Financial Autonomy

Episode 72 - Net Worth – how and why Remember back in your school days where every few weeks you'd have a test, then at the end of the year there would be an exam. I have kids in high school now and I can tell you the framework hasn't changed. So why all this measurement? It's all about assessing progress . If you get a test result back and it's 8/20, you know you've got to pull your finger out be...

Episode 71 – From fashion to true crime with Anna Priestland Anna Priestland joins us in this episode and tells us her story about how she achieved choice and flexibility in her career while building a young family. She shares how she has made these career choices work in her life. The experiences and knowledge Anna shares in this episode: An interesting walkthrough of her working life starting fr...

Episode 70 – Financial Anxiety - is it holding you back? I've spoken in past episodes about the potential for overwhelm to lead to procrastination. Procrastination is evil because it results in no progress. You're stuck in the cement. But there's another element to the no-progress problem, and that is financial anxiety or financial stress. If you've never worried about money in your life, I'd say...

Episode 69 – Money can't buy happiness ... or can it? In his thought provoking book The Geometry of Wealth, author Brian Portnoy observes "Does money buy happiness? The answer to that question can be summarised as Yes, Not really, It depends" . Intuitively none of us like ambiguous answers like this, but here, it successfully illustrates the complexity inherent in the question. After all, what is...

Episode 68 – Financial Fundamentals – the 6 essential foundation stones for financial success SUBSCRIBE TO OUR WEEKLY EMAIL "GAINING CHOICE" TO KEEP UP WITH ALL THINGS FINANCIAL AUTONOMY Today's episode flows from a meeting I had last week with one of you guys , a member of the Financial Autonomy community. For reasons of privacy, of course I won't use her real name, so let's call her Jenny. It wa...

Episode 67 – Trent Taylor and the 3 33 333 plan - work 3 days per week, 33 weeks per year, and earn $333k In this episode, we learn from Trent's interesting story from being a pilot to building his business to gain choice and improve his family life. In this interview we cover: His journey and transition from being a commercial pilot to changing his lifestyle by acquiring a franchise and then buil...

Episode 66 – The reality of negative returns - knowledge is power Investment markets don't always go up . In fact they go down on a pretty regular basis. Is that a shock to you? I suspect not. Yet virtually none of the commentary on investing talks about negative returns – markets going down. But when I speak with clients, especially new clients, usually somewhere in their top 3 issues is not want...

Episode 65 – The challenges of investing for children With the cost of housing continuing to climb, in addition to the rising cost of tertiary education, many parents and grandparents are worried about what the future holds for the young people in their lives. Last week Michael contacted me. He has a young daughter and was thinking of starting an investment for her, where he'd perhaps tip in $25 p...

Episode 64 – Money & happiness - Brian Portnoy - The Geometry of Wealth I am joined by author Brian Portnoy in this episode as we talk about his book on money and happiness called The Geometry of Wealth. In this interview we cover: W hat is "The Geometry of Wealth" about and what led and triggered him to write it. An elaboration of "Adaptive Simplicity". The 4 C's of the happiness element and how...

Episode 63 – Why do investment markets have bubbles? If you've ever seen a graph of any share market, you will know that whilst over the long term it tends to go up, the graph isn't a straight line. Markets will go up, up, up over several years, only to fall back for a year or two, before re-starting their upward climb. Research on United States investors shows that whilst over 20 years to the end...

Episode 62 – Putting the puzzle together – 4 essential elements to achieving your big life goals Here at Financial Autonomy, our focus is typically on the money side of how you achieve your goals and gain the choice in life that you deserve. But of course, achieving big goals requires more than just a financial solution . And so in today's post we're going to take a step back and consider things a...

Episode 61 – Have your 20's set you up for financial failure? Habits. Human brains love them! Any time we can go on auto-pilot, we jump at it. Author Samuel Johnson observed, "The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken" . I also like a quote from Agatha Christie on the subject "Curious things, habits. People themselves never knew they had them" . In your fin...

I interview tax specialist Shaun Farrugia to explore the use of trusts in maximising your wealth.    

Often associated with a sense of overwhelm, we look at how you can push through a procrastination barrier.

In this interview with Adam Murray of the hugely popular Subtle Disruptors podcast, hear how a personal crisis lead him to reinvent his life and in the process, gain choice and control.

Episode 60 – Mike Lewis - When to Jump Today in the episode, we interview the author of When To Jump, Mike Lewis. The book is about career change or starting your own business. In this interview we cover: M ike's jump to being a professional sportsman His job and career before he became a sportsman Events that unfolded and didn't go to plan when he left his career Framework: Jump Curves - 4 phases...

Episode 59 – The Beauty of the Worst Case Do you remember those Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbooks that were around everywhere about a decade ago? How to land a light aircraft if the pilot has a heart attack, or how to survive a bear attack. I don't know if they extended to surviving a zombie apocalypse, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did. They were good fun reads and made a great Christm...

When I started my career in investment markets almost 20 years ago all the investment options were what we'd now call Active. We didn't call them that at the time, it was just the standard way that money was managed. Passive investment had been around for some time, pushed primarily by John Boggle of Vanguard which first launched a passive index fund in 1975. But it took quite a while for enough d...

Episode 57 – 4 Hour Work Week – still relevant today? Originally published in 2007, The 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss, made some huge waves upon its release. It also laid foundations for its author that continue to this day. Indeed anyone who's ever browsed the iTunes podcast charts will have come across Tim Ferriss, whose self-named show is regularly towards the top. As regular readers and list...

Episode 56 – Are you playing offence or defence? Today in the episode, we talk to Tim Lavrey's career change story from being a bank manager to a preschool teacher. All sports have elements of offensive and defensive play. And whether you play Netball, soccer, cricket or basketball, your team must constantly strike a balance between the two. In pursuing your Financial Autonomy goal, you too must f...

Episode 50 – Tim's big jump - from bank manager to primary school teacher Today in the episode, we talk to Tim Lavrey's career change story from being a bank manager to a preschool teacher In this interview we cover: Tim's love for football The story of Tim's career change and how he made his move and decision to leave the bank and teach His redundancy and how it contributed to his career change G...

Episode 54 – Pay off the mortgage or invest? A shout out here to Christine Calnan who emailed me about this dilemma – whether it is best to put your savings towards extra mortgage repayments, or should you instead be investing? This is one that does come up a lot when I'm working with clients, and it's certainly not a question with a simple one size fits all answer. So let's take a look at the fac...

Episode 53 – Investment Power-Ups I was binge watching a fictional Netflix series last week about a group of 4 guys who had made an app that had become a huge hit, Angry Birds style. Each of the 4 guys had particular skills, and there was a scene where one of the guys was feeling pretty lost. He bemoaned to his friend how such and such was great at art, another coding, and the 3 rd guy, the one he...

Episode 52 – Mini-retirements In several previous posts we've looked at strategies to help you achieve early retirement. I've often spoken about the fact that early retirement in our Financial Autonomy context doesn't mean spending all day sitting on the couch watching the Simpsons. Our objective is gaining the flexibility and choice to pursue the things that we're interested in, and not have our...