Videos

Videos

Hello, I’m Ricky Hernandez and I’m the Client Manager here at Forbes Fava Financial Planning.

I’m going to spend a few moments talking to you about Centrelink Concession Cards.

Now, the main types of concession cards available are;

  • The Pension and Concession Card,
  • The Low-Income Health Care Card and the
  • Commonwealth Seniors Health Card.

 

For those of age pension age, some of the available concessions if you hold one of these cards are discounts on your electricity, gas, water, or your rates and discounts on your medical expenses and medication, recreation, and many more.

So, if you’d like to learn more or would like to know if you are eligible for one of these concession cards, please feel free to get in touch with us.

Hi there, I’m James Kennedy, Senior Financial Planner at Forbes Fava Financial Planning. I’m based in the Geelong office, and it’s good to be back in the office after some working from home.

We’re definitely thinking of everyone in Melbourne, Michael and the team who are still under lockdown rules, there’s definitely hope on the horizon, we’re looking forward to getting back to COVID normal, and meeting people in person, again, wanted to thank you for your flexibility bearing with us during this time, as we’ve had to do so many virtual meetings, and phone calls. It’s good that we’ve still been able to do the work we need to do doesn’t quite replace meeting people in person if you ask me.

I did want to spend couple minutes today just chatting through some of the key questions we get from clients as they’re starting to think about retirement for themselves. And they might be 2, 3, 4 years out from actually finishing work but, that’s a great time that they can start to actually plan ahead. Think about how they’re going to structure things, how they’re going to have money coming in the door, when they’re eventually done with their nine to five.

Now, we have broken this into three categories:

The first is the short-term category. What income do you need each month? Now, most clients actually get this wrong, or just not quite right. It’s very uncommon for people to know exactly what they need in retirement because they haven’t lived for retirement before. Now the question there; scotch or sizzle steak, no judgment either way. I mean, I love both scotch or sizzle. But these kinds of decisions that you’ll have in retirement will impact what kind of income you need coming in the door.

Now, we want you to have flexibility to try and work out exactly what it is the new normal for you. Not COVID, normal retirement normal. And it may take a few months for you to actually work that out.

The second bucket is medium term, these are the larger expenses that will come up maybe not every year but, every so often. I’ve got that ‘does the car need replacing’? Let’s be honest, probably yes, probably a couple of times, people are living longer in retirement, you may be retired for 20, 30, 40 years. That’s a couple of cars that need to be replaced during that time. Yeah, that big trip. I know this is a touchy subject, right? We love traveling here in Australia. And Victorians have been pretty constraint constrained this last couple of years, that will change soon, you’ll be able to do those things that you’ve wanted to do at some point in the future. Now those things are usually a bit more expensive if we’re talking about larger travel plans. And it’s something that needs to be factored into your planning when you’re thinking about what kind of money you need and when you need it.

The third bucket there, this is the long-term stuff. And this question is the most commonly asked question we get here at Forbes. Will my money Outlast me? Really valid question. And now we can do some things in the office here to project out longevity of money, all those sorts of things to try and answer these questions. It’s not an exact science, but it is a good framing to you to make the decisions that you need to make now. But one of those questions that I’ve just put there is what legacy do I want to leave for my family? This is a very personal question, which people have different priorities and different answers to some people place a huge emphasis on this. And some people choose to say, ‘I’m going to spend my money for my retirement’ and then it’s absolutely okay, if that’s your view. But having an understanding of that is very important when it comes to how you structure your investments when you get to this retirement phase.

Now we’ve got the three buckets there. We have three very different strategies for how you invest money to meet these three different purposes. And it is a little bit more complex than when you were working and accumulating funds. But this kind of strategy is a proven strategy that works to help you fund what you need to fund when you want to fund it. Without taking excess risk with your money. We want to try and bring the risk down as much as possible. But I won’t go on any further in there.

But thanks for listening to the video. We’re going to have a few more videos coming out over the coming months from the team so you’ll be able to meet everyone. But if you’ve got any questions from this, feel free to send an email or phone call. We’re happy to chat through it any further.

Have a great day.

Hello, everyone, it’s Michael Fava, one of the senior advisors here at Forbes Fava Financial Planning. We hope this finds you all well.

Today we wanted to speak just for a few minutes regarding the strength of growth markets, both shares and property here in Australia and certainly overseas.

I just want to backtrack 15 to 18 months in March of last year, we saw the share markets, which were pretty much at high levels took a sharp fall in March of last year, in four weeks, the average index here and in the United States dropped 39%. When I say index, I’m talking about things like the all-ordinaries index, the Dow Jones index, all of these terms you hear on the seven Nightly News. Normally just before Jane comes on and talks about the weather.

Now, panic, well, it’s not easy to go through that. It’s a difficult time for all, adding to all of this the health issues that we’re getting across people’s minds what’s going on with this pandemic. But what we’ve seen as we’ve always seen during these volatile occurrences is that anyone who panics and moves to safe haven fixed right type investments of means probably would have done themselves a pretty serious kind of disservice. Because the markets recovered.

By October, we’ve seen record highs November, Christmas week, the American shame market hit a record high close twice since January, the US share market has had over 30 record high closes and in Australia, we are also hovering around record high levels.

Now clients are asking me, you know, this is fantastic. What’s going on? How is this happening during a pandemic? Now let’s talk about the experts. Our own government’s Treasury Department last year was predicting doom and gloom unemployment would hit 13%. In their opinion, guys, unemployment didn’t hit 13%. It didn’t even get the 10%. We got to 7% there was a lot of stimulus and support. Yes, unemployment has now fallen to below what it was before the pandemic.

Let’s talk about property. I’ve been hearing for eight years from the best experts in the country that property is going to crash and I’m going to talk about a plateau or a 5% decline. I’m talking to 30 to 40%. Crash property hasn’t crashed in the last eight years property’s gone from strength to strength in most capital cities around the country.

So look, yes, we listen to experts, we get so many different expert opinions on any one topic. On any given day. We take it all in, we digest it, but we go on and provide our clients with sound long term advice.

Now, what am I finding through my client reviews? My clients are cashed up. Those who normally keep 20- 30 grand in the bank. Guess what, they got a lot more because nobody’s gone on holiday. The European cruises haven’t happened. The Trafalgar tours around Europe haven’t happened. Taking the kids to Disneyland. It hasn’t happened. The market knows this. clients that were going to buy a new car in the last 18 months not many of them have because they’ve said “Michael what for we’re in lockdown? We may as well wait”.

A new model will come around. supply has been in question. The market knows this. People are getting frustrated. People are getting more and more annoyed with lockdowns people are going to get out and spend money there will be a very, very high demand for goods and services. And businesses will be very, very busy. I believe over the next few years keeping up with the demand.

We’ve had no immigration in Australia pretty much for a month now we’ve got a pretty tight immigration regime. We need to get back on track get these people in. They get to buy houses, build houses, buy cars, they need furniture, electronics, fridges, air conditioners, and so on. The market knows this now, this is my opinion as to why growth markets are still so high at record highs. In fact, not withstanding the global pandemic.

The alternative interest rates are so low. There are some places around the world in Europe like Denmark, where they’re paying people interest to borrow money. Balanced funds have retained excellent averages. Over the last 10 years most balanced funds are returning anywhere from six and a half eight up to 9% averages on some.

Over the last 10 years. The last 12 months balanced funds have delivered the second-best performance that we’ve seen in the last 20 years and that’s during a global pandemic.

Our message to our clients is clear. We invest your money we design financial plans with your long term and short-term goals and objectives in mind. You stick to the course we maximize your diversification using everything in our power. You are well placed not only to enjoy these current high levels, but to cope with those short-term periods of fluctuation and volatility that undoubtedly will come around.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this feel free to contact our office anytime.

Have a great day.

Hello to all our valued clients and business partners. I just wanted to send out a quick message today to all of you as the majority of our clients are within Victoria. And without stating the obvious, some are doing it a little tougher than others.

We just wanted to remind you all that we are all human. And if you require anything, please pick up the phone.

Just to give you an update on our office, staff are working from home, they’re still working at full capacity. And like all of us are abiding by the rules and regulations that have been thrust upon us in this current pandemic. We just wanted to let you know that we’ve almost achieved 100% vaccination right within our own staff. And once the team is able to see you, when we get a lockdown, you’ll all be able to feel safe in the knowledge that we’re all vaccinated. And we are very much looking forward to all of you coming into the office sooner rather than later.

Unfortunately, we’ve not had the full opportunity yet to introduce Michael Fava, and also for all of us to get to know Mike’s clients personally a little better.

Just to give you an idea, though, on some of the things that we’ve been doing to try and keep it as normal as possible in the office, we have been trying to maintain our normal rituals, routines, keeping our minds busy, we’ve been maintaining the exercise, maintaining our health through healthy eating, and drinking. And one of the good things or the big things that I’ve been trying to do personally is not reading or following any social media professors, we don’t have any scientific or medical backgrounds or qualifications.

We understand that the social part is a significant impact on a lot of people. Some of the things that we’re doing in the office that we’re checking in each day at 9.10am and 1.10pm, and we call it our daily huddle. We’re just doing this to keep in contact, keep up to date. And to keep everybody motivated. And moving forward. We have introduced some stupid jokes. And we’re also trying to keep each other engaged as possible in a virtual environment. We also introduced a little activity, where we updated our backgrounds in our virtual environment and spoke about why that was important to us, and why it was significant.

We hope, trust and pray that you’re all safe and well. We’re looking forward to seeing all of you personally very soon. We are here to serve you after all.

If there’s anything you feel we could increase, implement or even provide to you that would be a value, please do not hesitate to let us know.

If you’re looking for a little bit of mental gymnastics, potentially for your children or even your grandchildren. What I am going to do is just go through a couple of little riddles that perhaps you might be able to go through with either your children or your grandchildren.

The first one is what has to be broken before you can use it?

An egg.

The more you take, the more you leave behind. What am I?

Footsteps.

If two’s company and three’s a crowd, what are four and five?

Nine

As I’m doing this video, it is Father’s Day on Sunday. So Happy Father’s Day to all the fathers, their grandfathers and significant men in their children’s lives. So, just to celebrate Father’s Day this Sunday, I thought I might just leave you with a great dad joke.

Did you hear the joke about the roof?

Nevermind, it’s over your head anyway.

Thanks, guys. Stay safe everyone. We’re really looking forward to seeing you soon. Take care and reach out if you need anything.

Bye for now.