The latest press releases have been hilarious for me as I have just enrolled in a Bachelor of Business majoring in Financial Planning. You can be assured that in 24 subjects I can see absolutely nothing on property per se. There are accountancy subjects, banking and finance, superannuation, social security, assessment of managed funds, marketing, law. There is one elective on land law. You would have expected something on property economics, perhaps even valuation methods.....something?!? Perhaps just so I could evaluate a property trust more effectively?????
It seems to me I am spending a lot of my time these days talking to people who are hitting 50 but who are paralysed with fear that the "nest egg" they have will be taken away from them by evil banks, evil planners, evil property scam artists. I recently spoke to friends in their fifties who wanted to know what we did because they were so worried they wouldn't be able to pay off their $50k mortgage before they retired. They were paralysed by it. I redirected their attention to the $250k of equity they had which was currently having a lovely holiday, sunbaking at the beach. They had never her the term "equity", they asked what a "dividend" was. It seems to me that financial planners would be much better served by helping people engage with the financial world in manageable chunks rather than telling them to pay off their house and come back with half a million to invest. What's wrong with helping a client to invest in a single direct share - it's not "diversified" but it is a worked example you can learn to understand - it's manageable.
On the other hand, the guy above who got all that advice for "free" should probably have received a fee for his invaluable service. You should be prepared to pay for good service. (How Steve Navra eats is beyond me - he's certainly not making anything in serious commissions from me and I would have quite happily paid ten times for the sessions I did attend.)
I also saw a finanical planner about ten years ago before we bought our first IP. We were wanting to renovate our very old house. He said we were seriously undersuperannuated and that we shouldn't consider borrowing any more but should pay off our house as quickly as possible. We were getting to old to be carrying so much debt. (We were in our late thirties!). This advice engendered fear and paralysis for about two years until we discovered Jan Somers.......and the rest, as they say, is history.
