“Third!” I yelled.
My eight-year-old daughter was riding shotgun. She didn’t miss a beat. She leaned over and confidently moved us into third gear. All the while grinning from ear to ear.
And why not?
She’d mastered a skill that evades her automatic-licence-only mother.
(I often yell “third” to Liz, but she doesn’t dare touch the gearstick.)
What a clutch.
My Toyota V8 ute has woolly seat covers, an ashtray, and a custom-fitted and totally-offensive train horn. (The Tesla famously has a fart button that makes passengers laugh. My ute’s horn makes people on the street fart.) Lucky is chained up in the back, wind in her chops, as we roar into third gear.
It’s little wonder my boys are already fighting over who inherits it when I run out of diesel.
Yet at the peak of the oil crisis it was costing me $310 to fill the thing. And with the fuel excise about to snap back I’ve started asking myself:
Is it time to go electric?
My wife recently bought an EV and she loves it. I find it stressful. It’s like she’s driving with me.
Too close to the lines? Ding!
Eyes off the road? Ding!
All it’s missing is, “I wouldn’t have done it that way”.
An ABC article called the Labor government’s EV leasing scheme “an amazing secret deal”. And that’s exactly why it’s blown out tenfold, costing taxpayers $1.4 billion this year alone.
The government says it can save you $5,000 a year.
Sweet tax break!*
*Terms and conditions apply. Including the bit where your EV ends up worth half what you paid for it at the end of the lease.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
But it’s getting worse.
First, because all those amazing secret deals are leased and most will be dumped on the market in three to five years.
Second, because buying an EV is like buying a phone. (Case in point: I tried to trade in my perfectly functional but old iPhone 13 mini recently. The guy offered me a used K-Pop Demon Hunters phone case and $80 cash.)
In other words:
The first owner gets the tax break. The second owner gets the bargain.
Honk!
Tread Your Own Path!
Your Questions & Answers
You’re a Loser, Barefoot
The Broken-Hearted Mum
Leave Your Husband. Now. Don’t Delay.
You’re a Loser, Barefoot
Scott
Calling SpaceX “the most overvalued piece of junk going around” shows that you have no idea about AI and the massive disruptions it’s about to make (including to the financial advice industry). The stock is up 50% in the last five days. FIFTY PERCENT! I bet you wish your boring index fund had more than a 0.06% stake? The world’s richest woman, Gina Rinehart, is one of its biggest backers. Maybe you should listen to her, you loser.
Dean
Hi Dean,
You’re right.
Making 50% in two days is seriously get-rich-quick stuff.
You’re also wrong.
I’m perfectly comfortable with my boring 0.06% stake through my index funds.
Why?
Because I’ve been investing for three decades, and I don’t think in two-day time frames.
I think in decades.
You’re right, I’m clearly not in Gina Rinehart’s league. But then again, my Daddy didn’t leave me a chunk of the Pilbara.
My index funds give me a slice of the earnings from thousands of businesses around the world. A slow and steady climb that compounds over time, not overnight.
And I’ve made peace with the fact that there will always be someone getting richer quicker than me:
That stops me from trading with my ego.
Now, on AI. I think AI is going to change the world. As did the internet. The internet transformed how we work, communicate, shop, travel and date. Yet most of the dot-com darlings that promised to change the world ended up broke.
A great technology doesn’t automatically make a great investment.
The current excitement around AI reminds me of every investing mania I’ve lived through. People stop talking about earnings. They stop talking about what a business is worth. And they start talking about the share price. Or, in your case, how much it went up in the last five days.
Maybe SpaceX will prove me wrong.
Yet if there’s one thing I’ve learned after thirty years of investing, it’s this:
When everybody is talking about how much money they’re making, it’s usually time for me to get interested in something boring.
Boring wins.
The Broken-Hearted Mum
Hey Scott,
I am a broken-hearted mum right now. After a wonderful Mother’s Day weekend with both my sons, my older son has now ghosted me. No warning. No explanation. When I finally got a response, he told me he’d started seeing a psychologist who had helped him uncover suppressed emotions from his childhood. He says he can’t talk to me without screaming. I am at a loss. He had a good childhood. There was no abuse (okay, I yelled when chores didn’t get done and he got smacked when naughty) and no neglect (our food bill halved when he left home). Yet somehow I seem to have been cast as the villain of his story. My question is this: my son is 24, a sometimes full-time uni student, and works casually pushing trolleys at a supermarket. We still have him on our health insurance, pay for his NRMA roadside assist and even cover his Netflix. Is it time to cut the cord?
Sad Mum
Hello Sad Mum,
Before I answer this, a disclaimer: I am not a family therapist. My kids are still young enough that I can settle most disputes by threatening to turn off the Octonauts.
However, you didn’t ask me why your son is angry. You asked whether to cut him off financially.
And I can answer that one:
Hell, no.
If you cancel the insurance and Netflix today, he won’t suddenly remember that you loved him. He’ll see it as punishment, and you’ll have given him one more reason to stay away.
You’re heartbroken. You love your son. You want him back in your life. Money has got nothing to do with it. Parents and kids often remember the same childhood very differently. Sometimes one of them is wrong. Sometimes neither of them is.
What matters right now is keeping the door open long enough to see your son walk back through it.
Leave Your Husband. Now. Don’t Delay.
Scott,
Reading your question last week about Wendy hit home (“I live with a man I no longer love, but stay because of the money I’d have to pay him out”). I did the same thing for over 15 years. Finally, I left. Somewhere along the way I had become the money-bags and a parent to an infant adult rather than a partner. The injustice is the hardest part. Everything you worked for, sacrificed and provided will be split with someone who doesn’t care. It feels completely unfair. And it is. But here’s what I know from the other side.
I was Wendy two years ago. In denial about the settlement figure. Worried I wouldn’t get through it. So I delayed. It cost me nearly $100,000 more. Bloody property prices! Wendy, don’t delay. The settlement only gets worse the longer you wait. The house gets paid down, your super increases, the asset pool grows. They’ll still get their 50%, just of a bigger number. Take the leap. It will be hard. But you can do hard. You’ve been doing it every day of your relationship. You just didn’t see it at the time.
Hardworking Woman
Amen to that.
See you all next week.
Scott.