10 per cent of all author royalties are donated to the not-for-profit financial counselling peak body, Financial Counselling Australia.
Read this first
When I first sat down to write this book, I expected to sell a few thousand copies at best.
(After all, who reads books these days?)
So, I decided to write it the same way I'd talk to a mate if we were at a pub:
I sketched out my simple ‘bucket’ strategy … the exact bank accounts I used … even the pillow I bought that I couldn't shut up about!
Little did I know that what I was writing would become the bestselling Australian book of all time.
In fact, The Barefoot Investor has been described as ‘the biggest finance cult in Australia’.
You know what that means?
It means that millions of people across the country have been going on date nights, and paying down shedloads of debt, saving for emergencies and nailing their retirements, and buying Dunlopillo pillows …
For a guy living on a farm, it's all a little strange.
So, in the ‘barstool chat’ spirit of the original book, in this classic edition I've decided to keep those references to many of the products I used myself, back in 2016.
Yet the truth is, there are now much better deals on offer than the ones I mention. How do I know this? Because readers write to me and tell me about new products, all the time. Case in point: there are now several index fund offerings in super that are just as cheap as (or cheaper than) the fund I talk about in this book (and better bank accounts too). How do you find them? Google!
So, focus on the Barefoot Steps, and always do a quick google to find the best deals on the market right now.
Tread Your Own Path!
Scott Pape
Family Farm
Prelude: Living Barefoot
A blackened sheep stopped right in the middle of the road and eyeballed us.
Its feet were badly burnt. It was shaking. The wool on its side was scorched into curly knots, revealing its bloodied ribcage. It was heaving in and out, clutching for air. In shock. Dehydrated. Traumatised.
With our fences destroyed, the poor girl was left stumbling around on her own, searching for water on our home block. Most of her flock had been burnt alive when a bushfire ripped through my farm 24 hours earlier.
Bang … Bang … Bang.
Without my knowledge or approval, the Department of Environment and Primary Industries had rolled up at first light and begun destroying my surviving sheep. Apparently they can do that when your farm is declared part of a disaster zone.
The sheep limped off to the side of the road. They'd find her soon.
I gripped my wife Liz's hand and continued driving down our driveway towards our family home.
Two chimneys and a pile of rubble were the sum total of a lifetime of possessions.
Her wedding dress. Tea cups. The few last remaining photos of her late father, who had died 10 years earlier. Butter knives. All of my baby son's clothes. All of his toys. Everything was gone.
Overhead, a TV news chopper hovered. Later, it would land amid our dead and dying animals, and a reporter would enter what remained of our private family home and kick through the still-smouldering personal possessions that had made our little family us.
At the time I was used to fronting the nightly finance news; that day I was the news.
With the thick smell of everything burning, the sight of everything we'd worked for in ashes and a chopper buzzing around us, my wife erupted. She began screaming uncontrollably. Deep, loud groans of pain. Our baby son, who was strapped in his car seat, began bawling in sympathy.
At that moment, when everything was falling apart, I looked in the rear-view mirror and said to myself the first thing that came to my mind:
‘I've got this.’
That's the truth. That's exactly what I said. Don't get me wrong: I'm not some Bruce Willis diehard tough-guy character. Far from it. But if this was the lowest point in my life, there was something deep inside of me that knew I could handle it.
And over the next two years, I did.
The belly of this book came from that one moment.
Because here's the thing: at some stage you're going to face your own financial fire.
It could be when your partner walks out on you and the kids.
It could be when you're sitting alone in the work carpark after the boss has made you redundant.
It could be after you go to the doctor for a simple ‘check-up’.
It could be your girlfriend telling you she's pregnant.
It could be when you glance at your super statement and wonder how you'll ever afford to retire.
No matter what you face in the future, I want you to be able to look yourself in the eye and confidently say to yourself:
I've got this.
And by the end of this book, that's exactly what you'll be able to do.
Plant, Grow, Harvest
After the fire, we looked at the devastation that surrounded us, and were totally overwhelmed.
The smell gets into your lungs … into your brain.
The day before, we had a ‘to do’ list. Now we had a phone book.
With a million things to do, where would we even start?
Well, we chose to … plant a tree.
An apple tree.
It wasn't a short-term fix, obviously.
After all, you don't plant an apple tree on a Saturday and then come back on Sunday and stand with your hands on your hips and scowl:
‘Where are my freaking apples?’
No, you don't do that.
You don't pull out the sapling a week later and replant it on the other side of the yard where you think it's (maybe) sunnier.
You don't stay up at night worrying that your golden retriever is threatening to lift its leg on the trunk.
You don't nervously watch the weather on the nightly news and think to yourself, ‘There's no rain on the five-day forecast! El Niño will wipe out everything. This is a disaster!’
You don't get desperate and google ‘How to grow a thousand apples a day, with one tree’.
No, you just plant the bloody tree.
And then you wait.
A year or so later it bears some apples (mostly hard, small and sour). Its branches are still young, so the weight of the apples makes it droopy. (It looks like a tree version of a fashion model.)
And then you basically forget about it, and get on with your life.
You