I like buying investment properties at the bottom end of the market. A step up from slum-lording, but still basic, no-frills housing. Easy to rent, cheap to maintain. Nothing glamourous. Nella and I lived in one of these when we first got married. I wouldn’t buy something I couldn’t live in. Note that’s “couldn’t” not…

In 1992 or so I read The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu M. Goldratt. It changed my business life and allowed Robert Kiyosaki to influence my world-view on work and investing. The Goal is written as a novel. The concepts emerge in the story. One point Goldratt made — inventory is not…

There are interesting recent developments in the deployment of Wi-Fi hotspots in public areas in Australia and the US (and probably elsewhere but I haven’t got any references). Wi-Fi is wireless Local Area Networking — basically wireless Internet on laptops. In Too Cheap to Meter, over at VentureBlog, Naval Ravikant notes it’s more of a…

I finally got to bed this morning at 2:30am. I figured if I was going to set up a RSS feed I might as well update the software that I run the blog on. There were a few glitches, hopefully none of you were online at that time to see them. Let me know if…

I was an early adopter of email. As spam becomes an immense problem, I am looking at technology solutions to keep the signal-to-noise ratio acceptable. One way has been through clever spam filtering. The other is to explore RSS. If any of you are using the RSS feed from this site, please let me know…

MicheleB challenged me to discuss the meaning of life among other things. I look forward to the smugness of owning half a suburb. Nella and I were talking about buying nice things while the kids are still young enough to enjoy them. “How about a house”, I said. So we went to check out some…

MicheleB made the following comment to an earlier post on Post Navra Rush. OK then, here’s a question I’d really like your considered opinion on. How does one, how do YOU, balance lifestyle with an ongoing acquisition program? When you’re young, it’s easy to put the comfy choices on hold when you have a PLAN.…

There’s a bunfight brewing over at the Somersoft forum about the Navra Cashbond?. If you want to wade through some tedious numbers, knock yourself out. There are even some interesting worked examples by Steve and others. Let’s ignore the emotion of the debate. As an aside, there are people who love nothing more than debates.…

Avoid jargon as you learn and practice asking your professionals for the outcome you desire. It will make you a fortune. Instead of asking your accountant to form a discretionary trust, ask instead for a structure that will protect your assets, offer some income, estate and tax planning benefits. Better yet say “I want to…

I was reminded of an interesting phenomena this weekend at Steve Navra’s course. Many people on hearing a speaker want to deal with this subject matter expert, a.k.a “the boss”. You don’t need to deal exclusively with the boss. If the boss is any good they have put great staff in place, who are better…