Blog
Welcome to our Personal Finance Blog
Money bewilders most of us. How to spend it, 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.

It's enough to make you want to wash your mind out
What a mess.
Well the Banking Royal Commission (aka Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry) closed in early 2019 and 76 recommendations were made spanning the Banking, Superannuation and Insurance industry and the government’s regulators a plenty.
So what is the final outcome of the Banking Royal Commission?
We’ve tried to distill the main themes down to 4 simple points below.
All the depressing and reprehensible details you can read yourself, here .

The changing face of work and how it will affect us all
Over the last decades, the world of work has changed dramatically. While the traditional career model of a job for life is fading, self-employment and ‘gig’ working is becoming more commonplace.
The hard reality is while the emerging gig economy promises flexibility, our banking and superannuation systems have not kept up with the changes and now only adds to the new stressors our community of casual workers is facing.

Have you ever thought about running a small business on the side while working your full-time job?
Perhaps you're already part of the new gig-economy and providing work-on-demand services back to your past employer.
For many people, working a side hustle is becoming more and more important in our growing world of temporary contracts and flexible working hours.
While providing flexibility (and promising better work-life harmony), growing a side business also requires a new business owner to learn new skills and new habits, before success arrives.
Here are some common financial mistakes time-poor new business owners can avoid.

If you're feeling like your life and business have been Kidnapped by the COVID-19 Virus, we can relate.
It's a difficult time affecting us all, and all in very different ways. The opened-ended nature of this worldwide health crisis fuels a sense of uncertainty. And this won't be the last crisis our world sees.
This changing environment can kidnap our thinking with the seemingly urgent and distract us from the still important.
And our hearts go out to the people who are not in very fortunate situations.

New rules for people under 25 who have super fund balances under $6,000
Your Super rules are changing (again)
The new rules called Putting Members' Interests First start April 1st 2020.
Why is this important?
Most people automatically get a small level of Life Insurance and Total & Permanent Disablement (TPD) insurance when they join a super fund.
- From 1 April 2020, if you're under 25 (or with an account balance below $6,000) and have insurance automatically provided to you by your super fund, the insurance rules have changed.

Friends, flatmates or de facto partners - and how to tell them apart
When it comes to romance and relationships, the emotional decision about who you think is your partner, may be very different from the legal decision about who is legally considered your de facto partner.
The questions about who may be a boyfriend or girlfriend and who is a de facto become important distinctions when it comes to super payouts, life insurance payouts, and family law claims on your finances, investments and property interests.
- Coronavirus, Life Insurance, Income Protection and You
- Standing with you through COVID-19
- Special Alert: End of Agreed Value Income Protection
- Creating wealth and prosperity is extra hard work
- How to build your personal emergency fund
- Trauma Informed Financial Advice
- Do you still have Adult Children living at home?