Financial Autonomy

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR WEEKLY EMAIL “GAINING CHOICE” TO KEEP UP WITH ALL THINGS FINANCIAL AUTONOMY  We are joined today by Shaun Farrugia from Optimised Accounting and Finance to talk about the essential things you need when you move to self-employment. In this episode we cover the challenges and knowledge Shaun shares about being self-employed: Getting the clarity of knowing why you need to move to self-employment.   Keeping the proper financial record and the challenges encountered with record keeping.   The capital and survival strategies whilst building your new business.   Tax and accounting tips. Putting aside enough money for tax.   Understanding your own break-even point.

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR WEEKLY EMAIL “GAINING CHOICE” TO KEEP UP WITH ALL THINGS FINANCIAL AUTONOMY One of the best ways to gain choice in life is to become self-employed, and a great way to bring that aspiration to life is by trying your hand at a Side Hustle. For the uninitiated, a Side Hustle is a business that you create as a second income to your primary source of making a living. It can be used to pay off some debt or build an investment, but it can also be a way to test out a business idea that could perhaps become your full time gig in the future. But there’s a problem. How do we find the time? In today’s post I’m going to share with you 8 ideas I’ve found that might help you side step this obstacle.

Episode 75 – When investing, focus on what really matters SUBSCRIBE TO OUR WEEKLY EMAIL “GAINING CHOICE” TO KEEP UP WITH ALL THINGS FINANCIAL AUTONOMY I remember reading once the advice of someone who had achieved success in their field. Their key observation was, “in life, you will occasionally be faced with times where you have to make a choice. One path will be easy, and the other harder. I’ve been successful because whenever I faced those choices, I chose the harder path”. Now I think there is great wisdom in these words in the broad journey of your life, but when it comes to investment success, they are plain stupid. When investing, we want the simplest, most likely to succeed option that there is. And that means focusing on what really matters.   SUBSCRIBE TO OUR WEEKLY EMAIL “GAINING CHOICE” TO KEEP UP WITH ALL THINGS FINANCIAL AUTONOMY

Episode 74 – How to get your partner engaged in your Financial Autonomy goal SUBSCRIBE TO OUR WEEKLY EMAIL “GAINING CHOICE” TO KEEP UP WITH ALL THINGS FINANCIAL AUTONOMY A significant reason many people don’t achieve Financial Autonomy is because they get pigeonholed into a certain life. They define themselves in certain ways, and often this flows from the role they’ve developed in their marriage or significant relationship. Some people worry about how their partner will react if they want to choose a fork in the road and pursue significant change. Yet I’ve found that when couples unite on a Financial Autonomy goal, it can really strengthen their relationship – they have a shared goal, something they can work on and achieve together. So today I wanted to offer some suggestions as to how you might bring your significant other on board the Financial Autonomy train. So you have a Financial Autonomy dream, but you’re hesitant to raise it with your partner. Perhaps they’ll think it’s stupid, or just want to shut d

Episode 73 - The pay yourself first strategy Have trouble building up a nest egg? Struggling to build up enough cash to start investing? Hate the idea of a detailed budget? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then the Pay Yourself First strategy could be for you. The idea of Pay Yourself First is not new – Google tells me the term was first used all the way back in the 1920’s by an American publisher. But it’s even easier to apply today thanks to the advent of internet banking. Let’s get straight to it. The idea with Pay Yourself First is that you set aside money in a separate bank account on the day you get paid, and then live off what’s left. The opposite would be to save whatever is left in your bank account at the end of each fortnight. It’s essentially the precursor to the bucket strategy, which is where you have separate bank accounts for bills, savings etc. Pay Yourself First then is a form of budgeting, potentially without the need to do the detailed work on how much you spend on coffee or

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 thinking you had that topic well covered. And the exam serves to confirm that you’ve learnt enough of the material to progress on to the next stage of learning. Without that assessment of progress, students could move up to concepts of higher complexity, without the foundational knowledge required for it to make sense. The take away here is that if you want to improve on something you first need to know your starting position, then you measure at regular intervals to monitor progress. The feedback this monitoring provide

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 freelancing which gave her control of her life and time. How she built her career in writing. Her concerns about leaving her steady job and moving to a freelancing job. Tips from Anna on easing your way into your chosen career. Where does Anna see her future going?    Links mentioned in the show Anna Priestland LinkedIn The Twist - ABC The Case Files

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 thing that we get through, and then move on to planning our next holiday or getting the kids to basketball practice. But having worked with many, many people over the years, I’ve come to recognise that often, the reason we don’t make progress on the big, really important life and financial goals, is because of financial anxiety. So in today’s episode, we’re going to explore what are the most common causes of this financial stress, and some strategies you might be able to use to reduce or perhaps even remove this worry,

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 scrutiny. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. Really? If I lose a limb or suffer a stroke, I doubt I’m stronger. Or how about “slow and steady wins the race”. Doesn’t sound like a recipe for success that Usain Bolt applied. Likewise, we all know the saying money can’t buy happiness. But I’m quite sure that if you’re on the pittance known as Newstart, some extra money would almost certainly add some happiness to your life. If we really believe money can’t buy happiness, why do so many people buy lottery tickets? In

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 fundamentals right. As an example, Jenny pointed to having her employer continue to take out extra tax for a HECS debt, even though this debt had actually been repaid. Jenny did this so that she would get a large tax return, which she could then put to something meaningful. Essentially this was a savings strategy, but she realised it wasn’t the most efficient or profitable way to go – lending your money to the government for no interest is not ideal. So it got me thinking about what are the key financial fundamentals that

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 to handle your own business. The story of how he brought back a 3-day work week to his life and traveled around Australia with his family using his business model, and how he is teaching this to business owners. Common mistakes people make in their businesses. The process of the Clarity Plan and uncovering your “Why?”. Is being self-employed or running a business for everyone?    Links mentioned in the show Teach It Forward Trent Taylor LinkedIn

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 talk openly about the reality of negative returns. So you’re about to start investing. Your driver is the goal of growing your savings – building wealth, and with that comes the choices in life that is our central theme here at Financial Autonomy. But you would be unusual if you didn’t worry about losing your money. Mountains of behavioural finance research tells us that we humans fell loses much more powerfully than we enjoy equivalent gains. So let’s look at the realities. If you invest in a portfolio that is either 10

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. He’d seen a lot written about ETF’s so he figured that must be the way to go. But his initial enquiries weren’t bearing much fruit and so he reached out to me, to establish whether there was something he was missing. Why is it so hard to start investments for children. The first barrier Michael found was that he couldn’t actually establish an investment in his daughter’s name. I confirmed that there’s two reasons for this. One is because, to establish an investment, whether that be buying shares through a broker, or in

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 3 symbols - circle, triangle and square. What are the ultimate drivers of success? Discussions on investments, asset allocations, building portfolios and diversification.   Brian’s advice for investors. The importance of having a financial advisor. Do we really need to retire early?   Links mentioned in the show Financial Autonomy Website Brian Portnoy LinkedIn Brian Portnoy Twitter Shaping Wealth Virtus  

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 of 5.29% per year. I don’t imagine Australian investors would be much different. This under-performance of investors has been observed for many years, so what’s going on? And how does it relate to market bubbles? Market bubbles, and their subsequent busts, reflect over-reaction. We bid up prices beyond that which makes sense, and then on the downward slope, we sell when we don’t need to, and prices go below what logic would dictate they should be. These extremes have nothing to do with balance sheets and profit and lo

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 off without any set-backs or things out of left field that you hadn’t considered. Adaptation is therefore an essential requirement in achieving success. In start-up land they call it a pivot. The risk when faced with the need to make changes, is knowing which path is the right path, and that’s where being clear on your ‘Why’ is so crucial. Your Why is your magnetic north. It guides you towards progress through the normal twists and turns of life. Let’s consider an example. You want to move to self-employment so as to h

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 until much later. So today’s post highlights some of the habits you might have inadvertently picked up, and suggests some ways that you can create new habits to put you in a stronger financial position into the future. Whilst my 20’s are now quite a while back, they’re not so distant that I can’t recall the enormous transformation that occurred from the beginning of that decade in my life, until I came out at the other end. Uni and work – I studied part-time at night over 6 years and worked during the day. From living a

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.