Sunday, February 12, 2012

2012 Forecast

If the stock markets do well, the Australian Dollar stays high, and we don't buy a house we might hit $US800k this year... Buying a house would reduce net worth by about $50k due to purchase costs - mostly "stamp duty". If the Australian Dollar fell to its purchasing power parity level we'd more likely be at $US600k. If the stock market is flat we'd probably be $100k lower. I doubt after two negative years in Australia there will be a third negative year. I also doubt the Australian Dollar would really fall to 70 US cents... But $US500-800k is probably a good range to expect. In AUD expect $A600-800k.

It is looking like Snork Maiden's job will be converted to a permanent position (and a promotion) but the paperwork is still being processed...

2 comments:

Financial Independence said...

Have you considered :
- Whether it worth buying a property vs. renting from financial point of view? Assuming that prices are very high in Australia now.
- If you get a mortgage, would it be better to pay for the house maximum amount of money you have. Most likely return on your investments is lower than mortgage interest?

mOOm said...

When you plug the numbers into standard calculators like the New York Times one (needs various fudges to match the Australian situation) renting is better than buying with reasonable assumptions if you plan on staying in one place for less than 6 years and after that buying starts to pay off. So now we have permanent jobs here and like living here we are thinking about buying, especially as little things about our apartment that we can't change increasingly seem to annoy us.