Let me take you to ground zero of the mortgage crisis. Right now the National Debt Helpline (1800 007 007) is receiving so many calls that they’re at breaking point. The helpline refers people in the most dire situations on to community-based financial counsellors ‒ yet the demand is so...
Should first home buyers be allowed to raid their super to fund a house deposit? “No”, declared Malcolm Turnbull boldly in 2015, before adding that it was “a thoroughly bad idea”. Then again, in 2015 the Minister for Networth also said that he thought Tony was doing a dinky-di job...
A couple of years ago I hosted a 13-week prime time television show. Don’t remember it? There’s a reason for that … it was axed after the second episode. I found out about its premature death via a text message (!) from the network. It started out promising — “We...
A couple of years ago my wife dragged me along to the opening of an art exhibition. Dutifully, I stood there with a glass of bubbly in one hand and a quizzical look in the other. I felt as out of place as a sober dude on a dancefloor. Worse,...
“Former Domino’s pizza delivery boy who earned $10 an hour owns 14 renovated properties and is now semi-retired at the age of 28 (and he says you can do it too)” read the headline this week. And all the renters groaned. Okay, so paint me purple and call me Dorothy...
Donald Trump reminds me of the bullies who teased me at school. Anyone who stands up to him gets a put-down: ‘Crooked Hillary’, ‘Little Marco’, ‘Low Energy Ted’. His aim is to get everyone laughing at them, just like in a classroom. And like all bullies, he only wins by...
Malcolm, I feel for you, brother. On Wednesday, after the banks behaved like brats by not passing on all of the Reserve Bank’s rate cut, the Prime Minister held a press conference. He said — essentially word for word — the same things I say to my toddler each night...
“Aussie Dream is Dying” read a newspaper headline earlier in the week. I happened to be reading the article as I was waiting for a coffee. So I turned to my hipster barista — who was all beardy and tattooed and David Beckham-like — and read him the following sentence:...
“NOW it’s mortgage brokers facing digital disruption in the third wave of property finance.” I read that headline earlier this week in much the same way that my three-year-old reads his bedtime stories. By guessing. “Mortgage brokers facing digital disruption” … hmmm, OK, so maybe it’s like Uber for home...
Today, I’m eating humble pie. I have to confess to you, dear reader, that a key ‘plank’ of the advice that I have written about for over a decade is, well, wrong. And it took a lovely couple to show me the error of my ways. For years, this young...
Picture this: You walk up to your car and notice you’ve copped a parking ticket. Bastards! You swipe the ticket off your windshield and almost fall over. A $500 fine! WTF?! If you’re like most people, it’d give you the Kevin Rudds for the rest of the day. It might...
I was born dangerously close to the VFL Grand Final. So when my mum brought me home for the first time, she was greeted by my dad and his mates (including the doctor who delivered me) drinking frothies and watching the game in the loungeroom. A generation later, things have...