June 2015 Monthly Accounts

These are the preliminary accounts for June. The main thing that might change are tax credits, which are estimated at the moment. Markets were down, especially in Australia, and as a result investment income was a negative $63k (Australian Dollars) and as a result net worth declined $58k. Salaries came to $13.8k which is what they are in a two payday month with no reimbursements. Retirement contributions were also the normal $3.2k. We spent $11.3k not including mortgage payments and $7.7k not including business expenses. But due to the business expenses and mortgage payments there was negative saving on the current account, offset by positive saving on the retirement and housing accounts. Tax credits, mainly associated with the end of financial year managed fund distributions are estimated as $2,800. These reduce tax payable on a 1:1 basis. We paid $1945 in mortgage interest, saving $350 in interest due to cash in our offset account. Transfer to housing adds that nominal saving, which we count as an investment return, to the actual mortgage payment to balance the accounts.

Update (from England)

It is always a slow process to get the accounts together at the end of June as it is the end of the financial year in Australia and data on tax credits etc. won't be available till mid-July. I estimate that we lost more than $A40k in net worth for the month and got -4.0% rate of return in AUD terms. The ASX 200 index was down 5.3% though. OTOH the MSCI lost 2.31% and the S&P 500 1.94%. Our estimated loss in US Dollar terms was 3.5%. So, again, we beat the Australian index but lagged the international stock market indices.

It looks like we again had high spending - $A7.6k not including large business expenses. And that doesn't include our mortgage repayments. We did buy a washing machine and dryer. That cost $A3030 in total. So the rest of our spending came to $4.6k. $943 was property tax ($313 per quarter) and body corporate fee ($630 per quarter). Health insurance is $308 (per month) etc.

I'm in England on business. Working on putting together an international consortium to bid for research funding. Round trip of 6 days away. I was in the Middle East for 2 weeks in late May early June - going to conferences and visiting family. My doctor was surprised when I said I was visiting family in the Middle East :) This second trip only came up while I was in Turkey (one of the three countries I was in). Yesterday was the hottest day of the year here in England. In London it hit almost 37C. A bit cooler where I was. Though we were meeting in a room which had air conditioning installed, the air conditioning was broken. So, it was hot work. We had lunch yesterday in the hall in this picture. Our meeting on Tuesday was in the building on the right...

Moomnvalley May 2015 Report

The Australian Dollar declined from 78.66 US cents to 76.59 US cents. Stock markets were flat to positive. The MSCI World Index fell 0.05%, the S&P 500 rose 1.29%, and the ASX200 rose 0.40%. In Australian Dollar terms we ganed 1.69% and in US Dollar terms we lost 1.00%. So we underperformed the international markets but outperformed the Australian market again. All asset classes rose with private equity doing best.

Net worth rose $27k to $1.294 million not counting housing equity and fell $US6k to $US0.992 million. Including housing equity, net worth rose $28k to $1.495 million - a new high ($US1.145 million). The monthly accounts (in AUD) follow:

Current non-investment income (salary etc.) was $20.2k due to business and medical expense refunds and retirement contributions were $3.2k.  Total investment returns were $21.2k. Spending on the current account was $13.3k. Removing a business expenditure and the cleaning of our old apartment it was $12.1k. We bought a new bed and again had major medical expenses. However, this number doesn't include mortgage interest, which was $2.1k of actual spending, for a total monthly spend of $14.2k (see last column core expenditure). If we hadn't reduced our mortgage interest using our offset account we would have paid $2.5k in mortgage interest. This gap will continue to get bigger. This month we raised cash as a share of gross assets to 5.67% from 5.28% in April.

We (notionally - the actual repayment was smaller by the amount of the gap in mortgage interest...) repaid $3.5k of the mortgage resulting in net saving on the housing account of $1,046. So, we saved a total of $7.6k.

Moominvalley April 2015 Report

The Australian Dollar rose for a change from 76.24 US cents to 78.66 US cents, which means that this month we did better in US Dollar terms than in Australian Dollar terms. World stock market indices gained but the Australian market fell. The MSCI World Index rose 2.95%, the S&P 500 0.96%, and the ASX200 fell 1.70%. In Australian Dollar terms we lost 1.10% and in US Dollar terms we gained 2.04%. So we underperformed the international markets but outperformed the Australian market (again).

Commodities did very poorly this month - down 3.67%. Partly because of dividend timing private equity was the best performer in our portfolio.

Net worth fell $9k to $1.269 million not counting housing equity and rose $US24k to $US0.998 million. Including housing equity net worth fell $8k to $1.466 million ($US1.153 million). The monthly accounts (in AUD) follow:

Current non-investment income (salary etc.) was $13.7k and retirement contributions were $3.2k.  Total investment returns were -$14.0k. Spending on the current account fell to $8.6k. Removing some business expenditures that will be refunded it was $4.2k. However, this number doesn't include mortgage interest, which was $2.3k of actual spending, for a total monthly spend of $6.5k (see last column core expenditure). I expect that this will be the typical monthly expenditure when we don't make any large extra expenses... If we hadn't reduced our mortgage interest using our offset account we would have paid $2.4k in mortgage interest. This gap will get much bigger next month. I am recording the saved mortgage interest as part of our investment income. But as this isn't actual cash we receive it has to be offset somewhere else in the accounts. We do this by recording housing expenditure - i.e. mostly mortgage interest - to include the saved interest. Core housing expenditure is what we actually spent on mortgage interest.

We repaid $3.3k of the mortgage resulting in net saving on the housing account of $841. So, we saved a total of $5.9k.

Snapshot at an Inflection Point

Now the house purchase is complete * and we are starting a new financial restructuring plan I thought of drawing up a balance sheet as a snapshot of this "inflection point". It's in a different format to anything I've done before as it is based on the various accounts things are in and how flexible they are rather than asset classes and beta and other investment theory things I've considered in the past. This is all in Australian Dollars:


Long term assets are retirement accounts, checking, saving, cash, and credit cards are short term and everything else is medium term as it can be restructured/sold/closed etc. but probably won't be done fast. So, the goal now is to increase the size of the offset account until it is the size of the mortgage. In the meantime adding a bit to some investments  - we still have $2000 of automatic savings a month outside of retirement accounts for example - and increasing the margin loan. Then one day in a few years there will be a flip - pay off most of the mortgage, redraw the mortgage, then pay-off the margin loan and make investments.

BTW, if you're wondering why we have a thousand dollars in Australian Dollars cash, a big chunk of that is a travel money card.

 * As you can see from the balance sheet we still didn't get the deposit on our apartment back, so everything is not yet settled.

Redrawing Mortgage for Investment Purposes

Following up finally on comments that bigchrisb made about paying off the mortgage faster and then redrawing the money to investment in shares/refinance margin loans. This appears to be the ATO ruling on this. So, there is no problem to do this, but I have been thinking about the practicalities. It seems to me that if you pay off say $50k of the mortgage and then withdraw the money for investment, then the next $50k you pay off just repays the redraw and so your tax deductible loan gets no bigger. So, it only makes sense then to do the redraw after paying off as much of the mortgage as you want in the long term before doing the investment loan. So, in the meantime I think we will continue to accumulate money in the offset account, which gives more flexibility. If you are wondering why we should pile up cash while having a margin loan, actually the effective untaxed interest on the offset account is higher than the after tax rate on the margin loan. So, it makes sense to borrow more on the margin loan while piling money up in the offset. I think I will stop automatic re-investments of distributions and dividends where there is no discount for re-investment to speed the process a little. The only one I think is with my Colonial First State funds. When we are nearer an amount I think is reasonable then it would make sense to actually sell investments and add that money to the pile. But that should be a final step I think. I do have a lot of tax losses so that the first $60k of capital gains is tax free. This will be a project over several years. Of course, maybe in the end we would take the cash pile and use it as a downpayment on an investment property instead :) So, lots of things are possible.

P.S.
For U.S. readers who might wonder about why go through this complicated plan.... in Australia, mortgage interest is not tax deductible for owner occupiers. But investment interest is, even if it exceeds the income on the investment so that you make a net loss. The latter is known as "negative gearing".

P.P.S.
From March on, I'll include the implicit saved mortgage interest as part of investment return. That means that it also needs to be included in the "transfer from current account to housing" and included in housing expenses in the account in order to balance all the books. I'll also include the "core housing expenditure" in the accounts which will be the actual interest paid to the bank.

Moominvalley Monthly Report March 2015

The Australian Dollar resumed its fall from 78.09 US cents to 76.24 US cents. World stock markets fell. The MSCI World Index fell 1.49%, the S&P 500 1.58%, and the ASX200 only 0.06%. In Australian Dollar terms we gained 0.50% and in US Dollar terms lost 1.88%. So we underperformed both the international markets but outperformed the Australian market. Actually because some stocks went ex-dividend this month but pay the dividend next month we did a bit better than this and outperformed all markets. But I can't be bothered to do the fussy accounting needed to account for dividends not yet paid.

Commodities and hedge funds were the best performing asset classes in our portfolio with Platinum Capital the best individual fund and Winton Global Alpha Fund second in dollar terms. Medibank Private was the worst individual performer losing $1690 in total.

However net worth rose $5k to $1.277 million not counting housing equity and fell $US20k to $US0.973 million. Including housing equity net worth rose $6k to $1.473 million ($US1.123 million). The monthly accounts (in AUD) follow:


Current non-investment income (salary etc.) was $13.6k and retirement contributions were $3.2k.  Total investment returns were $6.4k. Spending on the current account remained very elevated at $13.9k, which house painting and moving among other expenditures. Taking out the cost of moving (but not painting) and some business expenses that should be refunded it was a bit lower at $11.8k. The $2189 spending in the housing account is mortgage interest, while the $3,179 is our mortgage payments - so we paid back net $990 of our loan.

How Much Could We Save by Renting Our House out for a Year?

Bigchrisb commented on my recent post that we could save money by renting our new house out rather than going to live in it immediately. This is because the stamp duty paid to buy new properties is in this territory immediately tax deductible for investors. In Australia no costs of owner occupiers are tax deductible. So, I've calculated roughly what I think the financial gain from renting our house out for a year would be and come up with $18k:

The main deductions are the stamp duty, mortgage interest and depreciation. The first two we are going to pay ourselves anyway and so aren't actually additional costs while the latter is probably not a real cost, or we are going to suffer it anyway. Next there are property management fees, which might help in getting a tenant fast etc. and the difference between land tax on investors and rates on owner occupiers. There are real extra costs.

Assuming we could rent the house for one year at $650 a week we would earn $33800 in rent. So, the net income is -$34k and the tax saved at 40% is $13.5k. On the other hand we make $33.8k we would otherwise not have, but pay $25.8k in rent on our existing apartment that we would not have to pay if we lived in the new house as well as $3.7k in extra actual costs. So the net financial gain is $17.8k.

Let me know if you think I got something major wrong.

So, if we don't do this, economists would say that our revealed preference shows that the utility of living in our new house a year earlier and avoiding dealing with the hassles of being a landlord are worth at least $17.8k to us. For me, $17.8k is about 1.2% of net worth and so it's not enough to make a difference. It's not a lot more than our after tax salaries for one month. I asked Snork Maiden how big the number would have to be before she would be willing to do it and she said $50k. I know that if it was $100k I probably would do it :)

Housing Equity and Other Savings

I've updated my "savings components" chart to include housing equity. You can see the payment from current savings (blue) to the downpayment on the house (red). Also notable is that retirement profits (green) are approaching retirement contributions (pink). Non-retirement savings have performed much worse and profits (brown line) are nowhere near the money saved from salary etc (blue line). However, they are at least above the pre-GFC peak now.

Moominvalley Monthly Report: February 2015

The Australian Dollar was finally stable this month rising half a cent to 78.09 US cents. World stock markets rose strongly. The MSCI World Index rose 5.61%, the S&P 500 5.75%, and the ASX200 6.89%. In Australian Dollar terms we gained 4.92% and in US Dollar terms gained 5.57%. So we underperformed both the Australian and international markets but the latter only slightly. Still in absolute dollar terms this month had the highest investment income on record at $65k ($US57k), 55% more than any previous month.

All asset classes in our portfolio apart from hedge funds and private equity gained with small cap Australian stocks being the best performer (7.59%). Colonial First State Geared Share Fund gained the most dollars ($37.7k) followed by the Unisuper ($6.5k) and PSSAP ($3.9k) superannuation funds. I can't be bothered to work out rates of return for individual funds :)

However net worth fell $48k to $1.272 million not counting housing equity and fell $US31k to $US0.994 million. This was a result of the $111k second installment of our house downpayment. Including housing equity net worth rose to $1.468 million ($US1.147 million). The monthly accounts (in AUD) follow:




Current non-investment income (salary etc.) was $14.3k and retirement contributions were $3.3k.  Total investment returns of $108k also include the value of the gain in our house's value. As our house was valued at $785k and we only paid $740k I have credited a total gain of $45k, most of it occurring this month.

Spending on the current account was $11.9k, which include $2.8k in settlement costs and spending on our trip to New Zealand. We also paid car registration this month, which is an $1100 cost... The $693 spending in the housing account is additional costs, which the lender added to our mortgage loan. We have so far made two mortgage payments of $1589 each and so the total transfer to housing was $114k... So far there have been no interest payments on the mortgage. They would come under housing spending when we do make them. The house is currently being painted and we are booking the mover, arranging insurance etc.

Guardianship

My mother suffers from dementia. Up till recently my brother had power of attorney to make financial decisions for her, but financial providers now wanted him to have guardianship. So he is now the official guardian but the guardianship office where he and my mother live says that her investment portfolio is too risky. They want us to not have more than 20% in equities, get rid of all alternative investments and have the rest in cash and AAA bonds. It is not as if my brother and I decided on the current allocation. It's not a lot different to how it was when my mother could make her own decisions. The problem is that cash earns almost nothing anywhere and short term bonds less than inflation. Long-term bonds have the risk that their value will fall when one day central banks raise interest rates again.

We have tried to resist this and the guardianship office people met with my brother and his lawyer but the only concession they made was to give us a year to sort it out. In the meantime we also discovered (I read about this in an article in the New York Times) that the inheritance tax free threshold in the US for foreign estates was only $60k. That means that around 40% of the money in the US based separately managed accounts in my mother's name would be taxed away after she died - the accounts had minimal if any profit - so it would be taxing savings rather than earnings. So, we closed those accounts avoiding US inheritance tax and reducing the equity share of the portfolio to about 20%. Anyway, this is a warning to get good arrangements in place while you are still capable of making your own decisions rather than having a court imposed solution.

I need to think also about how to avoid US inheritance tax. I only have about $60k of direct US investments in stocks and mutual funds. But I also have another $70k in a 403b retirement account (TIAA-CREF). So, if I suddenly died there would be about $30k in inheritance tax that Snork Maiden would have to pay (no spouse allowance for foreigners...).  There are various options including trying to roll my 403b into an Australian super fund now or setting up an Australian self-managed super fund (SMSF) and transferring the US individual investments into it. My thinking is that this would then be like having units in an Australia based managed fund. Would need to get proper advice on that first. Of course, it's not worth setting up an SMSF for just USD 60k in investments - that would be just one of the holdings of the SMSF. So, watch out if you have individual stocks in the US and aren't a US citizen.

GMOM vs. GTAA

A few months ago Cambria Investment Management stopped advising the GTAA ETF and launched their own in house GMOM ETF to implement their their global tactical asset allocation strategy. How well has the new ETF performed? So far, so good:

 

GMOM has risen by about 2% since being launched and GTAA has fallen by about 1%. GTAA had had a fairly disappointing performance up till then. I was an investor in GTAA and switched to GMOM (I have 1000 shares). So, that was a good move so far.

ASX at Post-GFC High

Broke out of the trading range of the last year and a half. I had been thinking to rebalance away from large cap Australian stocks at the beginning of the week as US indices were looking like they could be topping out. But various evidence including the behaviour of the DAX index in Germany - which had recently broken out - made me eventually not do it.

Moominvalley Monthly Report: January 2015

The Australian Dollar fell by another 4.1 US cents this month to 77.61 US cents. The MSCI World Index fell 1.54% and the S&P 500 3.00%, but the ASX200 rose 3.28%. In Australian Dollar terms we gained 2.99% and in US Dollar terms lost 2.18%. So we underperformed both the Australian and international markets. All asset classes in our portfolio apart from small cap Australian stocks gained with commodities being the best performer. Colonial First State Geared Share Fund gained the most dollars ($14.5k) followed by the PSSAP ($5.6k) and Unisuper ($2.8k) superannuation funds and then the Winton Global Alpha fund ($2k). I can't be bothered to work out rates of return for individual funds :)

But net worth fell $A13k to $1.321 million not counting housing equity and fell $US65k to $US1.025 million. Including housing equity net worth rose to $A1.360 million but still fell in US Dollars to $1.055 million. The monthly accounts (in AUD) follow:


This month's accounts get more complex as we introduce the changes in housing equity and their implications for current and retirement accounts. And this is the much simplified approach. I decided to give up on a full economic accounting.

Current non-investment income (salary etc.) was $16.5k and retirement contributions were $3.2k.  Investment returns were $A42k in total.

Spending was at a record high of $32.5k because we paid $A27.8k in stamp duty tax to the government, which I decided to count as consumption spending. Income tax us treated as negative income in my accounting system but GST is an expenditure. So, logically stamp duty should be too.  Without that we only spent $A4.7k, which is low.

Then there was a $A37k transfer to the housing acccounting representing our 5% deposit with the seller's agent. This means we dissaved $53k from current non-investment income but made $37k in housing saving for a net dissaving (including retirement accounts) of $A13k. Next month will have the second and much larger transfer to housing of the 15% second installment in the downpayment of $A111k.

I just went to do a final inspection on the house. Settlement should be tomorrow.

Continuing to Recover from the Financial Crisis

This month profits on non-retirement accounts finally exceed the previous peak in June 2007 (in AUD terms at least). Of course, adjusted for inflation that is still a big loss, hence the title of this post. In retirement accounts the pre-crisis peak was $A108k in August 2007. This was exceeded for the first time in February 2013 and we now stand at over a quarter million dollars in cumulative profit this month. The retirement account numbers are post-tax. Cumulative profits on non-retirement accounts are only just over $A80k.