The Australian’s Money Puzzle podcast going twice weekly

If you have a question, then our new twice-weekly podcast will have the answers.

Podcasts, in common with newspaper stories, open a window into a wider world for the active investor and next week in The Australian, our long running money podcast is getting a makeover.

The show will now go out twice a week with a new name – The Money Puzzle.

If you have never listened to a podcast it’s very similar to a radio show except that you can choose the time you want to hear it. What’s more, you don’t have to listen to anything you’re not looking for such as the traffic flows downtown, weather alerts in places you’ve never been to.

Best of all though is that investment podcasts are small enough for you to get involved – you can ask a question and there’s a very strong chance it will be answered.

Or you can hear someone you are interested in articulate more widely on their patch of expertise. It might be a financial adviser, a property analyst, a mortgage broker or a crypto guru.

Listening back to our podcast over recent weeks there has been top advisers like Will Hamilton, Doug Turek and James Gerrard, economists such as Amy Auster, super specialists such as Meg Heffron, impact investing leader Michael Traill, teal tax warrior Dr Monique Ryan – and each with something to offer for the active investor.

Over the past two years it’s become pretty clear that the outstanding area of interest for listeners is the property market. That’s property in all its guises: Buying a home, purchasing an investment property, financing multiple property investments or finding housing grants.

So, the plan is to respond to that demand. The “everything about money show” The Money Puzzle, will be released every Thursday afternoon and the new Money Puzzle Property Podcast will come out every Tuesday afternoon.

Who’s been listening so far? Investors of every age from everywhere; we are getting more than 20,000 individual downloads per show these days which is a substantial volume when you multiply that over a year.

Back in 2021 I did a short feature on the most common questions investors asked on what has been The Money Cafe.

Some questions come round more than once. But then others have gone by the wayside or have now been fully answered by the passage of time.

Here‘s a couple from 2021: “Is there inflation or not?” Yep, in fact we now know it went from a standing start back then to more than 6 per cent today.

“What’s the next Tesla?” The answer two years later is there is no next Tesla and Elon Musk’s Tesla is unique, take it or leave it.

So what are the most common questions this year?

SHOULD I pay off my mortgage or put the money in super?

The answer here has changed because, believe it or not, when super funds were bringing in 10 per cent-plus a year and your mortgage was 2 per cent it was that rare period when often super won the competition. In 2023 we are back to normal, so pay off the mortgage.

WHAT are the new changes to super and will there be more?

The big concern is not so much that the government has put in a $3m threshold on super before much higher taxes kick in, but the nature of the new tax. Pretty soon, a 15 per cent tax on “unrealised gains” will be forced on super investors at the top end. If this form of taxing money – which has been made on paper but is not in your pocket – gets established in super, it could be introduced more often across the system. It’s going to be a big debate.

WHAT on earth is happening at (fill in stock or fund name)?

This is the type of question that takes the most work to answer and perhaps offers the best value for money (although the podcast is free). Investors and clients can only get so far on a company helpline but we can call through as The Australian and we often get a very different response.

HOW do I go about buying a property?

Maybe there was a time when you did not need to know that much to buy your first home or first investment property. Those days are gone. All the same, you don’t have to know about shares or economics to start investing here. It’s a world within a world and that’s why it has led to its own weekly show.

WHAT difference does inflation make to my investment plans?

Nobody worried about inflation two years ago and now, suddenly, it makes a difference to your HECS repayments, to the spending power of your pension, to the nature of the shares you should buy. For investors, it’s the central concern of our time.

I’M just starting out and I want to get it right over the course of my working life – what do I do?

A younger investor is in a position to take different risks than investors who might be decades older. Variations of this question are going to keep hitting the inbox in the months ahead. What’s the answer? Yes, younger investors can take more risks and we’ll explain the calculated moves that will pay off in the long term.

HOW do I invest for my kids?

This question is perennial. Sometimes it’s long term, sometimes it’s about paying a certain amount over a certain period – school fees. But always it’s a question of getting the investment structure right as one size does not fit all.

The Money Puzzle podcast will be launched on Tuesday May 23. The show will be presented twice a week by Wealth Editor James Kirby. Each Tuesday’s show focuses on all things property, each Thursday’s show focuses on everything to do with money.
As they say, the lines are open: Questions welcome to themoneypuzzle@theaustralian.
com.au