Blog Archives

Noel News  “The unexpected blow lands heaviest.” SENECA Welcome to our October Newsletter We have just got home from London, so today’s newsletter will be mainly about travel. Our original plan for the trip started with a Qantas return flight from Brisbane to Los Angeles to visit the grandkids, but the travel agent pointed out it would be no dearer to continue to London from Los Angeles and then fly home with Emirates. It was too good to resist! There were some challenges, though. The first was travel insurance – once you turn 80 the options shrink. But I duly did my research – using Choice – and opted for Medibank. The process involved a simple phone call, and I did not get the usual message about “receiving an unusually high volume of calls” – their message was, ‘Your place in the queue is number two.’ I chose the basic policy because my main ...

Noel News   Welcome to our September Newsletter It’s been another busy month and the good news is that the Reserve Bank did not increase interest rates at its monthly meeting on 5 September. I do think we’re getting near the top of the interest-rate cycle, but I can’t guarantee there will be no more rate rises. The problem is that so much inflation appears to be entrenched with big backlogs in the construction industry. Increasing rates won’t fix that. The estate planning book is moving along but taking longer than I thought due to the vast amount of research needed. I do thank you all for the fantastic anecdotes you have sent me. I’m now working through these and I think they’ll be of immense benefit to the readers of that book. We’re still hoping for release in time for Christmas. ...

Noel News  “Make the most of yourself, because that is all there is of you.” RALPH WALDO EMERSON Welcome to another Newsletter The big news last week was the housing summit, but unfortunately, I can see nothing proposed to solve the alleged housing crisis. There are two basic problems: too much demand and too little supply. The only way to cut demand is to cut immigration, which the government is not prepared to do, and building all these proposed new houses will put further pressure on the building industry, which cannot complete the jobs they have.  I would hate to be building or renovating a house right now. Then of course you have the Greens pushing for a rental freeze, one of the worst ideas imaginable. To increase the supply of rental houses, we need to make becoming a property investor attractive, not unattractive. If they want to freeze rents ...

Noel News “Don’t make your mistakes into a habit, rather make it a habit of learning from your mistakes.” DAVID MELTZER The Reserve Bank has spoken… …and, as I predicted, interest rates are on hold for at least one more month. The big question now is where they will go from here. The simple answer is that they will keep going up until inflation is under control, and at this early point in the new financial year, I see no signs of that. In the last two weeks our electricity bills have gone up by 15%, our car insurance bill is up 45%, all tolls have increased, and my favourite block of Lindt chocolate has leapt from $3.50 to $5.50. At the same time, the whole country is in a building frenzy, with massive projects going full steam in every state. My architect friends tell me it’s impossible to get ...

 Noel News “The simple things that lead to success are all easy to do. But they’re also just as easy not to do.” JIM ROHN Another financial year ends Good morning. We are almost at the end of another financial year. In the newsletter I wrote at this time last year, I was bemoaning the fact that the previous 12 months had been horrendous. However, I did point out that markets tend to have four bad years every decade and six good years, and my advice was to hang in there. That’s what I have been doing for as long as I can remember. Anyway, the market has done the right thing and the All Ordinaries Accumulation Index is up 13% from this time last year. It just proves the value of staying in there. This is not to play down the state of the world right now. It seems ...