It’s become my habit at this time of year to send a big community shout out to all those people and groups who are doing their darndest for Jamestown and the Mid-Northern region. For Rosalie and me, community service is not only important, it gives us a great sense of purpose that has some fairly…
Geez Louise the weather events at the end of last year made it tough. Apart from indulging in a few choice expletives to vent, there was nothing more anyone could do other than put it behind them and move on. This involves clarifying priorities and planning to make more of what you’ve got for maximising…
Over the past 40 years, I’ve been working with rural families as they pass their farming business from one generation to the next. While there have always been some challenges, these days succession has become considerably more complicated mainly due to changing family dynamics, new technology, advancing farming practices and the need for what can…
For farming families, managing debt and regularly reviewing your lender’s terms in context of your needs now and in the coming years, is an administrative task no one is in a hurry to tackle. Debt can work for or against you. To avoid the latter, it’s important to plan and prepare your brief for lenders…
I hate to be the one to say it, but we’re all getting older! I’ve been preparing financially (and emotionally) for my own elder years which includes aged care for quite some time, and I’ve been helping the older folks in my life as well. If you are an adult child, niece or nephew looking…
You may recall, I recently wrote about the importance of community service and the role businesses have in supporting important events that make life better for all of us. Businesses including farm businesses, are the life blood of rural communities and it’s important for us to support them, and for business owners to take good…
Community service is important – full stop. While the whole point of community service is to create positive outcomes for the greater good, in my experience what you put in is returned ten-fold in terms of personal satisfaction and lifelong friendships. This article is a shout out to those who proactively contribute to Jamestown and…
Farming families have circumstances that are different from those of non-farmers. Understanding and meeting these requirements is the basis of preparing a personal insurance approach that’s right for you. In this article we consider insurance in the context of farming circumstances which includes how insurance can keep your farm working when you can’t, and how…
Grain production planning and understanding business profitability can be stressful, and poor decisions can have significant impacts for many years to come. Rather than relying on an ‘eyes to the skies’ approach for predicting production outcomes, there are practical steps and tools you can use for making more informed decisions. Here we explore production planning…
There may be times when you add up all of your debt or look at your credit card statement and worry about how to manage your debt position. After such a long period of being in a low interest rate environment, the recent interest rate increases announced by the Reserve Bank of Australia may have…