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 before the year-end exam rolls around. In the absence of that test result you may have floated along t...
Dec 19, 2018•8 min•Ep. 72
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 from a university. Working in the fashion industry for years in Australia and London. Experimenting in...
Dec 12, 2018•35 min•Ep. 71
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 you are a very rare human being. For most of us, most of the time, money worries are a transient thi...
Dec 05, 2018•8 min•Ep. 70
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 happiness? There are plenty of sayings we get brain-washed with, that actually don’t stand up to scr...
Nov 28, 2018•11 min•Ep. 69
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 was a first time meeting, and in it Jenny observed that she felt she just didn’t have the financial fu...
Nov 21, 2018•10 min•Ep. 68
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 building his own business to give importance to being the father he wanted to be. Tips from Trent on how...
Nov 14, 2018•39 min•Ep. 67
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 wanting to lose money – hardly surprising! So in today’s post, let’s bust open this taboo subject and ta...
Nov 07, 2018•9 min•Ep. 66
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 per week, so that when she was a young adult, there’d be a pool of money to get her off and running. ...
Oct 31, 2018•8 min•Ep. 65
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: What 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 to practically apply it in our life. An explanation of the biggest definition of the book and the...
Oct 24, 2018•44 min•Ep. 64
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 of 2017, the S&P500 share market index returned 7.2%, the average investor experienced a return...
Oct 17, 2018•8 min•Ep. 63
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 bit more holistically . Start with Why Executing a plan to achieve a particular goal rarely goes of...
Oct 10, 2018•8 min•Ep. 62
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 financial life, many of your significant habits are formed in your 20’s. And often you don’t realise it...
Oct 03, 2018•9 min•Ep. 61
I interview tax specialist Shaun Farrugia to explore the use of trusts in maximising your wealth.
Sep 26, 2018•28 min
Often associated with a sense of overwhelm, we look at how you can push through a procrastination barrier.
Sep 19, 2018•20 min
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.
Sep 12, 2018•38 min
Sep 05, 2018•16 min
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: Mike’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 of taking a jump What made him decide to keep going Mike’s 2nd jump of writing the book When to Jump...
Aug 29, 2018•27 min•Ep. 60
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 Christmas present. In today’s episode we’re going to explore how planning for the worst case can be liberat...
Aug 22, 2018•8 min•Ep. 59
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 data to come in, for investors to begin to appreciate why some hard questions needed to be asked abou...
Aug 15, 2018•12 min•Ep. 58
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 listeners know, the reason Financial Autonomy exists is to explore how we can all gain choice in our liv...
Aug 08, 2018•10 min•Ep. 57
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 find a balance that will see your goals achieved in an acceptable time frame, whilst also enabling yo...
Aug 01, 2018•9 min•Ep. 56
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 Going through self-doubt during the process Their 6-month period of planning for his career shift, fi...
Jul 25, 2018•38 min•Ep. 55
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 factors you should consider to find the answer that’s right for you. Christine observed that whilst the...
Jul 18, 2018•9 min•Ep. 54
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 3rd guy, the one he was speaking to, was great at game design. But he asked, what was he in the group for? His friend co...
Jul 11, 2018•12 min•Ep. 53
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 life dictated by the need to earn money. An alternate way to gain flexibility and choice is through ...
Jul 04, 2018•10 min•Ep. 52
Episode 51 – Can you pass the financial literacy test Want to minimise the chance of living off nothing but a meagre age pension in later life? There’s a great proverb that I heard many years ago and have never forgotten “a fool and his money are easily separated”. So how do you ensure you’re not the fool? The solution is to have at least a basic understanding of the financial world. We call this Financial Literacy. That doesn’t mean you need to become an expert – you can hire people for that. B...
Jun 27, 2018•13 min•Ep. 51
Episode 50 – Mini Retirements, 3 day work week, self employment and more - Stuart Barry's Financial Autonomy success Today in the episode, we talk to Stuart Barry about his life story, his love for travel, his published book, his business and how he values his time. In this interview we cover: Stuart’s 35-year career journey in the finance industry How he started his current career as a financial planner Countries and places he has worked in Breaks and adventures or “mini-retirements” that Stuar...
Jun 20, 2018•37 min•Ep. 50
Episode 49 – Bike paths, Bitcoin, and Risk Budgets I go for a bike ride most Sundays. Wherever I can, I ride on a bike path. Often there is a road running parallel to the bike path. Very often, cyclists are on the road when they could just as easily be on the bike path. Now I understand why they do this. It’s because you can go faster on the road than on the bike path. But the thing for me is, you don’t get killed on a bike path. No cars to get under the wheel of. I know it doesn’t happen often ...
Jun 13, 2018•10 min•Ep. 49
Episode 48 – the 10 worst things you can do to prepare for retiring early So your financial autonomy goal is to retire early. For some that might mean retiring at age 35 and for others age 58. Often, especially for those looking to retire at the younger end of the spectrum, it will mean ceasing their current role, but still engaging in some income producing activities. So retiring early looks different for each of us. We usually talk about what you should do to achieve your financial autonomy go...
Jun 06, 2018•10 min•Ep. 48
In this episode, we interview Sean Callanan, a podcasting guru, and owner of Sports Geek . After 15 years of working for IT, Sean started his company, Sports Geek, out of his passion for sports and his expertise for technology in 2009. He eventually started his own podcast in 2014 under the same brand. In this interview we cover: Background on Sports Geek and the podcast The start of Sports Geek The mentality Sean took to make 9 months without income work for him Overcoming the imposter syndrome...
May 30, 2018•36 min•Ep. 47
