A traditional index fund invests in every company in a share market, with larger companies receiving a greater allocation. This means investors earn the market’s return, less a small fee. Importantly, because an index fund owns the entire market, it also owns the relatively small number of shares that generate most of the returns. The …
Over the 10 years to 31 August 2026, the Australian share market, measured by the S&P/ASX 200 Accumulation Index, returned approximately 9.4% p.a., including dividends. Over a similar period, global developed market shares, measured by the MSCI World Index in Australian dollars, returned around 14% p.a. Australian shares have delivered solid past returns, although they …
A listener recently asked: “Would you be able to cover long-dated fixed-rate bonds? I feel like we’re getting close to considering locking in some duration in Australia.” Duration measures how sensitive a bond’s price is to changes in interest rates. The longer the bond’s maturity, the more its price will generally move when rates change. …
Insurance is often described as a necessary evil. It can be expensive and, if you never need to claim, the premiums can feel like a waste of money. However, in many situations, most people agree that going without at least some cover is too risky. I think most people want the same thing: to protect …
A LinkedIn post caught my eye recently. It used a mocked-up receipt to tally the “cost” of not getting financial advice: a crashed portfolio, extra tax, a clawed-back Age Pension and missed growth. Its message is blunt: making financial mistakes is very costly! I have written before about how to assess whether financial advice is …
For years, $100,000 was the “magic” number for annual retirement spending. However, after several years of higher-than-average inflation, $120,000 is now a more realistic figure. To fund that level of spending from age 60 to age 90, a household needs around $2.1 million in investment assets by age 60, measured in today’s dollars. A perpetual …
In 2023, I wrote that inflation and interest rates could remain higher for longer than most people expected. That view was based on 50 years of history showing that once inflation exceeds 8%, it usually takes a decade or more to settle back down. Underlying inflation subsequently fell from around 4% in mid-2024 to a …
Our approach to constructing investment portfolios is best described as value-aware: investing in high-quality assets when they are attractively priced. Quality determines whether an asset or asset class is worth owning. Price determines when to invest and how much. Value-aware investing requires assessing these factors separately including accurately estimating an assets intrinsic value to determine …
Most investors think good investing is about finding more things to say yes to. More opportunities, more asset classes, more products in the mix. In my experience, the opposite is true. The investors who build the most wealth over a lifetime are the ones with the discipline to say no, repeatedly, to almost everything that …
The government has now introduced two separate 30% minimum taxes. However, only one of them is law. Division 119 is already law and applies a minimum 30% rate of tax to capital gains after 1 July 2027, including capital gains distributed by a family trust. The second measure, taxing trust distributions at a flat …
Level 10, 360 Collins Street
Melbourne VIC 3000
Office: (03) 8624 4600
Postal: PO Box 475,
Collins Street West, VIC 8007
advice@prosolution.com.au
© 2026 Prosolution Private Office
You can find our disclaimer, Financial Services Guides, Tax Agency disclosures, dispute resolution policy, CPD policy, and privacy policy here.