Veteran financial writer Noel Whittaker penned a story on what he would say to high school students if given the chance.

In part he writes: “Time is your secret weapon. It lets you harness the magic of compound interest – the most powerful wealth-building force that is available the moment you start investing” and “Most people who become financially secure follow one golden rule: Never spend more than you earn and always save a little.

“At first it’s not how much you save but the discipline of saving something. Habits compound just like money, and over time the saver beats the spender.”

Whittaker uses an example of a saver starting at 15-years-old versus a saver starting at 30-years -old.

The 15-year-old puts away $2000 a year for 15 years and the 30-year-old puts away $2000 a year for 35 years.

Given both earn an average nine per cent the 15-year-old saver ends up with $1.2m and the saver who starts at 30 ends up with $430,000.

A few snippets from the past week include: * Scott Pape writes in his weekend column, “Albo thinks luring young people into huge levels of mortgage debt is good policy, but this is really a dud” and goes on to say “Two thirds of voters own a home, most want prices to go up, and plenty of MP’s on both sides own more than one property”.

* Treasurer Chalmers was quick to promote the better-than-expected underlying deficit numbers which does not include all the ‘Off budget’ spending like loss making “investments” like Snowy Hydro, the NBN and Whyalla Steelworks. Off budget items cost around $11 billion over the past year.

* Value investor Porter Collins has sounded a warning on the $US100 billion Nvidia is pouring into OpenAI saying “This is no doubt a positive for both companies in the near term, but this is close to full Ponzi”.

* Former ACTU president Jennie George reckons the nation faces de-industrialisation due to high energy costs while others embrace nuclear. Geroge goes on to say “It’s a targets-driven energy transition. From the start, the priority was never to deliver the most affordable and reliable power 24/7”.

* Macquarie has conceded that it made a mistake by not putting the Shield funds on a “watch list” and the group will repay $321 million to Shield investors. Other trustees have yet to come to the party.

* Brisbane Broncos shares were up 14 per cent on Monday and are up 38 per cent for 2025.

Some headlines from last week were, “Labor bets on industrial losers, misses AI prize”, “Fundies positioning for after the bubble”, “Narrabri’s time has finally arrived”, “Bowen’s renewables transition fails the reliability test”, “Butler denies tax rise driving tobacco black market”, “High earners dominate EV tax concession”, “Urgent call to lift construction productivity”, “Challenge to level the playing field for households to install batteries”, “Nation must play to its strengths and always have a plan B on power”, “Car sector warning lights for US economy”, “The property side hustle paying off”, “Get stricter on spending, IMF urges nations”, “Shell’s red-tape warning on renewable energy’, “The big shocks looming over the US economy”, “Chalmers’ cheques and imbalances” and “What bubble? Structural shift could prolong the equities run”.