Aside from moving to dedicated hosting fairly recently, No Credit Needed (NCN) has now started to create an individual page for each member. I haven't updated my debt figures for last month yet, but as soon as I do (and NCN sets up my 'homepage' I'll put a permlink to my graph next to my NetWorthIQ chart (If I can display the chart as a link to NCN, rather than just a text link I'll do so).

Most of the NCN members are paying down CC or student loan debt, and hope to pay it off in a couple of years. If you're in a similar situation you can visit NCN for inspiration. Some other members are tracking more hefty debts such as home or investment property mortgages. I think I'm the only one tracking a whole portfolio of debt (mortgages, margin loans etc.) with a "pay off" timeframe of 20+ years!

Grrrr - both a "spend day" AND an "overeat day" - luckily not *too* bad on either front. I took DW and the kids to our local shopping precinct to get a batch of digital photos printed (DW tends to get "cabin fever" if she stays at home for more than a two days in a row, and DS1 loves visiting the shops, even though he never buys anything!) Although the photo printing was free (using a coupon from my dad), DW visited the Target store and bought her and DS2 some clothing. Although the clothing was a real bargain (DW got a blouse for $3.87 that was originally priced over $27) it still ended up being $11.85 spent on clothing. The bad part of this family outing was that while there I succumbed to a "two pizzas for $5 deal" at the Pizza Hut outlet in the foodcourt (they're normally $4.95 each) and totally blew my diet plan for the day by eating them both (they were the small "personal pan" ones meant for 1 person, and it was way too much fat and calories for healthy eating, let along someone supposedly on a "diet"). Ah well, tomorrow is another day to get back on the wagon, and next week I'll be back at work and can "brown bag" my standard lunch each day.

I also nearly went beserk and bought a Grundig LCD TV that was on sale (for $1499 compared to "original" RRP of $3200), but DW convinced me to leave it and come back "tomorrow" to check it out in detail. Luckily when I got home I realised that I should make an in-depth analysis of all it's features and price it compared to other models and makes, and that we don't really *need* another TV right now (although a "big screen" digital TV has been on my "wants" list for a couple of years). Anyhow, I can't be bothered doing the necessary homework right now, and prices will keep dropping on such electronic toys, so I'll try to forget about it for another year or two.

Ended up having to spend something today - $4.35 on petrol for the lawn mower (it ran out of gas half-way through mowing the lawn). Aside from that everything went according to plan - mowed lawn, cleaned gutters, shoveled four wheel barrow loads of earth from one side of the pool to the other (in preparation for putting down some gravel), and have a quick swim. DW has organised some of her digital photos taken this holiday season, so I'll burn them onto a CD tonight so she can take them to get printed tomorrow. She got a coupon for free digital photo printing from my dad (it came with the camera he bought).

It's the last day of my "at home" vacation tomorrow (back to work on Monday), so I'll have to try get the last of my stock portfolio data entered into Quicken and file away the big pile of paid bills and financial statements that's been building up for the past few months.

I'm wondering if I'll receive tax information for my US stock holdings and have to lodge a US tax return. So far I haven't sold any of my "little book" portfolio shares, but I did receive some dividends that had US foreign tax withheld. Not sure if I need to do a US tax return, or can just declare the dividends and claim the foreign tax credit on my Australian Tax return.

A very pleasant day out, with an evening walk around Taronga Zoo for three hours at dusk with my family and my parents. My parents have a "zoo friends" pass ($190 pa) so they are able to take DS1 to the zoo as often as he likes. Tonight (after closing) there was a special "picnic night" offer available to Zoo Friends and their guests, so DW and I got in for just $15 each (normal entry cost is $32 per adult). My parents paid for the entry and brought some sandwiches for our "picnic" dinner, so this was a "no spend" outing from my point of view.

My parents had also brought in some takeaway noodles for DW and themselves, and also brought some extra for me. Unfortunately I "fell off the wagon" and had some fried noodles and a couple of spring rolls for dinner - definitely NOT on my healthy eating plan. To make matters worse I then also ate the ham and turkey sandwiches I was supposed to have had for dinner as a late night supper ;(

Hopefully the three hours of walking around the zoo provided some extra exercise to offset some of this bout of over-eating. Although from memory a serve of fried noodles would take about 100 hours of walking to burn off the extra calories!

My only spending for the day was $18.38 worth of groceries I bought on the way home (so that I won't need to go to the shops for anything tomorrow). I'm planning to mow the lawn, clean out the gutters and do some more "earthworks" around the pool tomorrow, so it *should* be a no spend, high exercise and healthy diet day.... we'll see how it turns out.

The Australian stock market was up around 20+ points (to another "all-time high") before lunch, but then plummeted during the afternoon to end around 26 pts down for the day. This translates to a paper "loss" of around $2500 to my net worth, but as I'm a "long term" investor I try to just ignore the daily ups and downs of the market. Better to just concentrate on the things I can (and should) control - like my diet and exercise.

Another OK day - I managed to just eat mostly the "right stuff" again (hey, maybe I should write an eBook called the "The Right Stuff Diet"! - if so I'd better take the "before" shots for the cover before I get too trim, taut and terrific) and I got a bit of exercise cleaning the pool and shoveling some dirt from one side of the garden to the other. [We had bought a tonne of small river pebbles last year, and the plan is to put them between the path surrounding our pool and the back fence in place of the grass that is currently there. Hopefully the gravel will look a bit neater than the overgrown grass.] My weight is down to 98.6 kg - at the moment weight is dropping off me as if I'm on "The Biggest Loser". I know my weight won't keep dropping at this rate, but if I stick strictly to my diet plan it should average more than 1kg a week.

For the record, today was a fairly typical "diet" day, which comprised:
* 4 "weetbix" for breakfast, with 150ml skim milk and 150 lite soy milk, 4 tspn sugar and 4 tspn "aktavite" (a type of chocolate flavoured, vitamin enriched "sprinkles")
* a low-salt, lite ham and alfalfa sprout sandwich (on 2 slices of white, hyfibre bread)
* 1 navel orange
* 1 tin of chicken/veg soup and 4 slices of white, hyfibre bread (this isn't particularly healthy)
* 100g grapes
* 100g grilled, lean beef
* 50g grilled pumkin
* 100g boiled rice
* 3 "frosty fruit" ice-blocks (frozen fruit juice) (I should only have 1 of these as dessert each day, but it's still better than junk food or icecream)

Today wasn't a "no spend" day as I had to buy some groceries ($43.42) and top up the petrol ($14.97) to last until I go back to work next week. The petrol purchase wasn't too bad as the tank was still half full (not doing as much driving while on vacation at home), Tuesday is the day of the week where petrol price is cheapest around here, I had a 4c/L discount coupon from my shopping docket (which reduced the price to $1.109 per Litre), and I paid for it with the VISA "giftcard" that I'd got from my company as a "bonus".

I made some progress entering the current stock holdings for one of my margin accounts into Quicken (two more margin accounts to go), then my "Little Book" portfolio transactions for the past 7 months). That's the easy part. Going through the past 10-15 years worth of my broker and margin lender statements and my tax returns to fill in all the historical transaction data is not going to be fun. Luckily I still have an old copy of my Quicken files from '98 which had all my stock transactions up to that time entered correctly, so I'll just have to copy and enter them into the new version of Quicken, then work my way forward from '98 and check if the final stock holdings then reconcile. It's times like this that I hate DRPs, stock splits, takeover (especially cash/stock combos) etc. Another reason to only invest in 10-12 individual stocks, or, better yet, index funds).

DS1 visited my parents and they took him out to the cinema to see "Happy Feet". As Tuesday is the "half price" day at the cinemas here, the cost for two "seniors" and a child would have been reasonable. DW took DS1 and DS2 for a walk in the afternoon and collected some free wood chips for our garden beds from up the road (the local council had cut down a dead/dying tree last week and left a pile of wood chips on the side of the road. They usually come back after a week or so and clean up anything that's left).

One good thing with blogging is that I can write stuff that probably only I'm interested in

My New Year's Resolution for healthy living has survived the first day - although I stuck to my healthy eating plan (no snacking on left-over Christmas "goodies"), my exercise for Day 1 was limited to cleaning out the swimming pool. At the moment it's cool and raining in Sydney - most unusual for Jan 1 as it's often 40 deg C and clear blue skies at this time of year. Especially unusual considering that we're been in a drought for the past two or three years and the main dam supplying Sydney's water is down to around 30%. Luckily some of the rain today fell in the dam's catchment area.

As soon as the weather fines up I'll start doing half an hour of laps in our backyard pool each day while I'm still on vacation. Until then I'm making do reading the health and fitness blog written by a fitness women which has some interesting posts. The most immediately useful one is the ten tips for starting a training program. Although some of the tips (such as "Live in an area that provides opportunities for physical activity") seem a bit extreme - I'm about to move house just to be closer to a gym!

This blog also has some useful tips on how to handle the constant challenge of eating out without ruining your diet. Although I tend to "brown bag" my lunch (a tin of no added salt baked beans (for fibre), a tin of salmon in springwater, and some "high fibre" bread) for both health and budget reasons, there is sometimes no alternative to eating out - especially if it's a business lunch with the boss.

Another interesting post was the tip to stay hydrated by drinking a couple of glasses of water after drinking a cup of coffee (as it is a diuretic). I don't drink coffee, but I drink LOTS of diet coke - I'm trying to cut back from a couple of 2L bottles a DAY, to just one 2L bottle lasting all day at work and at home with dinner. I'll make an extra effort to take a bottle of filtered water along to work, so I can alternate between the caffeinated drink and plain water throughout the day. Hopefully the reduction in caffeine plus the weight loss will get my blood pressure back down below the "borderline" readings I got last time I visited my doctor. Avoiding having to start taking blood pressure medication by losing weight and execising would also save a lot of money in the long run.

Anyhow, my weight is currently 99.1 kg (goal

Who knows. But, as this is the time of year when lots of people who should know better start to make wild guesses, I might as well have a bit of fun and put on my Nostradamus hat (at least I have no reputation to tarnish):

My PF:
- Although you ever know when the markets will tank, I'll stick with the herd and say that the total return for the Oz stock market won't be the 20% or so we've enjoyed for the past three years, but will manage a good 10% or so. This will help my retirement fund and geared stock portfolio to have another positive year (10-20% increase).
- I imagine that commodity prices will moderate slightly as Chinese growth is held to a more sustainable rate, and oil will stay mostly within a $50-65 a barrel band in '07.
- The Sydney housing market will remain subdued (0-5% gains), despite interest rates having peaked and possibly being dropped a notch or two during '07.
- The US stock market will gain a bit by the end of '07 (5-10%), so I wouldn't be surprised if my "little book" portfolio ends up with a slight profit by the end of '07.
- At this time I'm hopeful that my NW will increase by my target 10-12% (plus my $30K savings) during the year.

World events: Hmmmm, the crystal ball is a bit cloudy, but I'd guess that:
- Nth Korea is still resisting international pressures over it's nuclear program by the end of '07, and is trying to get financial and diplomatic concessions from the US.
- China continues to build up its military and holds some impressive military exercises to intimidate Taiwan. The US gets less and less supportive of Taiwan as it's economic ties with China increase.
- Fresh elections in Palestine by the end of the year see some progress towards an negotiated peace with Israel, but sporadic violence continues to make this a long-term proposition. [Unless Israel or the US bombs some nuclear facilities in Iran during the year].
- US, Oz, UK all increase troop numbers slightly in early '07, but it's not enough to improve matters in Iraq. By the end of '07 numbers are being reduced and coalition forces are fortifying green zones and bases for maintaining a long-term presence in Iraq "supporting" the Iraqi police and army. Monthly Coalition losses start to reduce towards the end of '07, but the de facto civil war continues with civilian deaths continuing to escalate.
- Lots of wars in Africa kill lots and lots of innocent people.
- Bird Flu and Mad Cow outbreaks make headlines a couple of times, but more people are killed on the roads each day in the US, Oz, and UK than die worldwide from these two in '07.
- After considerable debate and campaigning, regulations requiring labeling of cloned meat is enacted in the US. Meanwhile people continue drop like flies from smoking, alcohol and drug abuse.

I'll give myself a score out of 12 this time next year

Well, my financial goals are pretty well set and my asset allocation implemented - what actual performance I end up with this year is in the lap of the gods. So, the goals I'll be concentrating on most at the start of '07 are:
* using Quicken to track my daily transactions in detail once again [like I did before I got married, had some kids and suddenly had no spare time ],
* get my share transaction records up to date in Quicken so my capital gains tax calculations will be less onerous in July. It may even let me do some propoer end of tax year planning and run some "what if" scenarios.
* stick to my healthy eating plan (aka "diet") and get a bit more exercise, so I can achieve my ideal BMI by the end of June...

Aside from that I'll be busy this year doing a subject for my Masters in IT in the first half of the year, and starting my studies for a Grad Dip Ed in Secondary Science education - that will keep me busy! In the second half of the year I'm taking a leave of absence from the MIT course, as I'll be flat out with the Grad Dip Ed subjects, plus I have to do a month of prac teaching (for which I'll have to take 4 weeks annual leave from my "real" job).

It will be interesting to see where things stand at the end of '07.

Wishing all my readers season's greetings. Blogger has been playing up so I didn't get to post much over the holidays.

Well, maybe, maybe not. I've seen a few articles about the resources boom that hold the view that when the Chinese economy and World economy takes breather (next year?) commodity prices will drop back down to their pre-boom prices as new production (stimulated by the recent profitability of resources companies) comes on stream.

A contrary view is that exploration and development was at very low levels between 1998 and 2003, so the push for increased production has only just begun. Couple this will a typical lead-time of up to 10 years to get a new mine into production and the picture for commodity prices looks somewhat more rosey.

Today's Australian Financial Review also had some interesting facts about the concentration of commodity production - a handful of big resources companies control the lion's share of production, and therefore are in a good position to maintain high commodity prices in the medium term:

Commodity % output from big-5
Produced in each industry
Platinum 94%
Iron Ore 85%
Nickel 82%
Alumina 55%


I think I'll hold on to my BHP and Rio Tinto stocks for a while longer - especially as they've already come back considerably from the peaks earlier in the year.