I’m proud to announce that today, after it being an idea for a long time, and several months of hard work, wheeling and dealing and awesomely fun challenges, that I can say that MoneyHQ.com.au is live, free and open to the world.

MoneyHQ is the realisation of something that I’ve felt has been needed in Australia for a long time.

Much of the financial industry – not all, but much of it – and the products available to people like you and me are really setup to seriously help you once you’re over 50 years old and heading into retirement. But what about people in their thirties and forties? While your’e working how do you make the kind of money that will allow you to have a comfortable and secure retirement?

Another thing that has bothered me for a long time, is that our generation are getting into much more debt in relative terms than our parents generation at the same point in their lives. When they were buying properties and getting their starts life simply cost far less than it does today. For example, I know several couples who are in their early thirties who are purchasing, or looking to purchase first or second homes for $600,000 – $750,000, and while they’re comfortable, livable homes, they’re certainly not gold plated mansions.

But, rather than bemoan the expenses, and throwing our arms up in a collective sigh and ask why someone else isn’t giving guidance, and telling us about the options available to us, I say that our generation simply has to be better informed, to make better investing and money making decisions.

It’s not good enough, and not going to get our generation anywhere, simply saying that ‘things shouldn’t be this way’. The fact is they are, they have to be tackled, and with information by your side you’ll pay off your debts sooner, invest smarter, and have more to live on.

So really that’s what MoneyHQ is all about. MoneyHQ’s purpose is to be a better inform and guide primarily young, pre-retirement age, Australian’s (although naturally everybody is welcome) to assist in the building of wealth, a sound base of investment knowledge and effective debt reduction.

When going about setting up MoneyHQ I also quickly realised ‘who on Earth is going to listen to me?‘. What is one person’s opinion worth, I knew right off the bat that it wasn’t enough to have one person’s opinion, but fortunately I know plenty of people who I hoped would be ready and willing to help.

Having worked worked in the investing information industry for many years, I had built up contacts and relationships that I had a pretty good feeling would be interested in helping me build MoneyHQ. So I approached several independent investing companies, reporting organisations, national associations and indepedent specialist contributors, and asked if we couldn’t arrange for MoneyHQ to publish some of their most relevent content to our audience, that is usually exclusively reserved for their paying clients, and give it away free to the world.

Happily they’ve agreed, and as well as all of our external contributors we have an experienced in-house content team produce great content, as I type this.

I hope you enjoy the website. If you have any questions, would like to suggest improvements or think we should be covering something that we’re not already, please drop us a note. We take all feedback on board and will do our very best to incorporate it.

Cheers for reading MoneyHQ