Voluntary Redundancy

So my employer announced a couple of days ago in the weekly newsletter that there will be a voluntary redundancy scheme. The details won't be announced until next week. Up till now they said that redundancies would be based entirely on determining work needs and budgets going forward and there would be no voluntary redundancies. Moominmama might also be made redundant mid-year, as her employer is also cutting and she is under-employed in her organization currently.

So, I did a simulation of what would happen if we both quit mid-year,* I got an AUD 75k payout (1 week's pay per year of service + 25k for long service leave etc.) and retired putting my transfer balance cap into pension mode. At the end of 2025 there is no real difference, as my pay is largely replaced by the payout. At the end of 2029 our net worth is 7% lower than it would otherwise be if I followed my original plan to work half time from next year until then.**

At first, when I told Moominmama this result she said: "Why are we working anyway then?" When I mentioned that I needed to stress test the result for different rates of return etc. she began to say it was too scary that we wouldn't have a salary coming in and I shouldn't take voluntary redundancy. But with that attitude I wouldn't retire till our youngest child completes grade school in 2037 when I will be 73!

In any case, I might yet be made compulsorily redundant. Our school (group of departments) has been given a salary budget for this year that is around 10% lower than the salaries we are paying... 

* To get a rough estimate you don't need a simulation. Just work out the after tax salary and superannuation you are giving up by retiring now net of the redundancy payment and divide it by current net worth. That tells you how much more % you would have in net worth at the end of the period of foregone salary.

** Net worth in 2029 would still be AUD 1 million higher in real terms than at the end of 2025 despite being retired. This is because our current spending is only 2.9% of our net worth (not including housing equity), which is well below the classic 4% rule.

P.S. 21 February 2025

Heard today that the window for applying for voluntary redundancy will only be three weeks from 25 February when the details will be released.

Moominmama's Manager Made the Whole Thing Up!

So, Moominmama talked to HR about the "voluntary redundancy". They said that there was no restructuring in progress and she would only be considered for voluntary redundancy if she literally volunteered and that basically her manager just made the whole thing up! This sounds like real incompetence or professional malpractice on his part.

Redundancy Package

Moominmama was offered a redundancy package. Seems a bit like an offer you can't refuse. When she asked if she would be fired anyway if she rejected it, her boss told her he couldn't tell her that... We don't know the details of the package yet. Her lower level manager said that as she is only working two days a week it's hard to involve her in projects or for them to take on projects that need her skills because she doesn't work enough. But she wants to take the package and doesn't want to work more days. 

She plans to reduce the daycare days of our almost 4 year old for the second half of this year. After that he should be in full time pre-school. 

I ran a simulation and through the end of 2024 the effect is a reduction in net worth of about AUD35k before considering the value of the package and after considering the likely value of the package it is about even. After that the effect gets progressively larger, but, surprisingly, in the long run (2029 and 2044) net worth is around 2% lower than in the base case. This is in contrast to the scary numbers that we are currently spending AUD 177k per year and my after tax salary is AUD 130k.

I feel like I must have done something wrong in the simulation.

Career Update

A year on, the career plan needs updating. I agreed with the School Director to take long service leave in 2022 and delay my leadership position to 2023-24. Instead, another person would take that leadership role for one year. Two months into the year, the director became a head of school at another university. The person temporarily filling the leadership position took over as interim director and a third person filled the leadership role. When I raised the issue recently, the person in the leadership role said they knew nothing of the plan to put me into the position in 2023-24 and it would depend on the new permanent school director who will be starting in January 2023. I don't think that the new director would be enthusiastic about me in that role.

Yesterday, I met with my immediate Department Head. He said that he thinks the leadership position is now off the table and doesn't think there will be pressure for me to take that kind of role now... He also wants me to again teach one of the courses I dropped.* The advantage, of course, is that teaching this course won't require any preparation. This new course has taken more preparation that anything I've taught before, I think. I am still working on that as the course began this week, but the end of prep is near... I'm not happy about teaching more again... Anyway, I told him that I would want to teach both courses in the same semester rather than spreading them out over the year. I find switching between teaching and research to be hard and end up wasting a lot of time doing that.

I also told him that I had thought about going to part-time status instead. Yesterday, I sent an email to HR asking about that. But I think that depending partly on investment income is a bit scary given the current economic and market uncertainty. On the other hand, the question is whether I will ever feel like I have enough money to retire....

I'll probably end up teaching the old course again together with the new one this time next year.

* He is teaching it this year (he also taught it before). Next year, he wants to revive another course that we have both taught before....

Headhunter

I was contacted by a head hunter today for a senior government position on the borderlines of research and policy. Normally headhunters approach me about academic positions, so this was a bit different. I wouldn't have to move for the job and I could plausibly apply for it. It would pay about double what I get now. I had a look at the "selection criteria", the current holders of the same level positions, and some reports they put out. I was already thinking that I would have a lot less freedom in such a position. The upside is I am a bit bored again with my career and it would be a new challenge. I felt positive when I saw the backgrounds of some of the people in those positions. But when I looked at the reports I felt mind-numbingly bored. Typical government reports with heaps of recommendations. I just don't think I could do it. So, I told the headhunter no, but recommended someone else.

Career Plan

A couple of months ago I discussed my career decision making issues. I made a decision and will take long service leave next year and reduce my teaching load. I will drop my current courses and teach a new (for me) course in the second half of the year instead of teaching in the first half of the year. In the two years following that I plan to continue teaching the reduced load while taking on a "leadership" position. This takes me to the end of 2024 when I will 60. At that point I will either go half time or retire depending on the situation. Anyway, that's the plan at the moment. My immediate "boss" knows agreed to the plan for 2022 and the "boss" at the next level knows the 2023-24 plan. No-one has the full picture.

Career Update etc.

About a month ago I posted about my career decision-making. So, because I ummed and ahhed, the incoming director found someone else for the leadership position for a year with a view to me doing it after that. On the other hand, she was happy for me to get a teaching reduction when I am in that leadership position.

I talked with HR and my immediate department head about long service leave. He was happy for me to get a reduction in teaching next year but not the course I wanted to drop. Instead, he suggested I drop both courses that are supposed to run in the first half of the year and do another course instead in the second half of the year. This is somewhat appealing as after a few year I get bored of teaching a course even though preparing a new course is a lot of work. So, then I would have a year out of teaching, then teach the new course, and then take on the leadership position while still teaching this course. 

That takes us to the end of 2024 when I will be 60 years old. So, my thinking is to then drop to a 50% position rather than retire outright and teach one course a year. 

On another front, a former student who I am collaborating with on research and maybe on another fintech business venture (at the moment I am on the informal "advisory board") is interested in trying to implement automatic systematic trading with my methods. He already has 2-3 other collaborators on the other (research intensive) business development. These guys are pretty expert in Python etc while I am relatively expert in markets. But he wants me to pay for their time up front for development. So, I really need to make sure I have something profitable before paying for this. So, I am going to do more extensive backtesting of my soybeans model, which is the easier one to backtest using my existing software. Most of the work is in compiling futures data together into a continuous series. I will go back at least to the Great Recession and maybe further. Currently I've tested about 6 years. If that works out (I am skeptical actually) they would then do more testing of other markets once we are trading the first market.

My thinking is to pay for development by being issued shares in return for cash in their (to be founded) company. After that when trading is up and running there would be profit sharing with the management company of which I would also be then a shareholder. One of the team is an accountant who would set all this up. They already have an IP agreement in place.

This actually all seems pretty crazy to me but you won't succeed if you don't try.

Career Decision-Making

My university has a big deficit currently and one money-saving move has been to ask people who are eligible to take long-service leave. Every pay period money is put into a long-service leave account. The university can't access this money unless the employee takes long-service leave. When they take long-service leave, the university stops paying their regular salary thus reducing the current deficit. I haven't yet been eligible as you need to have 10 years of service, and I started in 2011 in my current position. But I was thinking of taking long service leave in the first half of next year. I was vaguely thinking about retiring by the end of next year.

According to standard criteria we are financially independent. 3% of our net worth is AUD 150k and our annual expenditure is around AUD 120k. However, I expect our expenses to rise faster than the rate of inflation. We have two young children who my wife is determined to send to private schools (I tend to think that public schools are fine). We are spending on one private school and daycare right now. We don't get much childcare subsidy from the government because our income is high. But high school is more expensive than this.

My wife (Moominmama) is working (2 days a week), though I told her she doesn't need to if she doesn't want to. She said that holding on to the job has option value. Which I kind of agree with. Things feel very uncertain.

Now I was asked whether I could again take on a leadership position in my school (school = very large academic department in US terms - our school has 4 departments within it - think something like a business school of a university). This is probably the best of the leadership positions. I think it is kind of unfair because I spent five of the last ten years holding such positions, which are a lot of extra work, and some full professors have never done even one. The argument is that I am good at it and they're not... 

So if I started this in January, I couldn't take long service leave and it would be for two years probably. Usually, you get AUD 10-20k a year extra pay. After tax, that is half that, of course. After discussing with Moominmama she said that I should ask instead to reduce my teaching. This has happened in the past and the incoming director might be more open to this than the current school director. Moominmama also think I should hold onto my job for the "option value" and not retire. So, I suggested to her that after doing the leadership position for two years maybe I would switch to half time, which means I could keep the low teaching load. The truth is that without leadership duties my job is a very easy way to earn AUD 200k a year (including the superannuation contibutions). AUD 100k a year is also good money. So, I think I will tell the incoming director that I will do it, but only if I can teach less. I would still earn the AUD 200k a year for the next two years. I won't tell her about dropping to half time after that. Or should I just say no, because others haven't done their fair share of the work?

Stopped Out...

My long position was stopped out on Wednesday. Now back to more or less zero profit on this account - still have a positive overall result from the trading experiment. Also, I realised that I still can't really psychologically handle trading overnight futures positions at the moment even at the smallest trade size. I am losing sleep because of it. So, I am going to stop trading for the moment. I need to get a lot of academic work done in the next two weeks before going on another overseas trip. At some point after I am back I will do some further research on trading models. My thinking is I could design a model that would only make trades when the odds were most in favor of winning. The current model trades all the time regardless. The ultimate long-run goal is automation of trading or taking it out of my hands in some other way. To achieve these goals I don't need to be trading continuously at the moment if I'm not making good money at it and  it's having negative effects instead.

I am also at the moment on a trip for a job interview. As I am learning more about the position it seems more challenging and to need leadership skills beyond what I have. I would be shocked at this point, though, if they offered me the position.

New Era in Moomin Valley

In a few months we will reach "financial independence" - our annual spending will be feasible with a little less than a 3% p.a. withdrawal rate. About 60% of this was due to our own efforts working, saving, and investing over the last 24 years and 40% from inheritance. I never depended on receiving the inheritance, which is why I saved so hard. Because I knew finding an academic job could be very hard when my initial short-term contracts ended, I saved up to 50% a year at times. This allowed me to live for a year in 2001-2 without working for pay, traveling around the world looking for work. Similarly, when we moved to Australia, I could experiment with trading in the financial markets while exploring alternatives.

On the other hand, I think I was willing to take more risk based on the probability that we would receive a substantial amount. In the case of the financial crisis in 2008-9, I took on too much risk. The pressure of trying to make a living from trading with a small amount of capital combined with the volatility of the financial crisis was too much and I decided to stage an academic career comeback, which has been very successful.

The other half of the financial independence equation in the blogging community is usually "retire early". I don't have any plan to do that any time soon. I like the research side of my work and I have my teaching etc organized so that going forward it shouldn't be too hard - I only need to teach during one half of the year for now. As things are at the moment, it would be hard to find a better job than this. So, it doesn't make any sense to sacrifice my salary. I am actually exploring a potential career move to another bigger city. That job would have more admin and maybe no teaching. Introspection tells me that I wouldn't like to retire currently.  On the other hand, Moominmama is pretty frustrated with her work at the moment and so now has options to take a break and consider alternatives.

On the other hand, our spending is growing by more than the rate of inflation and I expect that to continue. So the current 3% withdrawal rate would become more than a 3% rate over time unless investment returns are very good, which does not seem likely. Continuing to earn some money does sound good in those circumstances.

Is continuing to work limiting our location choices? At the moment, I don't think there is another location that we would both agree on and which would make practical sense. We have to consider education opportunities for little Moomin. So, moving to a small town in Australia does not sound like a good move from that perspective. The nice parts (with good education) of the two biggest Australian cities are extremely expensive and would take us out of the financial independence zone. We definitely would never move to Moominmama's home country (she doesn't even want to visit at the moment). Moominmama is not enthusiastic about moving to either of my home countries. One is too cold and dark as far as she is concerned (Northern Europe) and the other too foreign and dangerous (Middle East). That leaves Southern Europe as a sensible or feasible alternative, but I don't think we want Moomin to grow up speaking Spanish or French? I think it would be hard for Moominmama to learn those languages too, though not difficult for me. So, continuing to work is not stopping us from making a move to another location that we could or would want to make.

So, for now not much will change, but this blog will change. I plan to stop reporting actual earning, spending, and net worth figures. Going forward, all numbers will be in percentage terms only. When the vast majority of our net worth was the result of our own work and effort I was happy to report those numbers, and reporting, even though it is mostly anonymously, helped keep us on track. But now that so much of our net worth has not come from our own efforts and we don't have the goal of achieving financial independence anymore, I don't want to report the numbers any more. On the other hand, I'm not going to erase the existing blog.

Our long term goal now is to pass on at least as much wealth in real terms to the next generation as we received from the previous one. My parents also inherited more than 2/3 of their eventual net worth, though they also saved and worked hard to build up wealth in earlier years. They eventually passed on what they inherited.

Pay Offer

My employer announced the pay deal for the next 5 years. For the average academic it will be a 9.1% increase (less for me), which is less than inflation was over the last 5 years :( For the average non-academic it will be 10.6%, which matches inflation. It's the same deal for both groups but some years will have absolute pay increases and some proportional pay increases, so the more you are paid the less you will get. Also, the after tax gain will be even less, because additional pay is all taxed at your marginal rate of tax. Seems the union has agreed to this. A minority of employees belong to the union. In theory you can appoint your own representative if you don't belong to the union... but that doesn't really happen, I assume. When I went to check the local union branch's Twitter thread to see whether they had anything to say about the deal, it is all about same sex marriage and other political campaigns that they spend union fees on. Nothing on the deal the employer announced. No, I won't be joining the union...

Half a Century

Today is my fiftieth birthday. It feels like quite a milestone. This morning I was sitting in a presentation with a colleague from a unit I used to work in who when I asked him how things are going said: "This is my final year, I'm retiring"... so after discussing that for a bit I told him it was my 50th birthday today. He said he was working too hard to celebrate back in 2000. It's probably the halfway point in my adult life, though you never know how long you are going to live, of course, we can just rely on life expectancies and how long our parents lived.

Careerwise, I think I need to be a bit less like this guy - "my strategic plan is to say yes to everything" and more like this guy. Two of the bloggers I follow. I find it hard to say no, though I am doing it more and more. Early in your career I do think you want to say yes a lot, but then you need to start to get more selective or you'll never get anything good done. You need to decide what to invest time in. I've been fairly successful. Three years ago I was appointed full professor and I am a reasonably well known researcher in some circles. I'm happy with some of my research, but I still think I could do much better work.

I got my PhD at age 29, but in a lot of other ways I've been a late developer. Since my fortieth birthday I achieved one major typical life goal - getting married (six years ago now) but at 50 I still don't have children, have never owned a house etc. I guess these goals were never that important to me or I actually was opposed to them. If you follow the blog, you'll know we are still pursuing those two goals. We probably have achieved the goal of financial security, though it could still all unwind if things go really wrong. I'm definitely not a risk averse person. I have come quite a way though from the crisis point in 2008. I made the right decision to refocus on my academic career.

Income per Capita in Australian States

According to this nominal income per capita in Western Australia is double that in the US and in the ACT double that in the UK. This shows the overvaluation of the Australian Dollar but also the high incomes in these states. I find the numbers hard to believe though. Nominal gross income per capita has doubled in the last decade but only increased by 50% in the decade before. These also imply that academic salaries have fallen back a lot relative to averages in the last 15 years. Snork Maiden's salary (not counting superannuation (retirement) contributions is less than average gross income per capita now. My salary at the same rank was about 50% above it back in 1996 when I first worked in Australia. It's hard to believe that a professional salary is less than income per capita (which includes children, retirees etc in the denominator), but that is what the ABS claims.

Snork Maiden's Job Made Permanent

She had the interview about four weeks ago but had to wait till today to get confirmation that her position which was a temporary one has been converted to a continuing one. This also means a promotion to what would be the assistant professor level if she was at a university rather than a government lab.

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...

Rome

I was just invited to come and talk in Rome. But I turned it down. I think I will have done enough traveling for the year and I don't feel particularly expert in the specifics that they are interested in. I don't see it adding a lot professionally in other ways. It's more like a training session for the participants (from developing countries) from what I can understand. It's a pity because I like Rome and I have a friend I could visit there and even in theory visit family from there. But that's a big trip and would take me away from Snork Maiden for a long time and she isn't very keen on that. So, I think I'll stay home this time. I expect only to get more such invites in the future.

Consulting

How much should I charge as a consultant? My employer allows us to spend 20% of our time on consulting. So I figure I should take my salary + employer retirement contributions and divide by 4*52 days to work out a daily rate. And add on any expenses too, of course. Snork Maiden thinks that is too low. And it seems to be lower than what one of my colleagues quoted. I'm not really interested in making money from this project but more about developing a long-term relationship with the client which would be valuable in terms of science and policy impact. I wouldn't really spend time consulting for a purely commercial client as I think we don't need the money. Unless they offered a really large amount of money of course :)

Four Years in Australia

We arrived in Australia four years ago today. From today Snork Maiden can apply for Australian citizenship, though now she doesn't seem to be in so much of a hurry to do that now. She just got a visa to visit the US (Australian citizens don't need visas) so won't bother with the citizenship until getting back from the US. We're still living in the same apartment as we were when we got here. We're now earning a lot more money but our net worth is about the same due to the financial crisis that intervened. I got a permanent job though Snork Maiden hasn't yet. There is still plenty of demand to hire her on a temporary basis for the next couple of years. But she hasn't looked for a permanent position outside her current employer and they are taking their time. Lots else has happened in the last four years too. We got married. We've travelled to Europe and Asia and around Australia. We've had people come visit here...

Superannuation and Life and Disablement Insurance

I finally got my job contract and have signed and returned it, so now I have a permanent job. As I discussed, I decided to make no additional contributions to superannuation (retirement) beyond the 17% my employer is contributing. Additional contributions have to come from after tax income as the employer contribution already almost hits the annual $A25k ($US26k) ceiling on pre-tax contributions. As I won't be paying any capital gains tax for a while and franking credits help reduce my tax bill it seems to make sense to invest outside super for the moment. There will be plenty of opportunity to invest extra in super nearer retirement (assuming the laws don't change). The cap on after-tax contributions is $A150k per year and at the moment for over 50s there is a $A50k cap on pre-tax contributions. I'm 46. So from age 50 to 65 I could in theory put $A3 million into super! I don't think I need to make extra contributions now.

I think we will instead increase Snork Maiden's superannuation contributions to the maximum pre-tax level. Currently her employer pays 15.4% on top of her salary. We contribute $A225 every two weeks from pre-tax salary. We could double that to $A450 and stay within the $A25k cap.

I did opt for the maximum life and disability insurance that is allowed by my superannuation provider without providing health information. This would be a lump sum payout of $A255k currently. That declines to $A231k next year and so forth. It makes sense that the number goes down as there are less years of salary to replace and savings will increase at the same time. The premium is $A218 a year for that amount. I'm not a big fan of paying premiums to insurance companies given the insurance company failures I've seen. But this amount made Snork Maiden feel more comfortable.

Job Offer

I got an offer of a continuing/permanent job. It's only an informal offer at this stage but a formal offer is guaranteed pretty much. We don't have to move either. Let alone to Cloud Cuckoo Land :)