Have you ever looked at the financial news and felt that the world has lost its collective mind? Markets often plunge on seemingly good news and soar on terrible news. A company with no revenue can be valued at billions, while a solid, profitable business is ignored. The short-term behaviour of the stock market can …
In almost every area of life, hard work and constant activity are rewarded. If you want to improve your health, you train more frequently. If you want to build a business, you put in longer hours. Action equals progress. But investing is a rare domain where this logic is turned upside down. In the world …
In our last post, we looked at the foundational laws of money: spending less than you earn, insuring your risks, and respecting the erosive power of inflation. These are the defensive structures of a good plan. But defence alone doesn’t build the life you want. You also need to move forward. Today, we look at …
In finance, as in life, there are opinions, and there are facts. Opinions are everywhere. You hear them at dinner parties, read them in the news reports, and see them shouted on cable news. “Buy gold,” “Sell tech,” “Property is dead,” “Crypto is the future.” These opinions change with the wind. But beneath the noise, …
Let’s be honest. Nobody wakes up excited to pay their car or home insurance premiums. It is the ultimate “grudge purchase”. You pay for something you hope never to use. Every month, you see that money leave your account, and if you are lucky, you get absolutely nothing in return but silence (and peace of …
In the world of finance, it is easy to get distracted by the shiny objects. We hear about the next big tech stock, cryptocurrency, or complex hedge fund strategies. We are naturally drawn to the exciting, the new, and the sophisticated. Especially after the holidays, when we’ve sat with everyone who seems to have “done …
We tend to assume that the journey to financial success is linear. We imagine that as our net worth rises, our stress levels will fall. We believe that once we hit a certain number (let’s call it the “freedom number”), anxiety will simply evaporate. Yet, in our conversations with successful individuals and families, we often …
We often talk about the emotional side of money, but sometimes the barrier to peace of mind is purely logistical. Over a lifetime of working, moving, and saving, it is normal to accumulate a “financial junk drawer”. You might have a pension from a job you left ten years ago, a savings account opened on …
(This is the last blog of three about biases and how they impact our financial planning, all published this month.) If you’ve ever walked away from a brilliant webinar or insightful podcast thinking, “Yes! I’m going to make a change,” and then done… nothing, welcome to the club! Change is hard. Not because we’re lazy, …
If financial planning were just about logic, calculators would replace conversations. But as we all know, that’s not how life works. Your relationship with money isn’t built solely on maths; it’s built on meaning. And meaning is shaped by how we see the world, how we were raised, the communities we belong to, and what …