Money musings over the Christmas and new year break 

This year, I thought it would be interesting to collate a list of topics and the ‘headline’ conversations that I had with people over the Christmas break which related back to what we do at Tribeca Financial – Financial Advice, which ultimately leads to an enhanced sense of Financial Wellbeing.

What financial trends am I seeing with our clients at Tribeca?

Whilst we are still coming out of the two year haze that was covid, we are seeing more and more people prioritise what is truly important to them in their life, i.e. much more family time, friends, holidays and hobbies, and much less 60 hour work weeks, extended work travel, etc. Instead, people are more acutely aware that time is finite, and we certainly have a choice in what we can/should be doing with it. This is leading people to understand and evaluate a much better balance between home, work and general life. They are prioritising short, medium and long term life goals (centered around 5 key life principles (i.e. the things that are most important to us as human beings), Live, Love, Learn, Legacy and Laugh) to assess and build a life by choice, i.e. their Good Life.

How do I know if I am doing OK financially?

We find that people are often hard on themselves in terms of how they are doing financially in comparison to Australians in a similar life-stage to themselves. This starts from people often underestimating the wealth that sits in their family home, to the value of their superannuation. When people take the time to review their consolidated financial position, they are often doing a lot better that they think, and in comparison to their peers. That is why it is important to stop and take stock of what you have achieved in all facets of your life, and be grateful.

How are people affording the increased costs of living?

I have never known a time over the past 25 years when people have talked about the increased costs to our everyday living more. Everyone is feeling it, from the supermarket, to the petrol bowser, to the family holiday and school fees/uniforms. There is no getting away from it, it is currently very expensive to live in Australia and everyone is feeling it. However, by implementing habits such as conscious spending, we know that people can make their money go a lot further than it currently is. You need to have the right bank account structures in place, along with some considered spending habits. In our experience, combining these two cashflow habits can generate a household $5,000 to $10,000 per annum, i.e. changes in behaviour around these two cashflow habits will release money that would otherwise just be ‘frittered away’ each year

What are the ‘investment markets’ going to do in 2024?

The honest answer is…that’s anyone’s guess. With some world (macro) turmoil at the moment, no one can accurately predict how investment markets are going to perform with a significant degree of certainty. What we can predict with absolute certainty though is that investment markets will go up and they will come down, it’s just a matter of when, not if. Based on this, Tribeca we continue to focus on our investment philosophy of index investment. Diversifying the investment portfolios of our clients to track the Australian and international market indexes to produced a more considered and consistent investment return for our clients. One might say…slow and steady wins the race. This coupled with the fact that the clients we work with are far more focused on living their Good Life, than worrying about what Trump or Putin is going to do on a whim.

How is business going? Busy?

Put simply, there has never been a better time for people to partner with a trusted Financial Adviser. The opportunity to help clients understand both their current financial situation and plan their future financial situation (where they would like to be/go) is enormous. When it comes to money, it can bring a lot of different emotions in people – often more bad than good. Therefore, the opportunity exists around helping people understand what is truly important to you in life, and then put financial strategies in place in order to give you the best chance to achieve those goals. Those financial strategies invariably add tens of thousands of dollars of value to people’s lives each year.

Over the last five years, the number of Financial Advisers in Australia has decreased from 28,000 to 15,000, and this could drop to as low as 12,000 by 2026. Whilst at the same time, there has never been a stronger demand for financial advice and the value that it provides to Australians. We are set to see $3 trillion in the transfer of generational wealth over the next 20 years, and with the right financial advice this can be done so effectively. Good advice is worth its weight in gold.

What exactly is it that you do again? (Ha!)

We help people understand how money can help them achieve their Good Life. Their Good Life is anything that is truly important to them, but it usually revolves around family, friends, holidays and hobbies. In our experience, good people don’t generally want more money in their life. They want the money that they have and the money that they will earn in future to provide them with the life they want.

This process for us always starts with a detailed discovery session called a ‘Discovery Appointment’. We take our clients through a short, medium and long term goal setting process (what we call a ‘10/3/Now’) that is purely based on what their unique family unit would like to achieve in life. It is from this point that we can understand in detail what each of our clients’ value in both a qualitative and quantitative sense – this is critical to enhancing each and every one of our client’s sense of Security and Freedom Of Choice, both now and in the future. Their true sense of Financial Wellbeing.