Empower Blog Investment Planning

Today: Weekend Property — The Bank of Mum and Dad

This time on Channel 9's Today Show, Bryce and Ben as co hosts of The Property Couch, talk to Peter Stefanovic and Alison Langdon about the "bank of mum and dad". So... what is this investment strategy and how does it help first home buyers get on the ladder? And no, it doesn't necessarily mean parents dip into retirement savings... Peter Stefa...

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In The Hot Seat with Ben Kingsley

In Money Magazine's May issue, Ben features in The Hot Seat! Check out his answers to the ten questions ...   What was your first job? My first real paying job was actually window cleaning. A guy across the road from where I grew up ran a domestic window-cleaning business. So when I wasn’t studying for my associate diploma in busine...

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Why is it So Hard to Build a Passive Income?

Today I want to talk about one of the reasons why I think it's a little bit difficult to build a passive income for a lot of people. For me, it's about setting the goal in the first place. I've got a virtual mentor, Michael Hyatt, who talks about how to set goals. He talks about goals being in either the comfort zone, the discomfort zone, or th...

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Revealed: How Much You Need To Retire in ONE SIMPLE FORMULA

What I want to talk about today is the concept of retirement and, more specifically, how much do you need to have in passive income to support the lifestyle you really want in retirement? Because for most people, I wonder if they've thought this through. I've spoken to hundreds and hundreds of people, and they often talk to me about how they want...

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Negative Gearing Still Works

Bryce is Money Magazine’s cover story this October!! Here to explain Why Negative Gearing Still Works, Bryce puts forward a crucial point, and one we frequently come back to: negative gearing is not a strategy; it’s a tax outcome that represents a moment in time. In other words, “Negative gearing is a means to an end, not a permanent way of ...

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Equity: The Power Within

What’s the power within your own home? Equity! As Bryce explains in Money Magazine’s Special Edition issue, using the equity in your existing property allows you to invest without chipping into your own savings and takes the time spent saving for a deposit. Basically, after you release the equity, you can use it to purchase an investment prope...

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Bad Time for Property Investment?

Ben appears again in Money Magazine’s Special Edition issue, this time in a Q&A surrounding some hard questions about the current market climate for property investors. With the spotlight on changes to borrowing, Federal Budget restrictions and depreciation claims, a light shadow looms on certain investors. Is it a bad time for property inves...

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Be a Farmer, Not a Hunter

Bryce appears again in Money Magazine ... this time in their Special Edition issue! In this article, Bryce talks about the importance of being a farmer, not a hunter when it comes to a property investing. The theory behind it is that you need to play the investment game for the long term, planting tree seedlings now so that you will sit, cover...

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Three Forces That Shape An Investor’s Character

If anyone’s interested in building a property portfolio, they usually focus on the mechanics and the doing. The asset selection, the finance and those sorts of critical things. But we need to have a think about the psychological side of it as well—because, quite often, not a lot of people who want to successfully build their portfolio, do it. S...

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Sky Business News – Your Money Your Call (February 2017)

Ben Kingsley is welcomed back on SKY Business News Channel, Your Money Your Call (YMYC). With Margaret Lomas away, Lisa Montgomery steers tonight’s discussion as Ben and Brad Beer talk Property Investment and how to make your investment work for you. Live from the studio, they answer a handful of emails and calls of interest, discussing: What ...

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Sky Business News – Your Money Your Call (December 2016)

For the December 2016  segment of SKY Business News Channel, Your Money Your Call (YMYC), Ben Kingsley joins the Margaret Lomas and Tony Hayek to discuss what's making news in the property market and more. They answered some emails and calls from viewers and some of the topics are: Will the Melbourne property market soften in 2017? Market seg...

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Variables to Consider when Modelling a Property Portfolio

In this advanced "How to..." session, I want to talk to you about all the sophisticated cash flow variables that any good cash flow management and property portfolio planning tool should have. So let's start from the top in terms of cash flow management. Naturally, we need to do our budget, and we need to assume that value of the money will increa...

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Tax Refund: Can You Request It Sooner?

Whenever you are buying an investment property, you should never buy it for tax reasons alone because it really has to be about the fundamentals underlying that particular property that you're buying. But let's be honest, once you've done that, the tax concessions or the tax refund that you get from holding a property is a very strong reason why yo...

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