Moomin Valley

Short report this month. I am travelling, currently in Charlottesville VA and about to go out to do some shopping.... Long trip from Austral...

Yes, I haven't posted anything since last month's report, but I didn't post much on my professional blog either. It's been a...

Finally, we had a slightly down month in investment returns in Australian Dollar terms though the streak of gains extended to the 10th month...

Snork Maiden's stepfather died. He was 80 years old. Her mother is much younger. Snork Maiden has gone to China to be with her mother f...

Our first auction where we were actually bidding. Some guy started the bidding at $700k and then it went up in increments of $25k. It stalle...

Yet another in 8 months of positive investment returns in Australian Dollar terms (9th in USD terms). We yet again hit new net worth highs i...

This afternoon I had the surreal experience of getting insurance on a house I don't own. We saw the lawyer this afternoon and she recomm...

We are getting ready for the auction this weekend. If we end up buying we need to give the owner a cheque for 5% on the day. So I'm mov...

We went to see this house for the second time today. We took along a couple of friends/colleagues. One has some architecture background. Th...

The profits on a lot of our investments are currently at the maximum since we started investing in them. This is only remarkable because of ...

Turns out the government has decided to abandon the idea of taxing distributions from larger superannuation accounts . The latest idea they ...

The Australian Labor government is floating the idea of taxing distributions from superannuation accounts (retirement accounts) if the balan...

This was the 7th month of positive investment returns in Australian Dollar terms (8th in USD terms). This long streak of gains is making me ...

A topic I haven't covered for a while - endowments . The Yale portfolio is the most dissimilar to our own portfolios of those I tra...

I just realized that I'd been computing the rate of return over the last 10 years incorrectly in earlier versions of this chart that...

We came in near the top of 2012's predicted range for net worth . For this year, the optimistic forecast is $A975k or just over $USD 1 m...

This year was less eventful than last year, but I was very busy, mainly with my career and a few international and domestic trips. We also ...

This was the 6th month of positive investment returns in Australian Dollar terms (7th in USD terms). We yet again hit new net worth highs i...

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about the trouble at Aletheia fund managers. Well they are going out of business and we are shifting the a...

December and annual reviews are coming up. One finance area I talked about quite a bit on the blog this year was looking for a house to buy...

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...