I had heard the term geographic arbitrage and didn’t really know what it was, so a little searching informed me that this is earning a high income in a high cost region compared to earning the same income and living in a low cost region. Whilst I wasn’t able to engage in geographic arbitrage during my working life, I will try this as a retiree.

When you engage in retirement arbitrage, you take your retirement in a lovely scenic place overseas to live a better quality of life. For Australians that is generally South East Asia with countries such as Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, and Malaysia. Of course developed countries such as Singapore, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea offer great opportunities but tend to be larger cities with higher costs.

For European heritage Australians whose families mostly emigrated to Australia in the 1950s, they typically consider returning to their native countries such as Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal and the Slavic countries. Americans may look at Asia or Central America, but I typically do not hear of many Australians seriously looking at Central American countries.

I am looking for a country with warm weather in summer and reasonable facilities. For me, Portugal seems to offer plenty. I can spend my time in a scenic area with a great lifestyle and good summer weather. Likewise, Italy is also interesting if I stay out of the large tourist areas of Rome, Florence or Venice. Sure, if I can find a place in the countryside, the amazing Italian train network can get me most places. Even better, Italy has a reciprocal agreement with Australia for medical treatment. With a couple of years before I can retire early, I need to start planning.

Sam Jones, the American influencer who outraged almost the whole of Australia when she snatched a baby wombat from its mother. I really don’t know what an influencer is, I am guessing a social media identity who possesses a relatively large following. Whilst her online persona is Sam Jones, she is really Samantha Strable from Montana who posts online about hunting.

She has 91.6k followers and had only made 143 posts when I checked. It took me longer to find her Instagram page than it should have, samstrays_somewhere wasn’t really where I was looking though. She posts about fishing, hunting, and horse riding so apart from being an attractive woman, I am not seeing how she is an influencer. 

When it came to the wombat joey she picked up and ran off with, sure she made a mistake, but what a huge backlash. She was receiving death threats, this is getting a bit silly. If she just picked up the joey and got it straight back to its mother, it would not have blown up as it did. Instead, she ran towards the vehicle with the joey and mother screeching, her Australian boyfriend Louis Sixt who was filming and laughing really did not receive the same level of hate. 

Even Prime Minister Anthony Albanese got involved, Albo said “take a baby crocodile from its mother and see how you go there” that I didn’t actually think was helpful. Whilst she issued an apology of sorts, she did not do this well either as she had a shot at farmers, the government and just about everyone else. She is a social media follower, she wanted to make a short video to publish for likes to gain more followers. She could have done it so much better, mistakes were made, but really, the backlash was too severe. The very online world she lives in and publishes content in turned out to be a whole lot more fickle and toxic than she expected.

As an AFL football fan we watch games where we see some not so great acts. For me, Collingwood thug Braydon Maynard ending the career of Melbourne’s Angus Braysure was especially galling. The AFL will in future years be hit with class action litigation based on the concussion of players, they have to be proactive now to prevent these actions.

Watching Ben Miller drop his knee into the head of Fremantle’s Jye Amiss was not a great look, Amiss had just returned to the team after requiring mandatory concussion protocols after a concussion two weeks earlier. Dropping your knee into a guy’s head after he just returned from a concussion is not a good look for the game.

Whilst Jye Amiss received a free kick that resulted in a goal stretching Fremantle’s lead to 54 points, this is not the point. This should never have happened, Richmond coach Adam Yze said in the coach’s press conference that there was no plan to target Amiss. What we know is Amiss was manhandled off the ball throughout the course of the game, the Richmond coach knew this and allowed it to happen.

What we saw occurring in Los Angeles was amazing in modern America, there have been riots before in LA. However, sending in the National Guard to quell rioting based on immigration squads roaming the streets is not what anyone expected, well that was before Donald Trump came to power anyway. It could have been brought under control easily, just stop the illegal deportations.

So now we are seeking on the news masked ICE agents riding around in black SUVs raiding streets, homes, and places of work. Remember the Trump lies before the election, “they are eating the cats, they are eating the dogs” to a believing crowd. Trump told blatent lies during the election [for starters] and his followers lapped it up, claims of voter fraud, any story that does not fit his narrative is decried as fake news.

It is clear Trump targeted a Democratic state, the Governor Gavin Newsom has hit back hard. Newsom now openly mocks Trump, he has taken a mocking and condescending approach to mimicking Trump. We all know how fragile Trump’s ego is, so this really irk him. Newsom has the strategy right, whilst no other Democrat can land a punch on Trump, Newsom is doing a splendid job.

What we are seeing with ICE is scenes out of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. The Trump administration is targeting immigrants and deporting them en masse. I am seeing so many correlations with the Gestapo, the MAGA supporters are the Brown Shirts and Karoline Levitt is the head of Propaganda. No wonder the LA population was rioting, they stood up to an authoritarian regime when it was needed.

Fake watches are for fake people, that’s a pretty harsh assessment, probably not the negative advertising I would want to be associated with. So where did this advertising originate? Well, Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie [FHH] is an advisory board with the intent to promote watchmaking that is located in Geneva. This think tank engages in education, promotion and certification. The Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry [FHS] is to protect and promote the Swiss watch industry and is headquartered in Bienne, Switzerland.

Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie is a largely Richemont Group undertaking with Audemars Piguet, and Girard-Perregaux owned by Sowind Group along with Ulysse Nardin. The Richemont Group brands include Cartier, A. Lange & Söhne, Panerai, Piaget, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Vacheron Constantin, and IWC. Then there is TAG Heuer of LVMH and independent brands include Oris, Czapek, and Breitling.

The campaign was launched in 2009 at the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie [SIHH], a trade show in Geneva. The SIHH was an invitation only event including authorised dealers and journalists, apparently some selected VIP collectors were also invited. The message is that wearing fake luxury implies that the person is not authentic, they are pretentious and lack humility, that is a hard message to sell. Then there is the issue that criminal networks produce fake goods, that is a real concern and a much easier message to promote.

There is the hommage, a design that is directly copied, I see so many cheap watchmakers replicate a Rolex Submariner or the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak. Sure, the Gérald Genta designed Audemars Piguet Royal Oak and Patek Philippe Nautilus integrated bracelet design have been copied by watchmakers from Rolex, Chopard, Bulgari, Girard-Perregaux and Tissot to Citizen. So I ask, where does a design style infringe copyright? An integrated bracelet timepiece, a dive watch, a pilot’s watch or a field watch all correspond to certain design features.

When I am in Singapore I love eating out at Little India, it isn’t often you can relate excellent value to such a decent quality. In one such instance I was flicking through a menu to make my order, the waiter politely interrupted me to explain that I was selecting overlapping dishes. Instead, I could order this and this instead of what I was ordering to still obtain the varied tastes I was seeking.

This particular food already comes with these tastes and it will also be cheaper – hard to argue with this logic. Another trip and another restaurant I was arguing the bill, but not how bills are normally argued. On this occasion I was trying to tell them they have undercharged me, it couldn’t possibly be this cheap. She recalculated the bill at my insistence to find I was wrong and she was right all along. This is what I love about eating in Singapore’s Little India, great value combined with amazing food.

After an application to the Federal Court in the Channel 10 defamation case, Lisa Wilkinson was to read from a pre-prepared script. It would appear Lisa Wilkinson’s skill-set was to read from the autoscript teleprompter, her skills are not of an investigative journalist, but instead just of a talking head.

We all know Lisa Wilkinson is pretty good at pre-production meetings, the recorded audio of the meeting with Brittany Higgins and David Sharaz along with producer Angus Llewellyn was both interesting and dull. There were a bunch of what could only be described as deadbeats sitting around mostly junk talking. Then there were hints of interest when they got to Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Defense Minister Linda Reynolds, from the recording we all knew this was a political hit job, nothing more.

If we believe the testimony, Wilkinson’s producer Angus Llewellyn was the brains behind the operation, there was plenty of planning going on. I am not sure if the strategy was well prepared. The strategy was simple, to cause maximum damage to the Liberal government including former Prime Minister Scott Morrison and former Defense Minister Linda Reynolds. I cannot believe after all this time that these actions have still yet to be resolved, I would be surprised if Lisa Wilkinson will work again, no one wants to take the risk to hire her again.

The war in Ukraine is very much an artillery and drone war. Ukraine as the much smaller invaded nation is putting up an amazing fight as the nation with limited resources. The adaptation of low-cost drones on the battlefield through necessity will be studied and debated for years to come in military colleges worldwide. What Ukraine has implemented as a cost effective means to determine Russian aggression is noteworthy.

In the early days of the invasion, Ukraine was utilising Javelin missiles to destroy Russian tanks. This was reasonably cost effective as a $250k Javelin missile could take out a million dollar main battle tank. But when you start using a $300 – $1000 drone to destroy a main battle tank, well that return on investment got a whole lot better. Sure Russia has been pulling out old tanks from its cold war inventory to throw into battle, these could be older T-62 and T-64 tanks that are cheaper insofar as they have already been paid for.

However, Russia is losing main battle tanks at an alarming rate. These need to be replaced, that is a cost, this is a cost that is becoming harder to justify as the war drags on and losses mount. The cost of Russian main battle tanks, a T-64 is about $1.1 million, T-72 $1.2 million, T-80 $3 million, T-90 $4.5 million based on estimates. Russian tank losses in September 2025 are estimated to be T-64 [274], T-72 [1529], T-80 [1130], and T-90 [168]. That is significant main battle tank losses, losses of armoured fighting vehicles is double that of main battle tanks, that is amazing losses.

So this brings us to Magyar’s Birds, Róbert Bródi known by his call sign as Magyar is the founder of Magyar’s Birds. He was a businessman prior to the invasion in the agricultural field, Bródi was assigned to the 206th Battalion of the 241st Brigade when he joined the Territorial Defence Forces of Ukraine, that is basically the military reserve. Based on Bródi’s entrepreneurial knowledge and skills, he raised funds to purchase a fleet of drones that he set up an aerial reconnaissance unit named Magyar’s Birds. The unit is engaged in reconnaissance and patrolling, kamikaze drones and targeting individual soldiers on the battlefield. I follow Magyar’s Birds on the battlefield through their video releases, great work, keep up the liberation of Ukraine.

According to Charlie Munger, you need $100,000 to get your investment portfolio multiplying. Naturally, this means saving $100k, as no one is likely to gift $100k to you. So, by definition, saving the first $100k is the most difficult proposition. So, who was Charlie Munger? Charlie was none other than the business partner of Warren Buffett, the famed investor.

From there according to Charlie, compound growth makes future gains easier to achieve. At a 7% return, saving $650 a month, it takes 9.5 years to save $100k. So I jumped on a compound interest calculator to test the theory and it indeed takes just over 9 years to save almost $100k. If I switch the calculator to 10 years, it works out at $78k for regular deposits and $34.5k in interest giving a $112.5k return.

So I cleared the calculator and added $112k and entered 25 years in, at year 23, the million dollar threshold was reached, so now I need to add the initial 10 years and at 33 years the target was reached. Ok, so now I have a baseline, I cleared the Moneysmart compound interest calculator and used a $650 a month deposit and 34 year range to find one million is achieved at the 33 year mark. So to put this into perspective, that is saving $162.50 a week for the next 34 years, that is not taking inflation into account either. So yeah, Charlie was right, the first $100k is the hardest and as long as you don’t give up and keep saving, you can get there.

What a disaster, after landing at Frankfurt Airport, the plan was to catch an S-Bahn train to the Hauptbahnhop, that is the central station. The plan was sound, the execution was flawed as we headed off in the wrong direction.

Around the fourth stop we had realised the mistake and stepped off at a desolate platform at that time of night. Opelwerk is an unusual name but once we were standing alone on the platform and could see the tall Opel building not far from the station, the name of the station made perfect sense.

I thought the best option was to step across the platform and pick up a train going in the opposite direction. This is not necessarily the best option, we really needed to first check the train timetables and stops, after a sixteen hour flight and working right up to the flight, I wasn’t feeling the greatest so I wasn’t moving around too much.

That was a mistake, we needed either the S7 or the S9 trains, the first one didn’t stop at that platform, what next? Move platforms and the train stops at the platform you were just standing at? As it turns out, a lone woman arrived at the platform and she was willing to assist with directions. We didn’t have much time, but we were able to get over and get on the correct platform when our train arrived. Thankfully, the night turned out all right after all.