Monday, June 29, 2020

Some Updates

Today I met on Zoom the accountant who has agreed to certify me as a wholesale investor. There are two reasons I want this certification. First, Interactive Brokers will only lend me AUD 25k as a retail investor. Second, I want to invest in a new Aura Venture Fund. The accounting firm is Nexia.

Before the Great Financial Crisis I invested in the ill-fated Everest Babcock and Brown fund of hedge funds. We finally got the final payout from this fund last week. In the end we lost AUD 12,348 from this and related investments.

Employees at my university narrowly voted in favor of freezing pay, which was scheduled to rise 2% next month. I won't be surprised if they soon try to get me to retire, though at this stage we don't have a good idea of what will happen to student demand going forward. Clearly, fewer people will want to study abroad for a long time. But one hypothesis is that Australia will rise in preference relative to the US and UK as a destination. Moominmama decided to not go back to work for another 3 months. On the spending side we decided to send Moomin to a private school. He has been going 2 days a week to their pre-school this year (and 2.5 days to the local public school). So, spending on childcare and  education is only going to ramp up....

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