My wife lost her job and is trying to get another. She won’t get jobseeker as I earn too much. Would it be right to take advantage of the new super policy and access 10k of her super early? We will struggle with mortgage repayments without her working.

Simon from Richmond in Victoria

Hi Simon,

I’m assuming your wife has lost her job because of the coronavirus crisis. Early access to super was one of the first financial reliefs announced by the government to help people in situations like yours.

Of course, there would be some advantages of doing that. However, as with any major investment decision, it's very important to seek professional financial advice rather than acting on your emotions.

Firstly, if you’re in a situation where you’re unable to afford basic living expenses, accessing super is probably the way to go. There’s a little point of discussing the pros and cons of it if you can’t afford to pay bills or groceries. This measure allows to you access two lots of tax-free lumps sums of up to $10,000 each and I know this will be a lifeline in a lot of cases.

If you don’t fall into the above category, there are important aspects of your super strategy that need to be considered. These include your age, your overall retirement plans, insurance benefits, crystallising capital losses, opportunity costs of withdrawing your capital, just to mention some.

People close to retirement may benefit as it allows them to access their super tax-free before reaching what’s called their ‘preservation age’. Under the announced measure, if they qualify, they could tap into some of their accumulation account before formally stopping work and switching into pension mode.

For the rest of us, accessing our super early isn’t such a good idea. As mentioned earlier, you’re likely to crystallise your losses. But that’s only part of the story. The other part is the opportunity cost – how much you’ll rob yourself in the long run. If you have a long way to go before retirement, accessing super now will almost certainly be a very costly exercise. Your super is your future employer. You want to make sure you maximise the opportunities during your working life to build your nest egg. Selling down quality assets in a well-diversified super portfolio (assumption) could hardly be called utilising an opportunity. Both time and compound interest will magnify the gap you cause by the withdrawal (potentially up to hundreds of thousands of dollars).

Being able to access your super simply doesn’t mean you should. There are now other financial relief options on the way that were not available at the time this superannuation measure was unveiled.

There’s the ‘JobKeeper’ payment – if your wife’s previous employer is eligible, they could register to receive $1,500 per fortnight for a period of six months for each employee (full-time, part-time and casuals employed over 12 months). This will potentially allow them to re-hire the employees they were forced to let go earlier. Simon, if your employer/or your business qualifies, you could also potentially receive this payment. The amount of $1,500 per fortnight is fixed and not income tested, meaning some people may end up earning more than they earned before. Most of the work needs to be done by the employer so clear communication between employer and employees will be crucial.

A lot of lenders have announced various mortgage repayment initiatives that allow people pause their repayments for a period of time. As you mentioned you will struggle to pay off the mortgage without your wife working, so it might be a good idea to call your mortgage provider and have a discussion. You might be able to negotiate a deferral of repayments of up to six months.

Lastly, I want to mention that there’s always some good in every bad. This crisis provides us with an opportunity to re-visit our expenses and re-set our priorities. It would be a good idea for you and your wife to sit down over the weekend, have a look at your bank/credit card statement and set up a spending plan moving forward. If you’re anything like me, you will be able to eliminate a lot of unnecessary expenses (some of them will come down automatically due to the lockdown).

One day, when this whole thing is over and your incomes will go back to normal, you may find that you suddenly have a cashflow surplus which you can allocate towards your future well-being.

I wish you all the best. Stay positive. This too shall pass.

Michal Bodi

Life hacks for coping with change in a new year

The entire science behind change fascinates me.  It’s also one of the critical variables in financial planning – without implementing a sustainable change the entire planning process fails to deliver the outcomes we’re after.

That’s easier to say than do. We get busy, distracted and we procrastinate. Procrastination is a real problem for a lot of people, and it’s a sneaky one. Quite often we don’t even realise it’s sitting on our shoulders making itself very comfy. Its level of comfort will depend on how we respond to change and how ‘change hungry’ we actually are.

Different people have different levels of readiness to change and it needs to be measured and respected. It allows a good coach to use the right approach and develop a framework that maximises the client’s potential.  After all, it’s all about the actual process of planning – taking clients from self-discovery to actioning digestible steps of a workable plan, fundamentally connected to personal values and goals.

It doesn’t just happen automatically though. The whole process is underpinned by changes in thought, attitudes and behaviour. And that’s where the rubber hits the road.

Studies after studies show us that if we address our behaviour, the results we're after are inevitable.

Coached investor behaviour can literally stop you from booting away your fortune. Up to two thirds of investor returns are lost annually, due to expensive mistakes because ‘human nature is simply a failed investor’ (annual Dalbar/Lipper analysis).

People’s improved behaviour can increase their savings by $90,000 after working with a financial planner (Saving Study by KPMG Econtech for the FSC).

Our behaviour and our decision mechanism is the dominant determinant of our financial outcomes. And managing the process of change forms a big part of what a behavioural coach does.

New Year’s Day is the single most popular trigger in our calendars, when we tend to think of change and how we can improve our lives. Without successful implementation, however, change won’t be sustainable.

So what can you do differently this time? The secret to getting ahead is getting started. These three, simple and practical life hacks might be the way to go:

- Don’t think (too much)– we tend to overthink things. Our minds love making excuses about the ‘right time’ and ‘perfect conditions’. These never happen. The best time to start was probably years ago. The second-best time is now. Often, it’s just a matter of starting and working out details later.

- Create external tension – if we tell other people and make our plans ‘official’, we subconsciously create a guilt trip if we stop. Sharing our goals and plans with friends fools our mind and holds it accountable.

- Start for 10 – break down the change into small bites you can introduce daily. Then, every day, practice the new habit for just ten minutes. Once the time is over we tend to continue as we already created a momentum.

Financial coaching can also reduce the anxiety about the irreducible uncertainty we all face. It provides a holding hand and objective point of view, that helps build our confidence when dealing with change.

Michal Bodi

Senior Financial Planner & Financial Coach

mbodi@sydneyfinancialplanning.com.au

My TOP 5 financial predictions for the New Year (and let's face it, every year after)

Predicting future can be difficult and mostly impossible. Especially if one’s trying to predict things which are completely out of their hands. Like, entirely! But guess what, surprisingly (not really that surprising to the scholars of human behaviour), most of predictions are made about exactly those.

We’re in the second week of the New Year and the mainstream media are already saturated with headlines about market predictions, interest rate predictions etc..

So I made my own list. However, the difference is, that these are about the one thing we can all fully control, if we choose to – our own behaviour.

I’m almost certain that my forecast won’t make the headlines because it doesn’t contain the information ‘the people want’. It’s not the sensational news or ‘the secret’ information that will bring them wealth. Well, actually it will, but not in the immediate form as they all expect.

So without further ado, here are my top 5 behavioural predictions for this year (and in fact every year thereafter, since human behaviour just doesn’t change):

1 . We will keep looking for ‘the right’ product that will ‘save’ us

Most corporations spend ridiculous amounts of money to employ top marketing agencies to sell their products. These behaviour wizards understand too well how human brain works and create wonderful campaigns that simply fool us. They play to our basic emotions - fear and desire, but lately also pride, frustration and self-esteem. And vast majority of population will follow and buy whatever they’re selling, not realising, the new product won’t make any difference in their long term well-being - financial or emotional. They will happily keep chasing it, year and year again, with their super fund, insurance company, mortgage provider…

2. We will ignore the behavioural (please read boring) issues that actually make all the difference

After over a decade of my professional practice, I’m yet to see a prospective client who will come to me asking for assistance with their patience, disciplined spending or emotional decision making. They all come asking to check if their super can be ‘’invested better’ (whatever that means) to deliver greater returns, for mortgage with a better rate or a cheaper insurance.

When I start explaining to them that it’s not the product that will deliver the outcomes they’re after and that it’s actually themselves who can do that via better money habits and mindful consideration of how they go about things, they get disappointed. Many don’t believe me. And subsequently leave and they continue pursuing the ‘whatever other crazy issues they’re convinced are important’ as everyone else and which will eventually drive them to the ground.

3. We will continue focusing on (out)performance

The ‘timing and selection’ culture we live in is obsessed with being better than average. We were told by our parents we can be the best so we expect nothing less from the results of financial products we buy. Not realising that the consistently best performance can’t be delivered year in, year out, we allow ourselves participate in the rat race we can never win.

Most of us will not want to see that it doesn’t have to be that way. That the best product performance (or the outperformance) isn’t required to pay off our debts fast, educate our kids or retire early (whatever that means).

Most of us will not accept that the only real outperformance is the one we can deliver ourselves via long term and disciplined plan, with a help of third party coach, keeping an eye on our vulnerable money behaviour.

4. We’ll keep buying things we don’t need

A decent number of books, movies and pieces of research has been done on how buying stuff does not make us happy (in the long term). Most of us just don’t want to (?) get the memo. It’s actually getting worse and more pathetic, with big companies now skipping parents and market directly to our children. And oh boy, do we all know what a kid shit behaviour does to a parent who is tired, lacking sleep and just wants to have a quiet moment or just wants to pop in the grocery store to only buy milk. So what do we do? We give in. To our kids, to fashion, to our marketing and social media driven culture. … but it’s so hard to save money these days, isn’t it…?

5. We won’t listen to financial advice professionals

Less than 5% of population has a dedicated financial coach who overlooks their family’s finances and long term interest. How can we expect to get ahead, to live lives on our own terms, to get financially independent, to retire early or whatever the headlines we buy into says, if we choose not to have hard conversations about the way we spend money?

Well, because it’s easier and so much more exciting, to look up stuff online or chat to our friends or read an article about the latest products and hottest suburbs to buy in right now.

Therefore, we will continue to choose to not engage a financial advice pro because we’ll continue to justify it to ourselves – don’t you read the paper or watch a TV report about them? It makes us feel better to say that and we won’t have to look for anyone (and use our brain). So we’ll just continue to Google…

Well, there you go. My top five (although the list goes on). I’ll be delighted to check in again in December to see if they came true. But I’m pretty bloody confident... Because they do every year.

All the best.

Michal 'Misho' Bodi

I've dedicated my career to educating people about what really matters about money, what they need to know and what is just noise. I believe that having practical understanding of what can appear to be a very complex issue and having a clear plan empowers people to achieve greatness.

I make money issues look simple, elegant, easy to digest and practical. I'm convinced it’s the only way to accomplish anything in the busy and dynamic environment we live in. You only need to know what's relevant to you. Everything else is commentary…

My specialty is helping people to open up and have an honest conversation about where they are financially and why. Then inspiring them to get proactively involved in the process of planning their lives by providing practical guidance and ongoing money coaching.

mbodi@sydneyfinancialplanning.com.au

The Federal Budget - What does it mean for you? Keep Calm and Focus!

The Federal Budget  - What does it mean for you? Keep Calm and Focus!

Ch - Ch - Ch - Ch - Changes...sings David Bowie in one of his classics. 

A change is one thing that will always be a part of our lives. In fact, the only thing that will never change is the change itself.

What does this have to do with the Budget? Everything. It’s all in the attitude.

The Budget never fails to surprise us, it never fails to headline in the media and create a buzz for right or wrong reasons... 

One would think it's the most important economic / social / financial event of the year with consequences that will greatly affect us all.

Hm, well, not really... At least not in the big scheme of things. 

Please don't get me wrong, the financial magicians, the economists, the financial planners will analyse the hell out of it and search for the loopholes, opportunities and consequences for their clients. It's their job to do it. But for the vast majority of us... keep calm and stay focused.

 

 

 

 

It really comes down to everything we ever talked about - Focusing on and controlling things we actually have any chance of controlling. And the yearly budget, together with interest rates, the market, or any other financial noise is just not one of those things. 

There will be changes and there are a lot of topics to get stuck into: the economic growth, the GDP, the dollar, the deficit, the Centrelink benefits, the income tax cuts, the super changes ... Etc. 

If the yearly budget does affect you in any way, your trusted adviser will definitely contact you and let you know. It might require a little tweaking of your contribution strategy or structuring of your assets. 

However, they're not going to be the end of the world changes.

 

You still will need to spend less than you earn to get ahead with building your wealth, you will have to keep being patient and disciplined with your strategies.

 

'The universal principles and practices of successful investing and preserving of your wealth will continue to be relevant.'

Leave the rest up to your adviser... and if you don't have one, no budget will save or destroy you. It will be done by YOURSELF.

by Michal Bodi