Welcome

It’s a busy world, and seemingly more complex and difficult to navigate each day…

But is it really so? i don’t think that it is.

That may simply be because i don’t understand enough of what is going on to appreciate every nuance of change that flows around me or it could be because i am insufficiently educated to come to terms with the key principles on display. It could be that i am inexperienced and simply can’t see that this has all happened before.

But i don’t think so.

Allowing for grammatical flaws, such as a preference for starting sentences with “But” or “And”, and a potentially unwarranted degree of arrogance, it is possible that you may find ambling down the Musings pathway with me will help you to see some of the money world’s mechanations in a different light as well.

Or not.

This is the home of Michael’s Musings – an ongoing attempt to sort some of the mountain of Data in the world back into Information that is understandable, digestible and hopefully, coherent. It is based on the idea that the modern world (culturally it may be more correct to say “post-postmodern world”) has become infected with Infobesity. A neat word, that one. Not particularly sure where it is from (your first exercise of the day is to research the author/originator of this sparklingly apt word and write an illuminating 200-word post for us all to digest) but it most appropriately expresses the intimidating mass of data confronting us all in our day-to-day lives.

If you like what you see then you are most welcome to subscribe. We’re not going to stress that you should.

Quite possibly, you are already comfy and satisfied with your own assessment of the world of money and your place in it. You also may question what value you will obtain from parting with money (because eventually, that is what we are going to ask you to do) to be a part of this corner of the virtual world? You may query what levels of service you could expect and the remedies available to you should i fail to live up to those standards? And you would be right to do so. If you are already measuring all of those issues in your mind then i would suggest a diversion to … here, here, here, or even here. Each link will provide you with many of those things, if not all.

This is definitely NOT the place to be if you are keen to measure all of those things. The Musings will ponder the belly-button of the world’s financial goings-on but from an incredibly biased point of view. You see, it is just me and, us.

Me, well i am just an individual and, as Confucius apparently pointed out, you should not look for all qualities in the one individual (most likely misquoted but that is your second assignment).

Us, well we are just a small (read – “boutique” if it brings a warmer glow to your insides) financial planning group based out of offices in East Perth, in Western Australia. For those who are not familiar with the Centre of the Civilised Universe (that’s Perth), our home is a little financial district just outside the CBD of Perth, the world’s most isolated capital city. It may be saying something to refer to an entire city purely in terms of geography… but most visitors tend to find very little else to comment upon. Except maybe to say that it is very clean. And quite possibly because of all that but most likely because of none of that, my preference is to refer to our lovely Perth as the Centre of the Civilised Universe.

Back to us. We attempt to help people to deal with money by being a sounding board for all things financial. That’s not as ridiculously easy as it sounds. No, it takes quite a bit of practice. You see, over the years we have found that the best research, knowledge, experience and understanding can help you put together a plan and work through its implementation even though it is entirely inappropriate for you. So, how did we approach what is clearly a fundamental problem?

Firstly, by admitting that there are limits to our knowledge. In fact, there are substantial limits to any form of knowledge.

We then dropped any pretense that working with us would provide you with the mathematically computed best outcome (we’re not sure anyone could and even if they could, we are not sure we could identify them for you) or that we would provide you with the “perfect” service levels (the bulk of work done in a financial firm is pretty much “ATM” service provision and there are bigger and better organised businesses around that can do that for you).

We start with the basics and go with the premise that being open on biases, and working on a platform of clear personal communication, should be enough to get you through.

Over time, working with more people than a few becomes a bit of an exercise in logistics. How do you share thoughts on the mechanations of the world of money with a group of people when you don’t have the time to ring them all individually or to sit down and chat over a coffee with everyone of them? And there is the issue that (perish the thought) some of those folks may not be interested at that time about that particular thing or even if they are, they simply may not have the time available. And so the somewhat irregular newsletter “Michael’s Musings” was born.

That may provide you with a bit of background on Michael’s Musings. Or it might not.

Either way, thanks for staying with me, and us, as long as you have. Time is precious and yours is appreciated. Until we get this site fully operational and can charge money then i guess ours is too.

As always, comment, corrections or clarification is happily accepted, even if sometimes cheerfully rejected.

We are, after all, as Nietzsche once said “Human, all too Human”.

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