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.
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.
How do you start ‘the talk’ with your kids?
"No, not that talk... the other big talk."
Parents all ask the same question
After 20+ years working as a financial adviser, you get to see patterns in people's actions and, more importantly, their questions.
The number one question I get asked by parents of all ages is,
‘How can I help my kids get ahead in life?’
Need to get early access to some of your super?
Nothing starts a heated conversation between mates at a BBQ quicker than a question about superannuation and whether you should be allowed to get access to it before you retire.
The government's stated purpose behind our national compulsory super savings plan is to provide people income in retirement to substitute (or supplement) the Age Pension. This is known as the sole purpose test.
Life insurance inside your super has special rules you need to understand - especially if you're a blended family.
You need to let your super fund (and life insurance company) know who you want as a beneficiary to receive any payout made upon your death.
This is especially important if your life insurance is owned by your super fund because there are additional rules you need to understand. If you don't, then you'll leave a whole lot of unnecessary pain and problems for your survivors.
- 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
- The Better Business Book Vol 3 (now also on Kindle )
- Test your Christmas Trivia Skills!
- Prostate cancer surgery and its disturbing new link to business risk
