I will admit it – I’m not really very good at dressing myself (by that I mean matching my outfit, not the actual act of putting clothes on, I’m not some serial nudist). I have a few clothes that I bought as a set and I know that some jeans go with some shirts, but if left to my own devices I will inevitably be told “You can’t wear that jumper!” before my wife Claudia lets me leave the house. It doesn’t really matter if I don’t look like a rock star, ‘cause Claudia doesn’t need to be proud of me when we go to the shops. However, how our daughter looks is another thing altogether.

Almost all of the clothes that we have for our little chicken were not purchased in sets. We were given quite a few and we bought three bagfuls of clothing second hand from a woman who was getting rid of her daughter’s baby clothes. The bags were $15 each and lasted the best part of chicken’s first year. There was a great variety of stuff in there and none of it was dodgy. The only problem was that it wasn’t numbered.

All of the clothing had the sizes clearly marked but it didn’t have a numbering system to help me. You know, an easy to read, easy to understand, foolproof way of making sure that our daughter could be clothed with bodysuit number 1, top number 1 and pants number 1.

Yeah, I know, Pumpkin Patch doesn’t follow Nick’s Numbering System either (although, given the cost of their clothes, they bloodywell should!) but it is a bit more obvious when you purchase everything as a set that it all matches. Even to a man.

When it comes to dressing our chicken I will always fall back on my disability as the reason for not getting it right. I was born with a genetic abnormality which means I can’t properly match clothing, and no, I’m not talking about my Y gene.

You see, I’m colourblind. Not completely colourblind, not like black and white and shades of grey colourblind, but I confuse some colours. For years I thought my old jacket (which Claudia eventually forbid me to wear outside the house unless we were escaping a fire in winter) was bottle green and that Claudia was lying about its shade. Then one day at work I looked at two colleagues wearing green and, referring to my jacket, said “Hey, we’re in the green club!” To which one of them replied “Well we are, but you’re wearing grey.”

So until we start regularly shopping at an expensive children’s clothing store (which, let’s face it, ain’t gonna happen anytime soon) Claudia will have to be content with placing out the clothing I am to dress chicken in the night before.

Or maybe my wife could just accept that even if our daughter’s clothing doesn’t all match itself perfectly, at least it will be pretty obvious that the guy who is dressed just as mismatched walking next to our little chicken is her proud, daggy dad.

It’s new financial year’s eve and there are plenty of reasons to pop the champagne at midnight. A bunch of changes that take place as of tomorrow means good news for consumers.

Anyone who holds a credit card or who applies to get a new one will be better protected by changes to credit laws. For holders of existing cards, credit card providers will no longer be able to send you offers to automatically increase your credit card limit (unless you have already given them the thumbs up to send them to you). You will start to see changes to your monthly statements too, including information to show how long it would take to pay off your balance if you only make the minimum payment (I guarantee this will shock the hell out of you), and for holders of cards with an interest free period, info explaining how your interest free period works.

People applying for a new credit card have the added protection of choosing their credit limit rather than just having to accept the one the lender sets. Fees for going over this limit will be banned on new cards and they’ll now have to tell you when you have hit your limit. And if you have a balance attracting different interest rates (highest rate for cash withdrawals, lower rate for purchases and possibly a zero rate for balance transfers) the new laws will mean that your repayments will go towards paying off the highest interest rate components first. Makes total sense for consumers but I reckon the banks will either be spewing about these changes or will just claw back lost profits through other means.

If your bank tries to screw you too much, you can now switch transaction accounts to another provider by filling out a single form. It’s now up to the financial institutions to swap over all those direct credit and direct debits you have set up, rather than the onus being on individuals to ensure it’s all sorted to avoid problems with bills and wages not being paid.

There are laws starting in the new financial year to tighten up the financial planning industry, although they come with a crazy 12 month period where planners can continue to ride the gravy train of commissions on investments they recommend to new clients. If you are looking for advice, the first question to ask a planner is “Have you implemented the new laws?” If they balk on that one, take your business elsewhere.

Tax rates change tomorrow to see a tripling of the tax free threshold from $6,000 to $18,200 – a big win for low income earners. The 30% tax rate goes up to 32.5%, but the tax free threshold rising so much means people in this bracket will actually be better off. And, of course, the much debated carbon tax starts. I reckon there will be less impact from this than there was from the GST when it was introduced 12 years ago. Time will tell.

So lots to think about as you do the countdown and sing Auld Lang Syne. Or not.

I’m bloody annoyed. I have just spent 48 minutes on the phone and I know that people are going to be ripped off. I hate when people get ripped off.

Yesterday a good mate forwarded me a text message he’d received from an old acquaintance. It was for a “tele workshop” which is where invited people ring a number and listen to, well, basically a lecture. It’s kind of like a webinar over the phone.

In the text message were the words ‘Five Steps To Financial Freedom’, so naturally I was interested to know what it was all about. The truth is I am always on the lookout for good quality information that can help people in generations X and Y with their finances. When I find something good I include it in my website. When I find something sub-standard I ignore it, and when I find a con job I get angry.

Thirty minutes into the phone call (and not a word about how to actually do a few things like save money, avoid debt or what to look for in investments) and it was time for questions. The first person who pressed *2 on their phone so they could be heard by the tele workshop presenter was asked “Do you have a question, or would you like me to have a look at your beliefs?” “Beliefs, definitely beliefs please” came the reply. Pause. “Let me have a look.” Pause. “Well, a bit of the belief that’s come in – money goes out as fast as it comes in, sort of what you’re experiencing at the moment. Would you say that’s the case?”

“Hang on,” I thought, “has the person presenting this tele workshop got access to a whole heap of info about those listening that I don’t know about?” The next person who came on the line also had a “belief”. The same thing happened again and I realised that the person running the show was making this crap up. Ok, now is probably the right time to inform you that I do not read my daily horoscope. I do not believe that someone on the other end of the phone who knows nothing about you other than your first name can tell you anything about your financial state, be it mental or numerical.

Unfortunately it was apparent that the other people taking part in this phone call were not as cynical as I am. And here’s the ultimate hook. Mentioned briefly in this workshop was the opportunity to sign up to a 9 week course, consisting of 9 x 1 hour tele workshops and a 15 minute one on one session with an expert. I had to go to the website to find the cost – $1,275.

Anyone trying to sign you up for a finance course that costs more than a couple of hundred dollars should be dealt with very warily. Any price over $500 and you can just about be assured that the person selling their success is making their money from selling it, not from taking heed of their own advice.

In the end, I guess I’m glad the phone batteries died. I’m glad I didn’t waste any more of my time listening to a con rather than reading a story to my little chicken before she went to bed. And I really feel for those who are about to part with plenty of their hard earned for a load of crap.

A few searches on the internet will show you that there is not only one or two definitions for financial freedom. In fact, there are a lot of people who define financial freedom as being linked to an expensive investment they’re selling, being a multi-millionaire in your 30s, or having a passive stream of income so you don’t need to work. And some people don’t define it all.

Obviously the term financial freedom is not something that is the same for everyone, and for me it’s not about having a lot of money.

Personally I see financial freedom as being a number of things. It’s about not ever having to worry about the bank knocking on our front door and demanding we leave. It’s about choices that make life more comfortable and special family memories. Recently Claudia and I have made a few choices that fit with our definition.

We replaced all of the windows and a glass sliding door in our house with double glazing. It was a big job, but the results have been quite dramatic. Not only do we have a house so well insulated by noise that the neighbour’s parties don’t disturb us, but it’s warm. In winter. In Canberra!

It was pretty cool to leave for work early one morning, look back at the house to see frost on the roof and be shocked it was that cold outside. We have woken a couple of times over the last month to subzero temperatures and not needed to turn the heating on. Even when we do have it on, it stays on for an hour at 21°C, which warms the house for about 12 hours.

Back in 1999 I fell in love. With a 70-200mm zoom lens. Oh, how I longed to hold one in my arms again. Until I finally bought one the other day. Yes it costs about three times as much as the average person would spend on all the camera equipment they would buy in a lifetime, but the quality of the image it captures is second to none. I will use it to spoil our little chicken, filling her bedroom walls with photos of her over the years to come.

Another way Claudia and I plan to spoil our family is with another trip to Germany. All Claudia’s side live in Germany and travelling there doesn’t come cheap (or easy as we discovered last time when our chicken was only ten weeks old and I couldn’t help with the bags after just having had my appendix out). We are planning our next trip over Christmas this year, which will be our fifth since Christmas 2006.

I guess if I had to boil it down to one thing, financial freedom to me is about family. It’s about providing them with a secure home, keeping them warm in winter and cool in summer, capturing their happy faces the best I can and travelling with them to see our overseas relatives.

How would you define financial freedom?

Australia has the best developed economy in the world, and the sixth lowest level of taxation in the OECD, but you wouldn’t know it by listening to the absolute shit that comes out of the mouths of the naysayers.

On Monday the share market dropped 2% and it was one of the first items on the news. To believe the reports, our superannuation was doomed and we were all destined to eat cold cat food in our old age. On Tuesday it bounced back by 1.5% but only got a mention in the finance reports just before sport. Then on Wednesday it was up by 0.3% again, largely on response to the GDP figures showing economic growth in Australia is at an amazingly high 4.3%. This is despite Tony Abbott saying on Tuesday, after interest rates dropped again, that Australia’s economy is weak.

If you believed the crap that is fed your way you could be forgiven for thinking that superannuation is a massive waste of money and that it is, in fact, just some conspiracy to make fat cats richer and provide taxation revenue for the government. It’s not. Super is one of the things that sets Australia apart from the rest of the world. When the system hits maturity it will set us up for life, despite short term movements in the share market.

If you have more than five or six years ‘til you retire, you should not give a rat’s about what the share market does from one day to the next. You only need to be concerned with what happens over the long term. Although it’s no guarantee as to what will happen in the future, the past has shown us that shares outperform all other assets over the long term. I guarantee that you won’t even remember Monday’s stock market events in a year, let alone in 10, 20 or 30 years when you learn to play bridge. That is, if you ignored the hype and hysteria of the crap media reports and didn’t touch your super or any shares you may hold.

If you don’t know anything about GDP figures, here’s a quick lesson. Negative numbers are bad, positive numbers between zero and about 1.5% are not great. 1.6% to 2.5% is ok, and anything above 3% is better than what Australia has averaged over the last 20 years of golden economic activity. Wednesday’s 4.3% result is incredible. Even when you take off 0.5% that economists predict will be the impact of introducing a carbon price, it is still way above trend.

I know that those figures of economic growth are largely because of the two speed economy with mining companies dragging the country along, however the economies of seven of our eight states and territories are growing, and there’s not a lot of mining in Tassie, the ACT, NSW, Victoria and SA.

Yes, there are a large number of individuals in Australia doing it tough. Kind of. Take a visit to a developing country for a bit of perspective as to how tough someone has it living in a country with access to free healthcare, education and social security as well as the right to vote. And just think – if you are reading this, you have access to the internet, something that billions of people around the world don’t know anything about.

We have a very strong economy, albeit with short term movements in our share market. We enjoy very low inflation, very low unemployment, low taxation, high average wages, and a standard of living that is the envy of the world. And all this despite the federal opposition’s dog whistling that we’ve never been worse off.

I was ripped off once. Claudia and I were on holiday in Mexico just after the swine flu hit and there were absolutely bugger all tourists. We were on a tour (with one other person) to the Teotihuacan Pyramids when we stopped at a shop selling local crafts. I was conned into buying a small statue of the sun god for a measly $300, which, as it is the fertility god, I thought it would make a nice wedding gift for Claudia.

When we arrived at the pyramids there were a bunch of locals selling similar statues for the equivalent of about $20, and I felt like a real knobhead. I justified it by saying to myself that it was only $300 (although it was about 30 billion pesos) and that the locals were really struggling with the tourism industry in tatters. And when Claudia became pregnant with our little chicken, I figured ol’ sun god had done his job.

Getting ripped off is possible without travelling to a developing country. There are plenty of people ripping others off here in Australia and lots of Americans and Brits who are selling crap to us as well. A few of them advertise their wares on Facebook.

I saw an ad on FB the other day and was intrigued what the “strange trick” was used by the 54 year old man to slash his “electric bill by 75%”. Clicking on the ad directs you to a video that spruiks a system of making your own solar panels and wind turbines for only a couple of hundred dollars. “Hmm, connecting my home to the power grid myself might be a little bit dangerous for a guy who swears changing light bulbs,” I thought.

Turns out I’m right, or at least that’s what the insurance companies think. Perform your own electrical work that should only be done by a licensed sparky in the ACT and you void your home insurance policy. I imagine it’s similar in the other states.

The product being sold by the FB advertiser – Power4Home.com is a pack of DVDs showing how to build and install your own power system. But wait, there’s more! If you sign up faster than you can google ‘power4home scam’ they’ll throw in 3 free books. At least, they say they will.

Before you click on the Add To Cart button and blow your $50, even if you’re convinced that the product you are looking at is genuine, google the name of the company and watch what the auto-complete spits out. In Power4Home’s case, the second auto-complete is ‘Power4Home scam’. Among the many sites where people have complained about not receiving what they had paid for are a couple that back the system. Power4HomeScam.net and a couple of top YouTube hits reek of the company itself setting up pages that say the system is not a scam to divert suspicious customers back to their product.

There would be few people who would complain to the authorities if the rip off that has caught them out has only cost them a couple of hundred bucks or less. But people will definitely vent their rage on internet forums. So before you take on face value statements like power4home’s “I’m going to spit in the face of all the thieves, crooks and liars who have been sucking cash out of your pocket” do the tiniest bit of research to see for yourself if you are at risk of being ripped off.

Ps Claudia still thinks the story of the sun god statue is funny.