Magnificent Life Team
Insights
December 12, 2022
Our emotions tell OUR truth, not THE truth
Did you know that listening to classical music has been proven to lower blood pressure, make us more emotionally available, help us sleep better and relieve anxiety? Ironically, our emotions…
December 12, 2022
Political influence and the markets
Religion, politics and money are all connected – and probably always have been! This is because they’re all currency for influence, power and status. These three topics can become highly…
December 5, 2022
Can the Enneagram help you with your money habits?
If you’re not familiar, the Enneagram is a personality typing tool that focuses on why we do what we do. It is a model of nine interconnected personality types –…
December 5, 2022
Holiday-proof your financial plan
Holidays should be a time of restoration and relaxation. But for savvy investors, who are seldom able to switch off or turn down the volume on their analytical brain activity,…
November 28, 2022
Can you control it?
We permanently activate our fight-flight-freeze-appease response when constantly performing at our peak. This acute stress response activates our sympathetic nervous system and keeps us unhealthy or from experiencing deeper joy…
November 21, 2022
When the conversation goes south…
Despite our best-laid plans and most honorable intentions, conversations about money can go south quickly! There’s never going to be a perfect time to talk about money dreads or financial…
November 21, 2022
Helping your parents with their financial independence
In the previous blog, we looked at how we can help our children with their retirement, or financial independence, as many in our profession are starting to frame it. But…
November 14, 2022
Helping your kids with their financial independence
We spend most of our time having conversations with people who are 40+ about saving for retirement. However, the language and expectations are slowly starting to shift in a powerful…
November 7, 2022
How to talk about money
“I love talking about money with my family!” said no one ever. Most of us will agree that there is more to life than money, but regardless, it’s very important…
November 7, 2022
Are old investment truths still relevant?
In a recent podcast on the Allan Gray Podcast with Dan Brocklemank, head of Orbis UK, he reflected on how humans are NOT designed to be good investors. Our natural…
October 31, 2022
Life after work
We spend months or years preparing for many significant life events. The first for many of us was the build-up to going to ‘big school’. Our three-, four- and five-year-old…
October 24, 2022
Living to 100…
So many things have changed in the last four decades, and yet so much has stayed the same. Financial planning has become an entire profession and is no longer just…
October 17, 2022
Why do we become people pleasers?
We all have reasons for doing things. It might be because we’re sticklers for following rules, or perhaps we avoid difficult situations and emotions by constantly focusing on the positives.…
October 17, 2022
The hidden costs of credit
As 22seven recently published on medium.com, “Always think twice before you buy something on credit or take out a loan.” Here’s the thing to remember with credit – it’s just…
October 10, 2022
Pop that balloon… or let it go
A balloon payment (also called a residual value) is quite simply an amount of money that is still due after you’ve finished paying your monthly instalments. The goal of structuring…
October 3, 2022
Visualization and stress
Not all stress is bad. But, if left unmanaged and unchecked, stress can become quite unhealthy for us. We all know many causes of stress, but we don’t always slow…
September 26, 2022
Seeing the light.
There are many reasons for our increased stress levels – the use of technology and how it has changed our communication with each other and the world around us is…
September 19, 2022
Inflation & Interest Rates
Typically, inflation and interest rates are in an “inverse” relationship: When rates are low, inflation tends to rise. And when rates are high, inflation tends to fall. Moneyweb recently wrote…
September 12, 2022
Recognize. Interrupt. Change.
“We cannot change what we are not aware of, and once we are aware, we cannot help but change.” – Sheryl Sandberg The foundation of most of our ongoing frustrations…
September 12, 2022
Rewriting retirement rules of thumb
At the end of any retirement planning conversation, we should always end with how our plan is unique to our own situations. But at the beginning, during the exploratory stage,…
September 5, 2022
Finding the healthy positive
Everything we know, believe, and feel is based on our internal thoughts. Positive thinking gives us extraordinary power over our thinking and ourselves (Strycharczyk & Clough, 2015). Some people are…
September 5, 2022
Ready and Willing
Here’s the thing about financial planning: we don’t plan out of fear; we plan so that we can extend our peace of mind. This is why wills form such a…
August 29, 2022
Messy, not perfect
It’s hard not to become fixated on getting things perfect. It may not be in all areas of our lives, but for almost all of us, we have skills, relationships…
August 22, 2022
Cruise through a cost-of-living crisis
No one likes to plan for a time when we might not have enough money to make ends meet. Often, when we plan or make financial decisions, we assume that…