Moomin Valley

We finally have managed to get a UK national savings certificate worth about £40k that was in my father's name only transferred to my m...

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 be...

Today we went to meet with a mortgage lender. We didn't get far though. I thought I would be OK that I had easily accessible money in ma...

Sydney is the 7th most expensive city in the world to live in and 50% more expensive than New York. As Melbourne is 8th, I'm sure Canbe...

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 hous...

So we (Snork Maiden and me) went into a Commonwealth Bank branch and talked to the person at the customer service desk about getting pre-app...

I'm planning a trip next month to a neighboring country and just realized I will hit 1 million kilometres of flying during my flight the...

This graph explains our sudden interest in the housing market. It shows monthly saving in Australian Dollars outside of retirement accounts ...

As usual, this much more conservative portfolio returned less than the stock market or the Moominvalley portfolio . And with dissaving rathe...

This was a good month with decent market returns, a relief after a year where most months we were losing money. The big news is that we hit ...

We went to our first home auction today . There was a big crowd but in the end only 4 people seem to have registered to bid in the auction. ...

The last couple of weekends we have been to open houses in neighborhoods we might like to live in. I think the nicest house we've seen i...

Unisuper say they are concerned that the Australian government will not index the concessional superannuation limit this year. The issue is...

Back in 2008 I blogged about traditional Australian Listed Investment Companies . These have lower management fees than Australian index fun...

This is what happened to asset allocation over the year: Cash and bonds went up and large cap Australian stocks went down. This is due to ma...

Not sure how serious this annual review is going to be. I'm just going to post what I feel like. This is what happened to net worth in A...

I got an e-mail from HSBC in India today telling em to phone a US number because my debit card may have been used fraudulently. I did a Goog...

So we were in Dick Smith (electronics store) about to buy something that costs $A250. Snork Maiden asked the cashier if any deals were avail...

It was a big year careerwise. I got a permanent job in Australia after working temporarily for the same department between January and Augu...

I'll do an annual review soon, so this will be pretty brief. As usual the numbers are in US Dollars. Non-investment income was on the hi...

Happy new year! Hopefully, this year will be better than the last. For US investors things weren't so bad but the Australian stock marke...

Third post in this series : 1996-2002: 2007-Present: The most noticeable thing about these pictures I think is the sunshine :) It's not ...

Street scenes from the other side of the ocean: 1990-1991: 1991-1992: 1992-1993: 1995-1996: 2002-2007: Yes, when I was in grad school I end...

I was inspired by these posts to put up some pictures of places I used to live. The difference in my case is that they all look much the sa...

I haven't done this kind of thing for a while :) Looking at the Qantas chart there is a clear resistance line at $1.80. TA theory would ...

And back down again this month. The portfolio was heavily affected by the rise in the US Dollar reducing the value of non-USD assets in USD ...

Things reversed again this month but the losses were actually less than I expected. IN USD terms we lost 6.35%. In AUD terms we lost 3.05% a...

With potentially large expenditures in the next year or two we need to have more liquidity. So going forward I'm going to focus discreti...

It looks like the chairman and a bunch of other directors of Qantas went out and bought shares on the market. It's nice to see a vote of...

I saw an ad in the Australian Financial Review today to invest in the US Masters Residential Property Fund . I already invest in US property...

A reader asks the Sydney Morning Herald : "Q The money that an employer ''compulsorily contributes'' to my super * come...

If you ever have to do a security clearance - at least in this country - these are some of the things you'll need: 1. Everywhere you eve...

The Vice Chancellor (i.e. President) of the University of Queensland is resigning . But what shocked me in the story was that he was paid ov...

When measured in terms of median wealth per individual in US Dollars at $220,000. Switzerland is richest in terms of mean wealth per individ...

Yes our rate of return in USD was 15.01% for October which is a record. But it was largely due to the rebound in the Australian Dollar. In A...

Finally a positive month... The MSCI World Index gained 10.74% for the month while the S&P500 total return index gained 10.93%. But the ...

Thanks to high house prices and compulsory superannuation the average Australian household is much wealthier than the average American hous...

Seems like it was hard to get both Yoyo and the Hollywood sign in focus.

We went to the (relatively) new Costco store at Canberra airport today. You have to buy a membership ($A60 p.a.) before you can look inside...

Another month of negative returns. Seven straight months of losses. Returns in USD terms were heavily affected by the rise in the US Dollar ...

I just heard that Steve Jobs died at age 56 . I felt sad but my immediate thoughts were that he got on with doing the big things he wanted t...

The portfolio got slammed this month by a double whammy - stock markets fell with the MSCI World Index falling 9.4% and the US Dollar rose s...

Google finally opened Google Plus to anyone who wants to join rather than by invitation only. So I joined to see what it was about. I get th...

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 f...

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 ...

We arrived in Australia four years ago today. From today Snork Maiden can apply for Australian citizenship, though now she doesn't seem...

Cambria manages the GTAA ETF . Manager Mebane Faber also writes an interesting blog . Now they have http://www.indexuniverse.com/sections/ne...

A recent paper by Wade Pfau really overturns some standard ideas about retirement planning. The usual story includes picking a "number...

This is a graph of our three Australian superannuation (retirement accounts). The green is Snork Maiden who has now been working for four ye...

If you ever wondered how much money to give as a gift at a wedding, there is an "app" for that if the wedding happens to be in Isr...

Six losing months in a row now... The accounts for the month look like this in USD terms: Non-investment income was very high as was ...

An interesting article in the NY Times about whether investors should have had a lost decade - losing money over the last ten years or ...

Most large cap tech stocks now have fairly low price earnings ratios and some are even paying big dividends: Historically, tech stock...

I've actually been buying shares recently. Adding $A5,000 to the CFS Geared Share Fund (large cap Australian shares with in built borr...

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 addition...

The Dow Jones Credit Suisse Core Hedge Fund Index is a hedge fund index that is updated daily. This allows real time tracking of hedge fund ...

Another month has flown by... I'm getting tired of losing money. In Australian Dollar terms the last 5 months have all had negative retu...

HSBC lost a lot of money from it's venture into North America. Now they are withdrawing and have sold their upstate New York branches to...

I can't submit my tax return yet as I don't have details of the tax treatment of a couple of distributions I received. But I did all...

When http://moominhouse.blogspot.com/2011/07/yoyo-tackles-korean-food.html">I posted a picture of Yoyo looking at Sushi I said that...

Bibimbap can be served in a sizzling bowl which you are supposed to add soup and hot sauce to complete the preparation. But, then, sometimes...