Money Magazine

Paul's response to Tamara about her teenagers’ interest in shares (Ask Paul, February) is insightful. Might I add that an excellent way for teenagers (or anyone, for that matter!) to learn about shares is the biannual ASX Sharemarket Game. Her childr

Friday, April 5 Balance of trade Tuesday, April 9 Westpac consumer confidence Thursday, April 11 NAB business confidence Thursday, April 18 Unemployment rate Wednesday, April 24 Inflation rate Home internet has come a long way in three decades. Gone

A ustralia's largest super fund, AustralianSuper, sent shockwaves through the nation's company boards last year when it led the resistance that thwarted the buyout of Origin Energy by the consortium led by the Canadian private equity group Brookfield

When we talk about saving money, we often share articles about how to invest, where to cut costs and how to improve money habits. But a damning report on price gouging and unfair pricing practices released in February had the Money team's (collective

▶ MORE MONEY STORIES ON P44-58 Insurance companies are being urged to redesign their products and practices to help prevent financial abuse. The call comes from the Centre for Women's Economic Safety (CWES), which played an instrumental role in pushi

Cash users could soon find themselves paying for their morning coffee with a new-look $5 note, as the Reserve Bank (RBA) has announced a public redesign campaign. 90% of the women who seek support for domestic and family violence are affected by fina

▶ MORE PROPERTY STORIES ON P60-65 While property prices have skyrocketed in recent decades, new research by PropTrack and the e61 Institute has highlighted the meteoric rise of another cost faced by most home buyers: stamp duty. The research reveals

The price of Bitcoin has reached a new milestone, breaching the $100,000 mark for the first time. 61% The increase in Bitcoin's value in the first two months of 2024. The cryptocurrency has recorded a rapid rise in value since the start of the year,

▶ MORE SHARES STORIES ON P78-85 Shareholders are increasingly objecting to what they regard as company executives’ inflated pay packets. Strikes against executive salaries among the 300 largest companies listed on the Australian SecuritiesExchange (A

Transurban's ex-boss, Scott Charlton, left a big legacy. During his 11-year term, the toll road operator's debt pile grew from $6.5 billion to more than $24 billion, yet a series of dilutive capital raisings to pay for overpriced acquisitions meant t

Justin Gilmour grew up with 10,000 sheep for neighbours. That might not be the norm for most young Australians, but when your family runs a 6000-hectare wheat and sheep farm near the town of Carnamah, 300km north of Perth, that's life. “I think growi

Send your questions to: Ask Paul, Money magazine, Level 7, 55 Clarence Street, Sydney NSW 2000 or [email protected]. Sorry, but Paul can't personally answer your questions other than in the Q&A column. By submitting your question to Money, you co

QMy partner is a couple of years older than me and has his own place. He has recently been dropping hints that he wants me to move in soon. But I want to save up and get a deposit and get my own place so that I am secure. I am not sure if I should mo

Q I'm 54, recently divorced and plan to retire at 60. I will have good super. I work three days a week and find it covers my expenses, living modestly. I don't have a mortgage. My question is: Is it too late to start investing in shares, since the se

Q I am 39 and have been saving and investing now for nine years. I hold two investment properties worth $800,000 and $570,000, with loans of $280,000 and $350,000 respectively. I also have $180,000 in super, $240,000 in equities and $50,000 in cash f

Natural darkness and sky quality are among the criteria required by the US-based DarkSky International for a location to be certified as a dark sky reserve. The Aoraki Mackenzie International Dark Sky Reserve on New Zealand's South Island is one of o

Ababy on the way often prompts people to upgrade their car – something bigger, safer, more practical. Whether your budget means you are looking at a brandnew or a second-hand car, there are some things to consider to make parenting easier. A large bo

Delicious Norfolk Gin is distilled with Australian botanicals. The juniper-led gin gets its crisp citrus notes from the Norfolk Island lemon, its slight kick from the Tasmanian pepperberry and its soft notes from the berry saltbush, hibiscus and elde

I'm 42 with a concrete plan to retire in about six or seven years with enough capital to live from the dividends (FIRE – financial independence, retire early). Now, the question is about my super. I have no issue with waiting to reach my preservation

As Australians grapple with a cost-of living crunch, some of our biggest companies have been reporting record profits. Now it's time for us to take action. Since mid-2021, we've seen prices soar, with inflation hitting 7.8% in late 2022. It has meant

Inflation may have left consumers primed to accept price hikes at the checkout. But for first-time homeowners Chris and Isha Rana, spare cash is a rare thing. Faced with the double whammy of rising mortgage repayments plus higher living expenses, the

A chance conversation with her son about the price he was paying for electricity prompted homeowner Amanda Shirvington, from Orange, in NSW, to take a closer look at her own bills and make a few moneysaving changes. “I was paying about $450 each quar

Businesses set initial prices low and then sharply increase them in subsequent years when consumers cannot easily detect, question or renegotiate them and where the ‘transaction costs’ of changing to other competitors are high. Guilty Some banks, ins

I am absolutely over being penalised for being a loyal customer. No, this is not a whinge about frequent flyer points, which are arguably Australia's most rapidly depreciating asset. While I try to accumulate them and use them to save money on flight

Australians love sport. More than 80% of us participate in some form of sport to keep fit or to have fun. Millions of devotees regularly watch games, tournaments and matches on television, and hundreds of thousands volunteer to organise footy, soccer

Yu may not see as many homeless older women living on the streets as you do young people and older men. Yet single women aged 65 to 75 who don't own their own home are the fastest growing homeless group. Homeless older women are often hidden from pub

In 1770, at a lavish party in a Viennese parlour, the inventor Wolfgang von Kempelen unveiled his latest invention with a flair that Steve Jobs would have been proud of. To the wonderment of the audience, he revealed a large wooden box with a chessbo

Afew weeks ago, a colleague's teenage son reluctantly enrolled in university. The teen, fresh out of high school, was keen to go straight into business for himself, try his hand at running an enterprise and skip the five-figure student HELP debt he's

Individual investors can now more easily access mortgage funds, an investment opportunity that has traditionally only been available to institutional investors and highnetworth individuals, and benefit from the regular income and diversification adva

Offset accounts and redraw facilities can dramatically reduce the interest you pay on a home mortgage or investment loan and impact how quickly that debt is paid off. Offset and redraw facilities both allow you to make extra repayments against your l

Home is a structure that provides us with accommodation, but for many of us it's much more than that; it's our sanctuary, a place where we feel happy and secure. Even if our home no longer provides the space or layout we need, many of us are still re

1. You can create a home tailored to your specific needs and preferences. 2. You can stay put, which is ideal if it's close to work and amenities, and you have good neighbours. 3. You could increase the value of your home with considered updates. 4.

When the topic of investing is broached, most people's thoughts turn towards assets such as shares, exchange traded funds, managed funds, property and bonds. They're less likely to think about a 2008 bottle of w Comte Georges de Vogüé Musigny Grand C

As any savvy investor will tell you, there is good debt and bad debt. Bad debt is non-taxdeductible debt – the amount you clocked up on your credit card for that European holiday; the loan you took out to buy a new car. Good debt typically refers to

Thao Bui was 24 when she purchased her first property in East Melbourne in 2006 for $275,000. Three years later, the four-bedroom, standalone house had doubled in value. Bui used debt recycling – that is, the equity she had in that first home – to bu

Although there are many advantages in setting up a self-managed super fund (SMSF), circumstances change and what may have been a sound decision years ago may no longer apply today. There are a whole host of reasons why people decide to wind up their

Despite the resilience of the global economy in the face of aggressive interest rate hikes, investors are debating the source of the next market, and economic, shock. A leading candidate is the stress in the US, and global, commercial real estate (CR

The mantra for much of my time at the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) was “what we do matters”. I first used it when answering a question from a new starter about why the ASX was always in the news. I wasn't boasting, just simply acknowledging t

A tried-and-tested approach to investing is to buy yourself 20 Australian stocks, never selling, sagely quoting Warren Buffett at dinner parties and wondering why you are going nowhere. But there are alternatives. Here we go with four of them – 40 ye

If the expression ‘May you live in interesting times’, usually attributed to the Chinese, was applied to a single ASX sector, I think it would have to be resources. These businesses tend to be price takers and that price is usually nothing if not vol

The creator of the beloved Mum/Lyn character on Instagram is the go-to woman for her take on the absurdities of modern life. She is a regular on Network Ten's The Project and has written for shows as diverse as the ABC's Ronny Chieng: International S