Moomin Valley

Net worth has gone from $61k to $781k .

This is not good news . My Mom has money invested with this firm via a local broker where she lives. The losing trades don't seem to af...

We pretty much achieved our goal of accumulating $A150k in cash to buy a house: Now it's time to adjust savings plans again. For the ...

This was the 5th month of positive investment returns. We hit new net worth highs in both Australian and US Dollar terms of $A716k (+$A15k)...

No, we haven't reached millionaire status yet but gross underlying assets do now exceed a million US Dollars: This is gross assets...

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 t...

I am now in Spain, where I arrived yesterday. I have never been here before but it feels very familiar as an amalgam of places I have been...

Financially, things went OK again this month. We hit new net worth highs in both Australian and US Dollar terms of $A701k (+$23k) and $US728...

Finally, I got the money I withdrew from my TD Ameritrade Roth IRA over to Interactive Brokers. It took a while because my bank account wit...

As a relatively old PF blogger :) I've occasionally mentioned that young people shouldn't worry too much about saving for retireme...

After doing Snork Maiden's taxes my final investment tax statement arrived and I could do my taxes: It's a huge contrast to my...

Financially, things went OK again this month. We hit new net worth highs in both Australian and US Dollar terms of $A678k (+$19k) and $US705...

I blogged a few days ago about Ameritrade dropping support for foreign investors. I got a reply from Interactive Brokers - they can't o...

I've more or less finished Snork Maiden's tax return for this year (Australian tax year ends on 30th June) but I can't submit i...

Snork Maiden wants to give money to her parents in China to help them out with medical bills. I've been telling her that all I need is b...

I got a letter from TD Ameritrade saying they will no longer support customers in my country from 30th October. Either I need to open a new ...

Interesting set of profiles in the Guardian . For a comparison, we make around £150,000 a year and have £230,000 in savings. Professor marri...

Yes, we are over $US700k in net worth after passing $US600k for the first time in February. Can't promise that it will hold up to the en...

So, we've been looking at houses and find some of the sort we might be interested in are above our pre-approved borrowing limit. So, we ...

We went shopping for bikes with a couple of friends who are visiting our city for a few months. When we were at the store I decided to buy ...

Financially, things went OK again this month. We hit new net worth highs in both Australian and US Dollar terms of $A659k (+$33k) and $US681...

The fund rose from $116k to $125k this month. Progress has been pretty steady since February: This is actually just the cash in the bank acc...

The fall in Facebook shares since the IPO isn't much of a worry for the earlier investors. Peter Thiel sells 80% of his Facebook shares...

In this piece , Gross says that stocks have had a 6.6% real return historically and asks how that can continue if the GDP grows at only 3.5%...

A whole month has gone by with no posts since the first day of the month... This seems to be the fate of a lot of personal finance blogs, ev...

Accounts for June in US Dollars: These accounts aren't totally final due to the slow reporting of tax credits etc. at the end of the Aus...

Back in September last year I discussed the idea that the last decade was a lost decade as far as investment returns were concerned. Back t...

These accounts are for the first six months of this year in Australian Dollars: As they even out the month to month volatility they are perh...

This month, stock markets fell sharply and the USD rose sharply. The MSCI World Index fell 8.88% and the S&P 500 6.01%. The Australian D...

Everything lost money in USD terms because both stock markets were down globally and the US Dollar strengthened a lot this month as you can ...

It stands at $A99,773 up from $A92,038 at the end of April. I now realize that we need to get to way over $100k. More financial reports for ...

Life is very busy recently and so I don't have much time to blog. I haven't even posted much on my professional blog. There hasn...

We went to the auction today for this house . This is the first house we actually saw sell at auction - only the second auction we've be...

The lender phoned me this morning. We could borrow up to $690k for a house with a price up to $750k. This is because the stamp duty is abou...

Back in February, we met with a mortgage lender at Commonwealth Bank. He told us that we need to have a reasonable sized deposit on deposit...

As usual, everything is expressed in US Dollars unless indicated. This month exchange rates were relatively stable for a change and investme...

The US has a particularly punitive tax regime on individuals. Not only are they taxed on their worldwide income but even if they move abroad...

So the government will increase the superannuation contributions tax to 30% but only for people who earn more than $300k per year. This is ...

that Google is defying the trend to smaller screens .

Here in Australia we are now in the run-up to the annual federal government budget announcement. All kinds of ideas that might be in the bud...

We continue looking at houses ... As we look more we gradually understand better what we are looking for. Houses vary a lot in location, age...

A lot of Australian closed end funds - known as listed investment companies in Australian jargon - have been trading well below net asset va...

As usual, everything is expressed in US Dollars unless indicated: Spending this month included a hotel bill that has since been refunded. Wi...

Doing the accounts for March this morning... Looks like we hit a net worth of $A600k for the first time, partly because of the fall in the A...

The numbers are mostly in now. As usual, everything is expressed in US Dollars unless indicated. February managed to squeeze in three pay ch...

The US has the Case-Shiller indexes and now Australia has a potentially tradeable house price index too.

More data than usual is delayed this month so I'm planning to wait to report fully when I have a bit more. As you can see from NetWorthI...

A respectable rate of return and most asset classes did well with the USD falling a little against Sterling and Euros. The MSCI World Index ...

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...