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7 October 2025
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“Alone in the dark with our money”, your financial literacy, tech dominance, housing fears, tax perils, startup warnings, good to bad, lifestages.
The Royal Commission stoked the coals on financial advice fees and commissions, taking three days to learn trustees and management are severely conflicted by best interest responsibilities.
The 2018 HILDA Survey included five questions aimed at measuring financial literacy. We have replicated these in Cuffelinks' own quiz to compare our readership's results with that of the rest of Australia.
With Apple through to US$1 trillion, and Google, Amazon, Microsoft hot on its heels, could these megacaps be experiencing ‘runaway returns to scale’?
The tightening of credit conditions for home lending driven by the Royal Commission has not fully translated into aggregate statistics, and the slowdown may already be worse than we realise.
Investments that offer some element of tax effectiveness or tax breaks can be good, but it's unwise to make investment decisions, both buying or selling, based solely on beneficial tax treatment.
Investing in startups and untried ideas is risky but there are some ways to swing the odds in your favour, without becoming bogged down in running the business. It's mainly about the people.
Most fund managers had a strong year in FY2018, but past bumper years when MTAA invested heavily in so called 'low risk' illiquid assets provide a warning in less fortuitous markets.
After failing to secure a buyer, Toys 'R' Us Australia is set to close down all of its toy and baby goods stores. The company has struggled globally against intense online competition.
It is useful to think of your financial life and psychological adjustment in five stages: a family and career phase, pre-retirement, close to retirement, just past retirement, and then lifestyle downsizing.
This AI cycle feels less like a revolution and more like a rerun. Just like fibre in 2000, shale in 2014, and cannabis in 2019, the technology or product is real but the capital cycle will be brutal. Investors beware.
An explosion in low-skilled migration to Australia has depressed wages, killed productivity, and cut rental vacancy rates to near decades-lows. It’s time both sides of politics addressed the issue.
LICs are continuing to struggle with large discounts and frustrated investors are wondering whether it’s worth holding onto them. This explains why the next 6-12 months will be make or break for many LICs.
Australian housing’s 50-year boom was driven by falling rates and rising borrowing power — not rent or yield. With those drivers exhausted, future returns must reconcile with economic fundamentals. Are we ready?
Younger Australians think they’ll need $100k a year in retirement - nearly double what current retirees spend. Expectations are rising fast, but are they realistic or just another case of lifestyle inflation?
This week, I got the news that my mother has dementia. It came shortly after my father received the same diagnosis. This is a meditation on getting old and my regrets in not getting my parents’ affairs in order sooner.