Home

A sad tale about an agency with a hammer

Hello there to all of my readers 🙂

Unfortunately I have some slightly disappointing news. The Australian Securities and Investment Commission or ASIC for short (the agency) have decided that the free flow of financial information online about sensible long term investments (the nail) is not what is best for the Australian public. Deciding it best to try and scare or stamp out any “finfluencer”, regardless of the quality of their content. They released a guidance note (the hammer, INFO 269) and held briefings with finfluencers saying that writing about anything other than saving money on salami sandwiches or reading product disclosure statements verbatim was not allowed under their purview and interpretation of the law.

I do think that my content is quite low risk and I am quite small to avoid the ire of ASIC. However, at the end of the day the consequences and hence overall risk is too much for me and as such I have disabled all of my content until such time as the situation improves.

I apologise about this and thank all of you for the incredible support you have given me over the last 5 years. You can hear the last FI/RE & Chill podcast where we discuss this topic.

I will remove the LIC discount Estimator from my website but keep the sheet live on Google Sheets.

All other content will redirect to this front page.

Always keep Shuffling, I will be.

Pat the Shuffler