Saturday, September 27, 2014

Moom's Taxes 2013-14 Edition







































I have now completed my own tax return - this goes really fast when you have a good system in place. Looks like I should also get a refund. My salary is only up 3% on last year and my taxable income by 6% but my real after tax cash income (counting realised capital gains and losses in the year they happen) is up 18%. Dividends, franking credits etc. are all up steeply too.

Previous years:

2012-13
2011-12
2010-11
2009-10
2008-9
2007-8

Snork Maiden's Taxes 2013-14 Edition

So, I just finished doing Snork Maiden's tax return for this tax year:
The tax year runs from 1st July to 30th June in Australia. The good news is that she should get a tax refund this year. This is because we now got private health insurance. Income is again up by about 10%. Investment income is up by a lot more than salary as are tax credits derived from investment income. The figures ignore employer and employee contributions to superannuation (retirement account) which amount to a lot of extra income.

Here are the reports on Snork Maiden's taxes for all previous years:

2012-13
2011-12
2010-11
2009-10
2008-9
2007-8

Supplementary Section Instructions Only Available as html?!

Apparently you can't even download a pdf of the supplementary tax return instructions. Instead you have to go through all these webpages.... There is a pdf of the main instructions (and hard copies at ATO offices) but not of the supplementary instructions. Why? If someone knows where they are please let me know!

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Ordered Another Valuation

I asked the bank to order a valuation on another house. This one is going to cost more than the previous one that we didn't end up buying. But there will be very little work needed to be done if we buy it, so we can afford to pay more. I think the house is a little on the large size, but Snork Maiden disagrees. It's in a different neighborhood a few kilometers further from the center (near this other one we bidded on last year). Despite finding that valuations aren't much use, I think this time we can use it as a basis for talking to the bank guy about raising the maximum amount we can borrow. I am now thinking to put 20% down (up from previously thinking 10%) after rerunning the numbers on a larger downpayment versus paying mortgage insurance, which you have to pay if you put down less than 10%. So, I am also ramping up the size of the Moominhouse buying fund. It's currently at $182k with a target of $250k (up from $150k).

P.S. 4pm

The valuation came in at $950k with a range of $920-$980k. We had guessed about $1 million. Anyway, so now we are going to discuss with the bank how much we can really borrow.

Saturday, September 06, 2014

Get Your Credit Score

You can now get your credit score for free in Australia, something that has long been taken for granted in the US. My score was 998 which is in the excellent band, which ranges from 833 to 1200.

Tuesday, September 02, 2014

Moominvalley Monthly Report August 2014

The Australian Dollar rose a little this month to 93.43 US cents. The MSCI World Index rose 2.25%, the S&P 500 rose 4.00%, but the ASX200 rose only 0.62%. Our Australian Dollar performance was close to the latter gaining 0.58% (1.05% in US Dollar terms). All asset classes apart from private equity gained with Australian small cap and US stocks doing best. By the way, you can get an up to date asset allocation here.

Net worth rose $A19k to $1.266 million or $US22k to $US1.183 million. The monthly accounts (in AUD) follow:



This month there is a new column and row to take into account housing investment activities separately from spending or other investing. So costs incurred in the housing hunt will be accounted for here. We seem to be out of the race for the house I bidded on this weekend, but the search continues.

Current non-investment income (salary etc.) was  above normal at $15.7k due to some extra payments. Spending was $4.7k which is lower than average. We managed as a result to save $10.6k from non-investment income. We gained $6.9k on investments.