Pete is a Chartered Accountant, Chartered Secretary and has a Financial Planning Diploma. Using a long term approach to building businesses, investing in equities, & owning a portfolio he achieved financial independence at the age of 33. Visit his blog
How do you choose a great property team around you? A fair few years have been swept under the bridge now since I studied Business Management, but with quite a bit of real world experience under my belt I thought it might be an opportune time to look at how you might go about building…
What could an Italian economist from a century ago have to do with successful investing today? Vilfredo Pareto noted back in 1906 that some 80% of the land of Italy was owned by just 20% of the population. He then developed his principle by observing that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained…
Pushing on a string? Some interesting debate on social media this week about whether lower interest rates still ‘work’ in terms of stimulating inflation and the economy. So the argument goes, there’s little point in cutting rates because, well, people will just pay down more debt and there will be no benefit to the real…
For the first year after my daughter was born I became lost in a maze of statistics. Doctors recognise that children come along in all shapes & sizes, but when looking at the ‘normal’ distribution of baby weights, she was an outlier – consistently lower than she should’ve been, and not gaining enough weight with…
Not too many surprises in the Treasurer’s 2019 Federal Budget. Tax cuts for households were effectively doubled from around $150 billion to about $300 billion, in rounded numbers. Quite a substantial saving of tax for households was mooted to be released in stages, and more Aussies eventually set to be paying tax at 30 per…
There’s been a bit of an odd blip in the natural increase figures for Australia’s resident population, with processing of births data now up to speed, and fewer deaths in recent quarters. Estimated annual population growth thus picked up to +395,100 over the year to September 2018. There are 5 key charts below, which you…
The slowdown in the economy hasn’t made Australia any less popular as a destination just yet. In fact, annual permanent and long-term arrivals increased to a new record of +835,310 over the year to January 2019, up by more than 6 per cent from a year earlier. There are departures to account for as well,…
One of the big accounting firms got my goat recently when it released house price growth forecasts by capital city out until the end of the year 2021, predicted to one decimal place. Even if you could predict the future of housing markets beyond a decimal point – which you can’t – what does a percentage…
Building approvals were fairly flat in January at 14,395 in seasonally adjusted terms, but this result should be seen in the context of recent declines. The acceleration in the downturn in Melbourne attached dwelling approvals is something to behold. In the month of January 2019 there were 1,069 units approved in Melbourne, down from 3,122…
I summarise the FIRB Annual Report in 60 seconds. Chinese property investment in Australia has been crippled. The number of residential approvals to foreign buyers has been crippled over the past two years, from about 40,000 to 10,000. And with this new apartment construction will slow to a crawl over the next few years …
