Say What Wednesdays

Where to start when you don’t know where to start; financial literacy in an age of information overload

Welcome to Say What Wednesday – Today’s episode is a special one! Plus there’s a bit of an announcement at the end.

This all started with a question I asked myself a few years ago. The question is: How can I increase the financial literary of Australians?

The Back Story

  • Started reading books about investing at age 12, played the ASX School Share Market Game as well
  • Started investing at 16 years old, just before finishing school
  • Went to Uni and did Commerce and Economics degrees
  • Started in financial planning after graduating and never looked back
  • I had a lot of financial knowledge, but my clients didn’t (which is why they were coming for advice!)
  • I had a ‘Eureka!’ moment – most of the initial meetings I was having with clients was spent simply educating them on a few of the same basic principles. Teaching people was 60% of the job.
  • Previously I hadn’t thought too much about the fact that people didn’t have the same background or exposure to finance as me;
    • I was pretty naive starting out – I assumed everyone would know at least the basics
    • But learned that financial education is lacking – it’s not taught at school or anywhere else in life unless you specifically seek out the education yourself

Education / Literacy

  • You learn physics and chemistry and how to dissect poetry – but most people never use it again
  • The point, I thought, of an education is to equip you to earn an income later in life.
  • From there, people go into trades or go to Uni, but never learn what to do with their money
  • What are your options then?
    • You either learn as you go – make some mistakes along the way
    • Someone does it for you
    • Or someone teaches you

There is plenty of information out there – But this comes with a few problems

  1. Scatter gun approach to information / Information overload – where do you start?
  2. No structured order to the internet in most cases
  3. You don’t know what you don’t know – hard to search online unless you know what you are looking for
  4. Most top-ranking searches are from the media / money making institutions – selling something, not providing education – a shiny quick fix

Creating a Solution

  1. In 2014 I decided to do something about this problem
  2. First step was to see where I could teach
  3. Contacted the course coordinator from a community education provider, we met and they liked the idea
  4. I locked myself away and started from scratch – I went back to the basics and thought about what information I would need if I was starting from day 1 all over again.
  5. The end result was a 6-week course that I taught each semester for 2 hours a week, Wednesdays 7pm to 9pm.
    • Really enjoyed this, but it was limited in scope – plus people’s lives are busy and 7-9pm on a Wednesday night is a big commitment
    • Lots of people wanted to take the course – but couldn’t make it

An evolution

  • After 2 years of teaching I had another eureka moment – almost the same time as Jayden and I started The Rentvesting Podcast
    • Why not put it online? You can do it your own time and there’s unlimited scope and online tools to use as well
    • So, over the past few months been putting it together in an online package – not restricted by school terms and 2-hour time slots and condenses all the information into modules that flow in a sequential order
      • The content ended up growing into 24 hours’ worth of lectures over 12 modules – I was running into same problem as before – information overload. Plus – there was so much information in there it was hard to get through.
      • So, after some initial feedback I scaled it back to just the essentials

The Announcement

  • Lectures recorded for the essential finance course – gone from 24 hours to 7 hours of lectures
  • To be completed through an online portal – go at your own pace
  • Tools for each module and quizzes – no point learning if you can’t apply it.

What the course covers – 8 Modules

  1. Financial independence and goals
  2. Basics – Income, taxes, balance sheets, budgeting
  3. Basic economics – Supply and Demand – Important for price of investments
  4. Investment theory – Risk returns and diversification
  5. Investment Basics – Different asset classes – How shares work, bonds, etc and asset allocation
  6. Structures – where you can hold investments – Family trusts, super
  7. Strategies – Focus on how to build wealth and reduce tax
  8. Risk management – Long term plans need contingency – Investment risks and personal risks

For those who are interested go to https://financeandfury.com.au/learn-finance/

  • Or just get to our website financeandfury.com.au, select ‘Learn Finance’ from the main menu, then scroll down to the bottom of the page to register your interest
  • We are already getting a list of people together to contact when the course goes live – this course is only being released to podcast listeners
  • Further details soon

Thanks for listening!

What is happening in the Repo Market? Banks bankruptcy or just business as usual?

Welcome to Finance and Fury, The Say What Wednesday Edition Question from Mark part 2: Can you explain the repo markets that are going on at the moment? Apparently the banks are loaning money from the Feds at 10% so they have enough liquidity to survive the night/Bank...

What 5 factors create poverty?

Welcome to Finance and Fury, the Furious Friday edition This episode is a flow on from the previous furious Friday episode question from Nick, about poverty. Last episode we talked about how poverty is defined and the economic factors of poverty, which play only a...

How to avoid missed investments opportunities experienced by Small Cap Index ETFs

Welcome to Finance and Fury, The Say What Wednesday Edition. Where each week we tackle questions from you – This week's question is from Gab Hi Louis, I have a question I've been pondering lately, around small-cap ETFs or LICs. It seems like the whole reason for...

Managed Funds or Exchange Traded Funds (ETF)?

Welcome to Finance and Fury. ETFs vs managed funds – Same same but different – when to use In many ways, managed funds and exchange traded funds (ETFs) are the same. They are both investment vehicles that allow investors to pool their funds with other investors...

Say What Wednesdays: China’s Social Credit Scoring; class systems, socialism, communism and exterminating ‘undesirables’

Say What Wednesdays China's Social Credit Scoring; class systems, socialism, communism and exterminating 'undesirables' Welcome to Finance & Fury, the Say What Wednesday Edition, where every week we answer questions from you guys, the listeners! This week’s...

The number of homes being put up for auction across Australia has plummeted as falling property prices and fewer cashed-up buyers shake the confidence of owners looking for the right time to sell

Episode 25 The number of homes being put up for auction across Australia has plummeted as falling property prices and fewer cashed-up buyers shake the confidence of owners looking for the right time to sell The decline of auction rates and confidence in the market...

The Government’s war on cash and personal freedom continues with the introduction of the Currency (Restrictions) Bill 2019!

Welcome to Finance and Fury In today's episode, I thought it was important to cover Currency Bill - Might have seen in the news – headlines about the $10k transaction – Currency (Restrictions on the Use of Cash) Bill 2019 – what we are talking about – had first round...

If the future of money is crypto currency, why might Bitcoin be a trap?

Welcome to Finance and Fury, Last Friday – new monetary reset might be going digital Today – Dive into Cyrpto/BTC potential traps of the future – The potential regulation and eventual centralisation of Cryptocurrency at the nation-state level – i.e. domestically in...

Cover your butt! A closer look at diversification

Episode 6 Not all returns are created equal; diversification (and over diversification), correlation and covering your butt Welcome to Finance & Fury! I’m sure that everyone’s heard the saying, “playing it safe” before. And in any game, it’s generally a good idea....

(Intro Series) Translating Finance

Intro - Episode 2 Translating Finance Welcome to Part 2 of this intro series to Finance & Fury. Today I wanted to start this episode off with getting you to imaging you’ve hit the lotto jackpot! Say for instance, you’ve got a guaranteed million dollars per annum...

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This