Metro News - Newspaper Online - formerly Toorak Metro News Victoria au newspaper Melbourne south eastern Bayside Melbourne

Everything you read which mentions money is now qualified with words like, “This should not be taken as investment advice. Readers need to consider their own particular circumstances and seek independent advice.” What independent advice should they seek? That is a question that always goes unanswered.

Another question commonly asked of radio investment gurus is where to get good financial advice. The gurus can’t help. Neither can I. The simple reason is that there is plenty of advice out there but I don’t know of any that is worth paying for. And yet I am obliged to suggest that people go look for it.

How did this impasse come about? Our regulators have made the basic assumption that the majority of people need help. That is correct. Australians are not good at money. In fact they’re hopeless. When they went to school they were taught many things, just about everything except how to handle money, how to get it and how to hang on to it.

Their teachers did not know, and the wise heads who set the curriculum probably never thought of putting it on the agenda. Why should they? It was not expected that ordinary people would ever have enough money to worry about.

This has all changed. Our government has now shifted the burden of catering for our retirement onto each of us. Most of us will, all of a sudden, be given a large sum of money and expected to know how to make it last 25 years.

The regulators made a second assumption – that there will be some able, honest, impartial and sympathetic person ready to help – ‘fraid’ not. Consider recent reports of licensed financial planners advising their clients to put their savings into the failed Westpoint, and collecting 10 per cent commission for doing so. Queensland Police recently reported financial planners not only putting their clients’ money into Nigerian scams but putting their own money into them as well.

It was the fear of my loved ones falling into the hands of such wealth managers when I die that made me write my book The Artful Stock Picker. Maybe my book can help you too. My basic premise is that no one has your best interest at heart quite like you do yourself so you should educate yourself in the art of investment.

In future issues I will examine various aspects of managing your own financial affairs, with the accent on the stock market.

I welcome your questions by mail or email. peter_840@hotmail.com.