Darren Titmus

When I first met Geoff, he had just set up his own printing business in his garage and was earning a moderate income. After borrowing to finance his equipment and start-up costs, it dawned on Geoff that if he were unable to work, he could find himself in serious financial difficulty. I pointed out a simple solution – Income Protection (IP) What is income protection Income protection, is insurance that provides a replacement income for a set period of time…

If you were paid the average annual wage of $90,916.80[1], you could potentially earn over $10,982,000 over a 40-year working life[2]. You would use this money for daily living, for holidays, to accumulate assets like a house and car and to save for your retirement. Being injured at work or taken ill, for only a short period, could severely affect or even cancel some of these plans. What would you do? Your income may be replaced from a number of…

GDP. If ever there were three letters designed to make us yawn, these would be solid contenders. So why are they so frequently on the lips of politicians, economists and finance journalists? More importantly, what does GDP mean for everyday Australians like you and me? Let’s get the boring bit out of the way first. What is GDP? GDP stands for Gross Domestic Product, which is the value of all of the goods and services produced by a particular country.…

Those with investments and who pay attention to the finance segment of the daily news may be gazing in awe at the index performance of the US share market. Even taking into account the fall in early February, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has risen 30% in the last 12 months. Meanwhile, the Australian All Ordinaries Index has yet to return to the height it enjoyed before the Global Financial Crisis at 6779.1 points. This begs two questions: what are…

At the beginning of 2022 the Australian economy appeared to be sliding into recession, dragged down by higher interest rates and even higher inflation levels. As a result, it was tempting to believe the share market was also set to tumble. And while that’s not impossible, the local market traded higher during each of Australia’s last nine recessions, with some of the strongest trading on the Australian share market occurring when the economy was contracting. For example, 1983 was the…

You might think that only importers and exporters pay attention to the value of the Aussie dollar, but movements in the exchange rate of the Australian dollar affect us all. After peaking at US$0.81 in January 2018, the Australian dollar fell as low as US$0.68 in January 2019, recovering a day later to around US$0.70. Our dollar has also fallen against a number of other major currencies. A falling Aussie dollar makes it more costly to travel overseas and increases…

Sometimes reading the financial pages of your daily newspaper or news website is like trying to understand a foreign language! To help you make sense of it all, we’ve explained what each column heading means. Company Name: This company name is the official stock exchange abbreviation, not the full legal company name.  ASX Code: A code of at least three letters given by the Stock Exchange to each listed company. This code is expanded to identify securities other than ordinary…