Festive celebrations will look a little different this year (and possibly every year going forward!). No matter where you find yourself this December, everyone has had a year of heightened awareness around health and personal space. It has not been easy to follow precautions of preventing the spread of Covid-19. Having to wear masks all day and sanitise at every entrance took time to get used to. These experiences have changed the way we look at […]
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Gifts for the cost-conscious
As our finances ebb and flow, we will sometimes face a festive season where we have to think out of the box for holiday gifts. Gifts are a wonderful way to let our loved ones know how much we appreciate and value them, but they can be expensive and out of reach if we don’t give them enough thought. Gifts don’t always have to be a physical, fit-in-a-box, wrappable item – they just have to be […]
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Sometimes we need to take our eye off the bush
“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” – English Proverb Working with what we have now is more important than what we might have in the future. Life is too short to be lived in conversations that are filled with ‘if only’, ‘should’ve’, ‘could’ve’ and ‘would have’. In financial or investing terms, as one of the most influential economists of the 20th century, Paul Samuelson said: “Investing should be more like watching […]
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Savvy celebration tips when times are tight
Tough years lead to leaner budgets and lighter wallets. But it’s important to celebrate and the festive season is traditionally a time to enjoy and celebrate friends and family. Families and businesses host and cater for large groups of people, and the costs can add up quickly. Enjoying the holiday season during tough economic times means that we need to change our usual game plan. In addition to the material costs, being mindful of new social […]
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It’s not about wishing; it’s about planning
“It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.” – Eleanor Roosevelt Appreciate the value of putting a plan in place and not merely spending time ‘with our heads in the clouds’. As Lee Bolman says, a vision without a strategy is just an illusion. Over the last few weeks we have looked at identifying our dragons and how to confront and slay them to eliminate the risks they may pose; considered the […]
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Taking stock and talking stocks
Anyone with a mediocre knowledge of investing will be familiar with the term “stock”. But few people are aware that there common stocks and preferred stocks. And they’re fundamentally different. Stocks have been traded for over 400 years – the first common stocks were made available in 1602 through the Dutch East India Company. They form the building blocks of our modern-day economy and have taken on personalities of their own. In a nutshell, here’s what […]
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Three ways to survive a bear market
What do you do when a bear attacks? For many of us, we don’t live near any bears, so we’re likely to be unprepared. When it comes to a bear market, the situation is not too different. No one can predict a bear market, and for some it’s not even easy to recognise when a bear market begins and when it ends. The general agreement is that bear markets are characterized by a consistent drop in […]
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Preparation vs Perspiration
“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” – Abraham Lincoln It’s so easy to follow the philosophy that hard work is the only thing that will guarantee our success, but hard work on the wrong things will only leave us stiff the next day. If we focus on balancing our preparation with perspiration, we will find that our success is much closer than we […]
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Planning reduces anxiety
We don’t plan because we fear the future. We plan because we realize we can enjoy today more by reducing the anxiety of tomorrow. Most people accept that planning offers us a detailed proposal for doing or achieving something. When we plan, we map out the possible steps of our ideal life journey before taking them. Some of our biggest fears orbit around the unknown, so if we can clarify what our future might look like, […]
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The notebook and pencil
“Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.” – Gloria Steinem Preparing and planning should be as much a creative exercise as much as it is considered to be a calculative exercise. If we allow our planning process to be purely a numbers game, we will struggle to become fully engaged, and fully invested, in our financial plan. As our days continue to fill […]
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