I've been waiting to use this story for some time. 

With the fairness of our tax system to be the focus in the lead up to the Federal election, I figured here's my chance. I'm not sure who wrote this originally, but all credit to them. It's a great analogy, and while the numbers may not be exactly right, the concept is.

Here it is, the 'beer' explanation of the tax system.

We have entered that time of year where the financial media goes into overdrive, providing more misinformation than usual.  The trigger is end-of-year predictions about next year.

They are meaningless.  And what’s worse, relying on them can hurt your financial well being.

I’ve been contacted by a couple of media outlets looking for predictions, as well as folk from the general public asking me to look into my crystal ball.
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Here were my answers. 

​Just because political or financial news is a diversion, a challenge or even entertaining, doesn’t mean it’s actionable. In fact, what people outside the media rarely appreciate is how many of the headlines you see every day are effectively meaningless. And it’s been really getting on my goat lately! So in this article, I’ll interpret some of the most common headlines and what it actually means for your investments. 

​Most of us could do with a crash course in personal finance.  In fact, two-thirds of people around the world failed a short test of basic financial concepts. The five-question test—created by Standard & Poor’s, Gallup, the World Bank, and George Washington University—was posed to 150,000 people in more than 140 countries last year.