A girlfriend who recently lost a lot of weight said to me a short time ago “it’s all about the small decisions”. Her theory is that the single decision to slim down isn’t enough. You don’t gain weight just by deciding to, or because of one piece of cake or one failure to...

I run a zero-base budget. What this means is that every single last dollar that comes in is given a purpose. This doesn’t mean that I spend it, just that it’s allocated. I have neither a surplus nor a deficit at the end of each month – in other words, a zero base. From a financial...

In my last post on emergency funds, I discussed the concept of passive income – that is, having sources of income that do not require you to be employed in your primary job, on which you can rely as part of your emergency fund. In a way, this is a core part of Robert Kiyosaki’s ‘Rich...

If you’ve spent any time thinking or reading about the subject of personal finance, you will have come across the concept of an ’emergency fund’ before. Put simply, an emergency fund is a reserve of money held in a highly liquid (easy to convert into cash) and secure (low risk) manner....

What exactly is it about insurance and superannuation (aka 401k, pension, etc.) that people are so determined to ignore, deny the need for, delay, put their head in the sand about and generally procrastinate over? Perhaps with insurance it’s like writing a will – somehow, people seem to feel...