Nest Eggs

With Easter fast approaching, the use of the imagery of eggs isn’t far away from our minds (and our lips too apparently, given the amount of pre-Easter egg eating I have done this week. Note to Self: do not purchase Easter eggs too far out from the big day and leave in pantry for easy access).

An enduring symbol of new life, eggs also pop up regularly in clichés and sayings we use in everyday life - “Don’t put your eggs all in one basket”, “don’t count your chickens before they hatch” and the very handy “I’m not teaching you how to suck eggs but…” are three that spring to mind.

When we talk about our own “nest eggs” we are referring to the money we squirrel away over our lifetimes – into our homes through paying off our mortgages, into our super funds to save for retirement, and what we tuck away for our children’s education and family holidays. We nurture our precious eggs by putting them in the right environment (an appropriate mix of investments that fit our risk profile and time horizon), giving them time to grow (through the power of compound interest and by investing in growth assets like property and shares) and, when the time is right, to watch our eggs hatch into new life when we withdraw our hard earned money to fund us in our retirement years.

This is what our nest eggs are really about. Not just dollars and cents saved for the sake of it so we can stare at the balance on our super statements. Our nest eggs represent the chance for us to live our lives the way we want to, to realize some of our long held dreams, to take some time for ourselves. Those dreams don’t have to be as grandiose as taking your own long deferred Gap Year and travel the globe – a personal favourite of mine. They can be as simple as whiling away hours in your long neglected garden or helping babysit grandchildren while your own children work hard to tend their own fledgling savings plans. Whatever it is, keep those pictures in your mind along with the amounts on your bank statements.

It can be frustrating when our savings don’t grow as fast as we like. We wish and hope for a quick fix – the proverbial goose that lays a golden egg. We recall Aesop’s fable where greed drives a man and wife to kill their golden egg laying goose in the hope of getting their hands on all the golden eggs at once. Of course, all they end up with is a dead goose that can’t lay any more eggs at all! It’s an old tale but one which reminds us of the dangers of greed. Time and patience is what’s required when it comes to growing our money.

So, I hope you have enjoyed my egg analogy and discourse as you head into the short break ahead. Nicky and I want to wish all of our readers a safe and eggcellent Easter holiday for 2011!!

The Benefits and Backlash of Bingeing

I have just driven home from dropping my sister to the airport after a very enjoyable 6-day visit. As is customary when any of my family visit, we embarked upon a festival of indulgence in food and alcohol which included outings to such diverse establishments as Rockpool and Max Brenner Chocolate Café. Enjoyed every moment of it but now have that feeling of bloating that accompanies having too much of a good thing.

As I was driving home I was pondering the similarities in the feelings I have whenever I eat and drink to excess to those I have when I go on a shopping frenzy and overspend. I can easily compare the two, as I returned recently from an overseas holiday that included a 2-day stopover in Los Angeles where, with the dollar at parity or above, I managed to punish my credit card so hard I developed RSI in my fingers from entering my PIN number so often. It wasn’t pretty and I actually received comments on the size of my suitcase at baggage claim from fellow travellers. Tres embarrassing!

Yes, at wisewomen our motto is spend, save, prosper which is all about balance. However, I am only human (and female human at that) and with makeup at half the price you pay in Australia and my never ending quest to find the perfect pair of designer jeans top of my mind, balance went straight out the window.

I have honed the similarities down to 3 main areas. See if any of these ring true for you.

• The rush of pleasure at eating the most divine date tart made by staff at Rockpool is pretty much akin to the flush of excitement and satisfaction that overcomes me as I seize the handle of the shopping bag that contains my tissue wrapped purchase.
• The guilt and recriminations that follow said consumption (be it food or material goods) are also hauntingly similar. Did I really need to have that second beautifully made cocktail before dinner? Is it necessary for me to have 3 of the same cashmere v-necked jumpers in different colours? And, more frightening, once it’s eaten/purchased I can barely remember what I ate/bought and why I so desperately wanted/needed it. Madness!
• And finally, the effort required to get back to “balance” is always way harder that the ease with which the overindulgence occurred. I can put 2kgs on in a few days of bingeing but the amount of “eat less, move more” I need to follow to eliminate the same 2kgs is…..well, just clearly not equal in my mind. Same with the subsequent credit card bill after my recent trip. So easy to rack it up, so damn hard to get down to nil. I’ll be “paying” for my gluttony for the next couple of months in so many more ways than just in dollars and cents.

So with the awareness and insight gleaned from my narrative I am hoping to learn to moderate my behaviour such that the next visit from siblings or next overseas jaunt does not end up with quite the levels of self-loathing that has followed these highly pleasurable special moments. There is a way to enjoy the good times without, as we say in Australia so eloquently, “going on a bender”. I am also hoping that this blog might stay in your mind next time you find yourself on holiday in LA with a wallet full of plastic!!

The Emperor’s New Clothes

So Mark McInnes has got himself a new gig. He’s recently been appointed CEO of Premier Investments, owner of the Just Group and brands such as Just Jeans, Peter Alexander, Portmans and Smiggle. Not everyone’s happy about it, which you may imagine, as the dust has hardly had time to settle after that sexual harassment case at David Jones forced McInnes’s departure from the giant retailer.

Do you think he’s had enough time in the sinbin? Not to suggest that he should never be able to work again, just that it gives an interesting message that it’s ok to behave in a certain fashion, with not much consequence – a few months later another multimillion package will be yours. You’d think the directors would give due process contemplating the impact of hiring someone with a less than squeaky clean reputation with women, into a company whose clientele, again, comprises mainly women. Perhaps they did, but decided it was worth the risk.

At the minimum, why would they not have held back for an appropriate period, if only as a gesture of respect to the thousands of female staff and customers of the Premier group? Workforces held in captive to predatory bosses, where performance is not judged on merit alone, are not the healthy or well functioning environments that directors should be striving for.

You have to wonder if the decision to hire McInnes would have been any different if the Premier board were not exclusively male? The absence of women from the board of a company such as Premier is an embarrassment.

Running a successful company, particularly those with a high public profile, should not only be about the shareholders and the bottom line. A company has responsibilities to stakeholders more far reaching than its shareholders and the endless quest for share performance that seems to motivate the actions of many of today’s boards. Showing leadership in matters of principle, whether it be gender equality or the environment, is crucial in creating sustainable and enlightened companies of the future, a future that we will be proud to pass on to our children and grandchildren. 

It takes courage to engender change, to step out of our comfort zone. To cry out that the Emperor is in fact naked. But who do you think is man enough to take that risk? What a shame.