Enough Wealth

Net Worth Update: June 2009

2009-07-05T15:28:00.003+10:00

My net worth as at 30 June had increased a little (up $2,898, or +0.45% for the month) to $646,571.My retirement account gained $5,440 (+2.05%) to $270,511, and the estimated valuations for my half of our real estate assets (house and investment property) were up $8,969 (+1.18%) to $766,806). My employers superannuation contributions for April-June should be processed in July, which will boost

Pensioners hold advisor 'accountable' for bad advice

2009-06-27T08:39:00.001+10:00

An interesting story regarding the back-lash some advisers are experiencing due to the GFC. I'm glad the advisor escaped with just a few broken ribs, but I think the 'furious five' old-age pensioners who kidnapped and tortured their financial advisor for losing their savings by investing in a failed Florida property scheme will probably end up with the short end of the stick. Apart from still

CDF wind-up payment arrived

2009-06-19T09:48:00.002+10:00

As announced last month, the wind-up of the Commonwealth Diversified Share Fund (CDF) was completed yesterday, with payment of $1.0387 per share made to all remaining shareholders. I'm glad that I borrowed some money to meet the margin call that resulted from Comsec Margin Lending reducing the margin value of this share to 0% on 17 May, otherwise I would have only received around $0.96 per share

No pay rise this year

2009-06-19T00:33:00.003+10:00

My company goes through it's annual performance review/pay rise process every June - putting new pay rates in place for the new financial year starting 1 July. This year the boss sent out an email to all staff saying that although the company was weathering the GFC pretty well and didn't need to lay off any staff, it was facing uncertain times and had to keep a close eye on costs until at least

ANZ SPP - a windfall?

2009-06-14T17:42:00.003+10:00

DS1 and I both received the paperwork for the ANZ Bank's Share Purchase Plan. The maximum application amount is $15,000 and the share price is a maximum of $14.40 per share (it's unlikely to be less than this as the current share price is 20% above that level). I have around $20,000 worth of ANZ in my leveraged equities portfolio and will use the cash realised by the wind-up of the Commonwealth

Using CFDs to add gearing to our SMSF fund

2009-06-12T19:11:00.002+10:00

So far we have invested our SMSF in the Vanguard Highgrowth fund, whose asset allocation is mostly the Australian and International share markets. Despite the recent poor performance of stock markets around the world, I'm still of the opinion that, in the medium- to long-term, this asset allocation is most likely to provide the best return for the amount of risk we are comfortable with. In fact,

Coles Gift Card promotion

2009-06-11T20:36:00.003+10:00

I received an email today telling me that I had accrued $3.51 as at the end of May. Provided my total exceeds $5.00 by the time the promotion ends on 31 July, I'll be sent a Coles gift-card for the amount accrued. When you spend over $30 in one transaction you receive 1c credit per dollar spent. There are also some 'Boost' products advertised around the store where you earn an extra $1 credit for

Neighbour dispute starting to cost real money

2009-06-11T19:48:00.004+10:00

As I previously posted my next-door neighbour wants to add a couple of feet of new retaining wall to the existing brick retaining wall, demolish, realign (our respective property identification surveys disagree on which side of the brick wall the boundary is), and replace the existing wood boundary fence (which has started to rot due to the earth he piled against it soon after he moved in).

Free Qantas Frequent Flyer membership

2009-06-11T19:14:00.002+10:00

My wife got a free membership of the Qantas Frequent Flyer years ago when a program of another airline closed down in Australia. I never bothered joining QFF as the annual fee made membership a dubious benefit. However, the Woolworths EveryDayRewards program recently linked up with QFF and in future spending more than $30 in a single Woolworths transaction will earn you QFF points if your

Net Worth Update: May 2009

2009-06-02T22:46:00.003+10:00

My net worth as at 31 May had decreased fractionally (down $507, or -0.08% for the month) to $643,673. My retirement account gained $7,732 (+3.00 %) to $265,071, but this was mostly offset by a drop in the estimated valuations of my half of our real estate assets (house and investment property - down $7,070 (-0.92%) to $757,837). But the preliminary sales figures indicate that this loss may have

Fee rebate received from YourShare

2009-05-31T18:30:00.004+10:00

I signed up with YourShare.com.au one year ago. Sure enough a cheque for just over $480 arrived last week, along with a comprehensive statement showing all the fees and commissions that YourShare had received from my nominated financial products. Having YourShare as the nominated 'adviser' on my loss of income insurance, margin loan accounts and managed fund investments has had no impact other

Another tale of financial woe from a retired sports star

2009-05-31T14:38:00.003+10:00

In yet another example that being a successful sports star doesn't mean you'll be set for life, Australian tennis star Mark Philippoussis (nick-named 'the scud' for his fast service), is at risk of losing the bay-side Melbourne house he shares with his mother after falling behind on the mortgage payments. One has to wonder why he would even have a $1.3 million mortgage, since the retired 32-

Me and the Rich 200 List

2009-05-27T20:07:00.003+10:00

The SMH has a summary of the latest BRW "Rich 200" Australians List. Aside from the sad, sad news that the number of Australian billionaires has dropped from 38 last year to only 28 this year, my main interest in this story was to see how the GFC had affected the "cut off" to get on the list of 200 wealthiest Australians. Last year the cut off was A$200 million, whereas this year it had dropped

This and that

2009-05-24T16:04:00.003+10:00

DS1 competed in his first Judo tournament today. There were only three competitors in his age/weight category, so he only had two 1.5 minute bouts - winning his first bout and losing the second in a close contest. The competition was held at a nice venue at the Sydney Olympic Park, and only cost $10. On the downside, weigh-in, getting organised, and the competition took four hours - so there was

A dollar spent is a calorie burned?

2009-05-19T19:40:00.002+10:00

The past couple of years haven't seen much progress towards my goals of increased net worth and reduced weight. I think I can claim force majeur regarding my failure to reach my NW targets, but I have also failed to loose any weight over the past couple of years and that's entirely my fault.I recently started taking prescription medication for high blood pressure (not that it seems to be doing

A margin call from Comsec Margin Lending

2009-05-12T20:02:00.003+10:00

As feared, the wind-up of the Commonwealth Diversified Share Fund has resulted in me getting a margin call on my Comsec margin lending account. I had expected it might happen when the CDF shares ceased trading on 18 May, and had phoned the Comsec help desk about this last week. They didn't call me back as they had promised, and yesterday they changed the margin value of CDF shares from 70% to 0%

Revised my retirement projections

2009-05-06T20:08:00.003+10:00

It looks like the Australian Labor government will slash the superannuation tax deduction available to "high" income earners in next week's budget. The rumour currently doing the rounds (it's an Australian tradition for the government to leak the budget bad news in the weeks leading up to budget night, so that only the good news items come as a surprise) is that the current $50K cap for salary

Involuntary liquidations suck

2009-05-02T19:29:00.002+10:00

Commonwealth Diversified Share Fund (CDF) has announced that they are going to wind up the fund and pay out the remaining investors. As I had been moving away from picking individual stocks and increasing my investment in CDF as a proxy for index investing in two of my margin lending accounts, this news was unwelcome. However it wasn't totally unexpected, as CDF had ceased issuing new units in

Net Worth Update: April 2009

2009-05-01T19:15:00.001+10:00

Woo-hoo! Two positive months in a row.My net worth as at 30 April increased by $28,626 (+4.65%) to $644,180 (+4.65%), but that gain is still dwarfed by the huge -$141,895 (-15.68%) net loss experience last October. My leveraged equity investments continued to climb towards break-even (up by $20,811 in April to now be 'only' -$14,366 in the red), and my retirement account put on another $12,852 (+

If a tree falls in the forest and the manager is in administration, will I get paid?

2009-04-24T08:12:00.002+10:00

Timbercorp (TIM.AX)today announced that it has gone into voluntary administration. It has about $500m in assets and owes about $600m - sounds like it's gone bankrupt. It cites the changes to the tax rules regarding agricultural investments, the GFc etc. etc. for going broke - the usual 'the dog ate my homework' excuses that managers everywhere use to explain why it isn't really their fault that a

Fixed the interest rate on part of our home loan

2009-04-22T20:09:00.002+10:00

Most (90% or so) of home loans in Australia are variable rate, and fixed rate loans are generally only available for terms up to 5 or 7 years. My parents had a 30-year fixed rate home loan when they bought a house back in the early 1960s, but Australian banks moved to the 'standard' variable rate loan during the high inflation (nearly 20%) period of the 1980s.We fixed the interest rate on our

When is a target not a target?

2009-04-22T19:50:00.003+10:00

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has an official inflation target band of 2%-3% "over the economic cycle". Apart from the difficulty of determining exactly what time period defines an "economic cycle", the target also seems to only affect RBA behaviour when it's broken on the upside. When inflation had spiked above 3% due to the oil and commodity price bubble, the RBA was intent on preventing

Bought some new mobile phones

2009-04-21T18:32:00.003+10:00

We've been using two Sony Erikson K608i handsets with our $28 shared plan for just over three years now. Aside from the recent problems with being charged for unwanted 'premium SMS' messages being sent to DWs phone, we've been pretty happy with the plan and the handsets - enough to get rid of our land line last year.However DWs handset has been dropped a few times too often while looking after

All quiet on the Eastern front

2009-04-21T09:57:00.002+10:00

I'm having next-door neighbour issues. When we bought our house in 2001 the side boundary was a three-foot high brick retaining wall, with a standard six-feet high wood paling fence on the boundary line behind our retaining wall. On the far side of the fence was a typical Aussie back yard, with a lawn sloping fairly steeply down the the fence from the neighbour's house. Over the years a bit of

Rowany Festival

2009-04-13T09:57:00.003+10:00

Yesterday we threw together some 'medieval' looking garb, packed the kids into the car, and headed off to Rowany Festival for a day trip. The Festival is an annual five day event held over the Easter long weekend, and many SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) members travel from all around Australia to camp at the event. I've never been keen enough to camp at Rowany Festival, and we hsdn't