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.

How we think about our money dictates so many of our responses to it - and most of them are subconscious and invisible.
Now, this is not some pretend self-help article about 'positive thinking with positively no actual doing' where you're told to sit and 'think yourself rich'.
If that worked, the tax department wouldn't need to get people to pay their taxes; you could just 'think about' it for them instead.

We all have to learn how to use financial tools to our advantage to get ahead in our financial life.
Learning how to use key financial tools is one of the habits of wealthy people… not learning how to use those same financial tools, are often the habits of people who don’t get ahead.

Do you get paid Super on your overtime? Well, the answer is usually no, but also that depends.
Your superannuation is your forced savings for your retirement, so it’s important to understand these two key features:
- How much Super are you being paid?
- How is it actually calculated when it comes to commissions, bonuses, overtime and back pay?

When is an inheritance tax not called inheritance tax?
When it's a super death payment tax of course!
Like to know more? Well, you should because this tax problem has special meaning for people with super, and adult children of people with super.
If you plan on leaving your superannuation to your now adult kids when you pass away, there's a strong possibility your super death benefit payout will be hit with tax.

Want to know if you'll be financially comfortable in retirement?
Well, first you need to have a standard of what's comfortable and what's, well ... a modest standard of living.
Thankfully, an annual assessment run by the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASAF) can help you start thinking about what you want to achieve in your retirement.
Then we can help you get there.

Getting money out of super early on compassionate grounds
Many people are unsure about whether they could get early access to some of their superannuation funds.
While this is a very complicated task (and perhaps the stuff of urban legend) it's worth setting the story straight; so you know where you stand with your super.
- Claim a tax deduction for making a personal contribution into your Super
- How to compare home loans
- Breaking a lease on a rental property because of Domestic Violence
- Tips for when you’re looking to buy strata residential property
- What do you have to do as an Executor of a Will?
- 8 Things couples can do to talk about money better
- How to begin talking about money with your partner