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October 03 newsletter

Welcome to the Shape of Money's October 2003 newsletter.

Next month - the final guide to the secrets to wealth will be covered in the November newsletter.

This month - we launch our residential property investment calculator. Together with some new resources and a revision of the existing pages, we believe that the calculator will be a useful tool for those either already in, or contemplating, a residential property investment.

The genesis of the Shape of Money was a property calculator developed by best friend Nik Zangouropoulos. Nik - "guru analyst" - told me about a calculator he had created in Excel. I thought about it for a moment, and suggested that we put it on the internet and sell some advertising space. About six years ago, companies like Yahoo were making a bit of a noise and I thought it would be a great idea.

Three years later, the Shape of Money was born.

It has taken a further three years to get the residential property calculator to the web. The time seems right. It might not be a boom, but you could certainly argue that the market is robust.

The calculator has been designed to:

• Do the calculations, which can sometimes be complex, and
• Equally importantly, it provides a guide to ensure that you include all the relevant variables.
  

We've added some new pages that we hope will be useful in helping you assess the future direction of the market. You can keep track of the important variables which drive rental and property demand, such as migration, interest rates and sales volumes, by keeping one eye on the media commentators and another on the official statistics, made available on a regular basis.

We hope you find the upgraded residential property investment pages useful.

We do, however, recommend that you also keep in mind the concept of a diversified portfolio.