged parents with declining health or maybe a family law court financial settlement after a relationship change or retrospective investment property land tax (thankyou OSR).
Financial life when we're honest is complicated.
The other day when talking with Little Miss 5 about the cost of having her birthday party at the local gold class cinema, she casually gave me some financial advice to, "just go to the money machine in the wall and get the money".
I realised it was time to begin to explain where money comes from, after all, it's up to the adults in the lives of children to model helpful behaviours as our children begin their journey of understanding money.
- Would you prefer to talk with your teenager about sex or money?
- When is it possible to get early access to my super?
- Who gets your super and its life insurance, when you die?
- How to split expenses as a couple
- Downsize your home and put the profit into your super
- Who can make emergency medical decisions for you?
- Financial Advice for Same-Sex Couples
