Building a bridge to recovery In what has been billed as one of the most important budgets since the Great Depression, and the first since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic dragged Australia into its first recession in almost 30 years, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the next phase of the journey is to secure Australia's future. As expected, the focus is on job creation, tax cuts and targeted spending to get the economy over the COVID-19 hump. The Treasurer said this Budget, which...

The JobKeeper subsidy has progressed beyond the rush for eligibility and entered its second phase: compliance. Late last month, the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) released guidance highlighting where the regulator will focus its compliance resources. The JobKeeper estimates error Hindsight is a dangerous lens as Treasury discovered last month announcing that the number of employees expected to be covered by the JobKeeper scheme was overstated in the original announcement by approximat...

The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in dramatic and unprecedented changes for many families and households, impacting social lives, workplaces and finances. As financial advisers, we are responding to the unfolding crisis to assist our clients to manage the financial repercussions. From looking at how the Government's measures will impact your finances, to developing a plan to assist you to be positioned in the best possible way to make it through this period, we can provide suppo...

Sticking to investment principles The reporting on COVID-19 has caused panic and fear across global markets and economies. The topic is now a permanent fixture across all aspects of media. From a financial perspective, there are two possible paths: 1. A recession across multiple countries driven by a partial shutdown of industry and the workforce; or 2. An economic recovery driven by a two-pronged fiscal and monetary stimulus from governments, coupled with a realisation that the vir...

Australians delight in their nation punching above its weight. But there's little to celebrate in being the world's silver medallists;  we're a nose behind the Swiss when it comes to household debt. i With the present-buying, holiday-taking season nigh, millions of Australians could soon find themselves sinking even deeper in the red. Older readers may remember a time when credit was hard to come by and people were cautious about going into debt. But those days are long g...