building wealth

1. 6 February 2026

   Money matters. Part 2: Expanding your capacity

   Earning more can be values-aligned behaviour. If living well requires resources, building the capacity to earn what your values actually require is itself a form of service — not greed.

2. 24 April 2020

   What are your shadow assets worth?

   A typical balance sheet misses something important. Most households have "shadow assets" — things that can't really be liquidated but have the potential to be valuable. Speculative investments, antici…

3. 17 April 2020

   Investing in a business can make you rich. It can also make you poor.

   For most of my clients I recommend widely-diversified, low-fee index funds. They're steady, sensible, and almost no one gets really rich from them. Investing in a business is one of the few things tha…

4. 22 November 2019

   You’ve got to spend money to save money

   Frugality is great — if it's mindful, and aligned with your values. But focus purely on savings rate and you can miss the forest for the trees. My wife and I joke that you've got to spend money to sav…

5. 24 May 2019

   The myopia of compound interest

   Compound interest is magical, but there's a myopia around it. The Barefoot Investor and others lean on 10% annual returns to make the "start early or you're sunk" case — at 5% the chart looks very dif…

6. 27 June 2017

   Repaying debt is building wealth

   If there's one figure to focus on when it comes to your finances, it's your net worth — assets minus liabilities. From that perspective, a dollar towards debt is the same as a dollar into savings. Rep…

7. 11 March 2017

   Most financial advice wasn’t written for you

   Young professionals at the start of their careers face a genuinely different financial situation from people nearing retirement. Different circumstances, different needs, different objectives — which…

8. 18 September 2016

   The younger you are, the wealthier you are

   If someone asked you to calculate your net worth, you'd add up your assets, subtract your liabilities, and get a number. But for a younger person, that calculation misses the biggest asset of all: the…

9. 19 July 2016

   Fixed costs aren’t necessarily fixed. (Or: Less car, less house, more wealth)

   When we think about spending, we focus on the discretionary stuff — coffees, clothes, takeaways. But it's the "fixed" costs that do most of the damage over the long run, and the two big ones are house…

10. 25 May 2016

    The first $10,000 is the hardest

    For most people, building wealth is a slow, gradual process. It happens over years and decades. There are bumps up and down along the way, but only rarely do people experience "liquidity events" — the…

11. 24 October 2015

    Can’t afford a home in the current property market? You can still get into a good long-term financial position.

    If you can't afford to buy a home in the current property market, don't despair. You can still build wealth and end up in a good long-term financial position. Owning a home is a legitimate goal for ma…

12. 14 November 2014

    Picking stocks should be the least exciting part of an investment plan

    A financial planner's job isn't to pick stocks. That's the work of someone at a Bloomberg terminal all day. A planner's focus should be you — your circumstances, goals, risk tolerance, cashflow. Asset…