My money resolution for 2026? Subscribe to the ‘Buy It For Life’ philosophy.

The BIFL school of thought is that if you buy a high-quality, durable item once, you’ll save money in the long term. As you’ll see in the official BIFL Reddit Thread (with 3.5 million members), people profile the wallets, umbrellas, water bottles, and shavers they bought once and are still using.

My first stop? A white t-shirt. I go cheap every year, and end up spending more 12 months later. That ain’t the BIFL way.

In case you missed it, Tesla has lost its spot as the world’s largest electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer, with Chinese giant BYD now taking that title.

Here’s what you need to know.

According to Tesla figures released Friday, sales for the Texas-based company were down last year. This marks the second consecutive annual decline for the Texas-based company. 

BYD sold 2.26 million EVs in 2025, far outpacing Tesla’s shipping of 1.64 million cars for the year.

That’s a jump of 28% for BYD and a slump of about 9% for Tesla from 2024. 

One point of difference between the companies is that BYD sells cars at a much more affordable price point than Tesla.

The last three months for Tesla were particularly bad, as its sales fell 16% to around 420,000 from the same period the year before.

Despite this, Tesla remains the most valuable car company in the world, with a valuation of US$1.4 trillion, equal to the next 29-largest car companies. 

Global uptake for EVs has continued to grow throughout 2025, but at a diminished pace.

It comes as shareholders voted to award Musk a possible US$1 trillion (AU$1.49 trillion) pay package last November if certain sales targets were met, including shipping 20 million cars and one million robots over the next decade.

(Anyway. No one bring up when Musk once laughed at the prospect of BYD ever competing with Tesla in an interview with Bloomberg in 2011.)

Reporting by Lachlan Keller.

In the biggest story of the week, the U.S. launched airstrikes against Venezuela over the weekend, capturing the country’s now-ousted President Nicolás Maduro.

The operation has led to a conversation about Venezuela's state-owned oil reserves - the largest of any nation - and whether the global economy will feel the impact of volatility in the Latin American country.

The U.S. says it will now run Venezuela’s oil industry and that U.S. companies will “start making money for the country.”

Here’s what you need to know.

On Saturday, Trump announced the U.S. had carried out a “large scale strike” against Venezuela.

The country’s President, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, were captured during the operation. (Some quick context: The U.S. has not recognised Maduro as the country’s president since the 2024 election, as Maduro was widely accused of ‘stealing’ the election. For months, the Trump administration has also been criticising Maduro over what it called his involvement in shipping drugs to the U.S.)

Maduro has since pleaded not guilty to narco-terrorism charges in a New York federal court.

In the meantime, Trump has said the U.S. will “run” Venezuela until there is a transition of power.

So why has this all led to a conversation about Venezuela’s oil industry?

Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves - an estimated 300 billion barrels, or about 17% of all known global oil reserves, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

But, despite its vast supply, Venezuela actually produces relatively little of it. The country currently contributes about one million barrels per day, which is just 1% of the world’s total daily oil supply. Rewind to the 1970s, and Venezuela represented 8% of the total global supply.

There are two main reasons why Venezuela produces so little of the oil it has under its territory - the technical challenges of oil production, and international sanctions.

First, the country’s state-run oil company (which, like other state-run entities, is ultimately under control of the Venezuelan Government), does not have the hardware or capacity of global oil companies to dig and process the oil. On top of that, international sanctions makes developing that capacity near-impossible.

After the operation, Trump said ​major U.S. oil companies would move back into Venezuela.

During a press conference on Saturday, Trump said: "We're going to have our very large U.S. oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country."

It is not clear yet how this would work, or when it would happen. However, Venezuela’s Government has already publicly indicated it will not cooperate with the U.S.

As mentioned above, Venezuela only produces about 1% of the world’s daily oil supplies, so experts don’t think the evolving situation will have dramatic impacts for consumers at the petrol pump, and oil prices should remain steady.

If President Trump’s plans to help global oil companies reinstate operations in Venezuela works, they’ll be able to produce a lot more oil than Venezuela’s state-run operation, and faster. This will mean there’s more oil out there in the market.

However, other economists warn that any increase in global instability - and threats made by President Trump to leaders of other South American nations in the days since Maduro’s arrest - can increase the risk of countries panic-buying oil reserves, and lead to situations where panic and instability force prices up.

Reporting by Lachlan Keller and Sam Koslowski.

Like all of us, the Australian Financial Review (AFR) made predictions for 2026.

Coming in at number 11 was their prediction that the Australian record for the most expensive home will be will be broken this year.

Last year, a penthouse in Sydney was sold for a cool $141.55 million, which was the highest recorded price paid for an Aussie dwelling.

The AFR said “it’s a matter of when, not if.”

Given the AFR had a 62% success rate with their predictions last year, they could be onto something!

Reporting by Anju Dhanushkodi