Enoughwealth's Personal Finance Blog

New Blog Location

enoughwealth@yahoo.com (Ralph) — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 07:49:15 PST

I originally started using savingadvice to mirror my blogger site, as it offered 'categories', which wasn't available on the old blogger. However, it did have some drawbacks, mainly less ability to customise the blog template, and the fact that savingadvice gets revenue from google...

Make Hay While the Sun Shines

enoughwealth@yahoo.com (Ralph) — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 03:12:28 PST

Besieged by the non-stop promotion of the consumer life-style everywhere we look and everywhere we go, many people are struggling to cope with consumer debt and the pressure to live a lifestyle that is, to be honest, beyond the means of their available income. However, if you look...

Some great posts

enoughwealth@yahoo.com (Ralph) — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 03:09:41 PST

Trent, over at The Simple Dollar has done three great post in succession:
1. Dealing With Professional Burnout Without Quitting Your Job
2. Revisiting The Happiness Scale
3. A Financial (and Personal) Commitment For November

The only trouble is I don't think I can apply...

Net Worth Update October 2007

enoughwealth@yahoo.com (Ralph) — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 03:07:00 PST

My net worth as at 31 October decreased by -$3,590 (-0.31%) during the month to $1,158,905 (AUD), largely due to a decline in the estimated valuation of our real estate assets. The real estate valuations bounce around from month to month, affected by what mix of houses were sold during...

Tax Return Overdue

enoughwealth@yahoo.com (Ralph) — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 03:05:45 PST

I spent lunchtime at work sorting out what stocks had been sold during the last financial year, and it turned out that they'd only been a handful of them. Unfortunately two of them didn't have complete information in my capital gains transactions log (I only started back-filling all...

Strike While the Iron is Cold

enoughwealth@yahoo.com (Ralph) — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 20:28:25 PST

Back on the 12th of August I posted my thought that it might be a good time to buy some stocks for DS2. At that time the All Ords Index had dropped sharply to 5,965.2 - since then it has rebounded at today was at a new all time high of 6,808.2 (a gain of 14%). Goes to show that you...

Self-Funded Superannuation Fund gets Funded

enoughwealth@yahoo.com (Ralph) — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 03:33:00 PST

We're in the last stages of transferring our retirement funds from our employer-sponsored fund (with BT) into the Self-Managed Superannuation Fund that we setup a few months ago. I mailed in the paperwork to BT at the start of last week and the funds had finally disappeared out of...

Time to Buy Stocks?

enoughwealth@yahoo.com (Ralph) — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 05:36:22 PST

With the 4% drop in the Australian stock market on Friday the "correction" is now about 8%. While there could be further drops in the coming weeks, even if this is just a correction rather than the start of a bear market, I think it may be time to start looking at stocks to buy for...

Virtual Stupidity

enoughwealth@yahoo.com (Ralph) — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 08:50:45 PST

Apparently the biggest "bank" in Second Life has frozen withdrawals and converted deposits into perpetual bonds that are trading at a steep discount...

How Closely Does my Portfolio track the All Ordinaries Index?

enoughwealth@yahoo.com (Ralph) — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 03:09:24 PST

The graph below shows how well my portfolio of around 30 Australian stocks has tracked the All Ordinaries Index since 1 June 2007. As you can see there is fairly strong correlation between my portfolio and the Index (red and blue lines respectively). The chart also shows the effect...

When Can You Retire: Case Study

enoughwealth@yahoo.com (Ralph) — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 04:45:41 PST

In response to my recent post about the effects of savings rate and ROI on the age at which you can retire and reasonably expect your retirement savings to last until age 85, Fern wrote a comment requesting a review of her situation as an real world example. As I'm not a financial...

Calculating the Decline in Net Worth from "All Time High"

enoughwealth@yahoo.com (Ralph) — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 05:05:21 PST

I normally update the component figures (stock portfolio, retirement account) of my investments daily, but only calculate month-to-month changes in my net worth. Having had a couple of down months in a row I was interested in calculating where my net worth is in relation to my personal...

When can you afford to retire?

enoughwealth@yahoo.com (Ralph) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 03:57:12 PST

There are many retirement calculators available online, but it's interesting to look at the figures that pop out of a simple spreadsheet model to guage the effect of savings rate and return have on possible retirement age.

MODEL ASSUMPTIONS:

Start off retirement savings with...

Car Repairs Done

enoughwealth@yahoo.com (Ralph) — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 08:47:28 PST

The car now been fixed - one reconditioned Japanese gear box and a new clutch installed for a total cost of around $1510. Hopefully the car will now last for another 5 years or so (by which time it will have done around 150,000 km) and we'll then replace it with a "new" 2nd-hand vehicle....

Frugal living: Educational Coaching for Kids

enoughwealth@yahoo.com (Ralph) — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 01:37:45 PST

Many parents give their kids education highest priority, and a lot will resort to expensive out-of-school coaching to help them get better marks and/or pass selective school tests. Things were different when I was in primary school - you just sat for the selective ("Opportunity Class")...

DFS(FP) Update 4

enoughwealth@yahoo.com (Ralph) — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 07:28:29 PST

I checked through some of my email accounts yesterday and noticed that my assessment items for the DFS1 course had been marked and feedback emailed to me last Wednesday. The turnaround time for marking (3 business days) was very impressive. Three out of the twenty assessment items...

Wealth Inequality Rises (Again)

enoughwealth@yahoo.com (Ralph) — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 19:14:01 PST

Figures published in today's Sydney Morning Herald show while the disposbale income of low-income households rose by 31% in real terms over the past decade, high-income households saw their disposable incomes rise by 40% in the same period.

The popular assumption is that this...

Jobs For Kids

enoughwealth@yahoo.com (Ralph) — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 06:30:54 PST

DS1 is quite interested in the financial topics I've discussed with him. He enjoys doing his banking, earning some money busking, and I showed him how to apply for a business number online and how I fill in his eTax return. He's also been keen on using the computer - drawing using...

Net Worth Update July 2007

enoughwealth@yahoo.com (Ralph) — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 07:13:23 PST

My net worth as at 31 July dropped by $23,420 during the month to $1,126,770 (AUD), due to a perfect storm of asset classes all declining simultaneously (so much for non-correlated asset classes). My leveraged stock portfolios decreased by a net -1.39% last month due to the overall...

Car Troubles = $$$

enoughwealth@yahoo.com (Ralph) — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 15:54:29 PST

Our car is now 9 years old, although it's only done 78,000 km. Yesterday it developed an intermittent steering problem - every now and again when doing a LH turn it would "fight" against the left turn, before the resistence suddenly dissappeared with a bump. I took it in to the garage...