Tuesday 26 December 2017

Starting early on the New Year resolutions

My perennial self-promise has always been to loose weight and exercise more, and yet again this year I didn't manage to make any progress with either. So, as we were going to have a low-key Christmas anyway this year (as DS1 is away in Europe on a back-packing holiday before he starts uni at the end of February, and I won't be visiting my parents at the lake house until the New Year) I decided to eliminate the Christmas tradition of overeating and having lots of sweets, and instead get an early start on sticking to my diet plan. Nothing too onerous, just healthy breakfast, a modest lunch and healthy dinner, and a serious attempt to eliminate desserts and snacks from my diet. I also need to start tracking my daily step-count and make sure that I meet my target of at least 10,000 steps every day.

Aside from health and fitness, my others goals for next year are to complete the Diploma of Financial Planning course I'm doing via distance education, as well as a Six Sigma Green Belt certification I am doing at work. I've pretty much resigned myself to not re-enrolling in the MSc/PhD by research that I was doing part-time, as I can't see that I'll every get enough time for it while I'm working full-time, especially if I have any health issues such as during the past couple of years. I'm due to re-enrol by next July, so I'll wait and see if I my eczema improves significantly before then.

My other goal for 2018 is, of course, to keep my job as long as possible. Ideally I'd like to remain employed full-time for another 7+ years. But these days one could get retrenched at any time. And as DW has found out, it isn't easy to find a suitable full-time job when you're nearly sixty, despite the economy doing quite well at the moment.

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Thursday 14 December 2017

DS1 HSC results out

DS1 got his HSC marks via email last night, and sent them via IM to DW and myself (he is currently on a train between Vienna and Venice - halfway through his 10-week post-HSC European back-packing holiday). His results were close to what he expected, or slightly better:

Economics 93/100 band 6
Mathematics 90/100 band 6
Modern History 90/100 band 6
Software D&D 89/100 band 5
English Adv 87/100 band 5
English Ext1 43/50 band E3
Chemistry 83/100 band 5

Plugging these numbers into an ATAR calculator suggests he should get an ATAR of around 95.75, which should be plenty for him to get offered a place in his first choice uni course (Commerce/Computer Science double degree at UNSW), especially as UNSW offers 'bonus points' for getting top results in the top bands in English Advanced, English Extension 1, Mathematics and they also offer bonus points for having completed the Gold Duke of Edinburgh award.

His actual ATAR will be released tomorrow morning, and the first round of university offers will come out on December 21. I'm very happy with his HSC results, and delighted that he should be getting into his first preference uni course. Hopefully DS1 gets home safely from his European adventure at the end of January, and is keen to apply himself to his uni studies in 2018.

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Friday 1 December 2017

Net Worth: Nov 2017

DS1 has arrived in Europe for his 10-week post-HSC/pre-uni vacation. He had a couple of days stop-over in Singapore on the way, then spent a few days in Frankfurt before getting the ICE train to Berlin. He had a few days there (seems to be mostly visiting museums based on his IMs, but that might just be the sanitized version he is telling mum&dad). He left Berlin yesterday, travelling by train (he has a rail pass for ten days of train travel during his time in Europe) to Prague for the next stage of his journey. His HSC result and ATAR will arrive via SMS this month, and he'll find out if he gets offered a place in his first choice for uni (a Commerce/Computer Science double degree at UNSW).

DW is still looking for a new job, but is filling in her time doing some short courses and attending free investment seminars, playing table tennis etc. The sale of her investment unit 'settles' in a couple of weeks time, and she is planning on putting most of her $100K capital gain into her superannuation fund.

My net worth increased to a new high this month - due to the strength of the share market providing strong gains in both our superannuation investments and my geared stock portfolio. The valuation for our home dropped slightly (back to where it was two months ago), as the current weakness in the Sydney real estate market spreads to the more affluent suburbs of Sydney. The general consensus seems to be that the Sydney property market will decline by a modest amount during 2018 (maybe 5%-10% decline), but I'm not confident that we will see substantial gains in Sydney real estate during the coming decade, and we could see further falls if interest rates start to pick up.



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