Friday, 1 August 2025

Net Worth JUL 2025

Chart updated to end of JUL in sidebar.

Stocks/cash increased $202,199 (+69.01%) to $495,179. This was mostly due to receiving a large payment for redundancy and accumulated annual and long service leave. I will keep about six months of basic budget requirement ($25K) in my credit union savings account, and the rest of the cash will be sitting in my investment mortgage offset account to reduce the monthly interest payments. About 21% of my retirement budget of $48Kpa is allocated to savings/emergency fund, and the 'surplus' pension income will be either added to my mortgage offset account or contributed into my SMSF as an personal deductible contribution. My TSB is over the limit for making undeducted contributions, so I am limited to the $30Kpa concessional contributions cap (SGL+ any SS or personal deductible contributions). Making deductible contributions (that are subject to the 15% contribution tax within super) only makes sense if I have taxable income (same with my negatively geared property investment), so I might need to use all the 'surplus' to just add to the mortgage offset account so the investment property is no longer negatively geared. I'll see how things stand towards the end of this year.

Retirement savings (SMSF etc.) increased by $49,785 (+2.29%) to $2,221,314. Part of this was due to receiving a 0.5% 'bonus' payment into my QSuper accumulation account when I moved about $440,000 into two lifetime pension accounts. The pension accounts have an initial value of the purchase price (that would be paid out if I died tomorrow), and that value will slowly reduce over time by the cumulative amount paid out as pension payments (until the final residual value of $0 is reached). The fortnightly pension payments commence next week, so I probably won't need to withdraw the mandatory minimum 4% from my SMSF pension account until the end of this FY (the required minimum has to be paid out by 30 June each year).

Est. valuation of our home (my half) was unchanged at $1,191,911 (for the sixth month in a row!). And the 'Other real estate' (my 'lake house' and the investment apartment) increased by $191 (0.01%) to $2,169,422. A slight rise in estimated value of my investment apartment was offset by a similar slight decline in the estimated value of my holiday home.

Other assets (my online depository bullion account at Perth Mint, and the bullion value of my gold and silver proof coin collection) increased by $991 (1.56%) to $64,470. I am currently adding $200 worth of gold to my Perth Mint online depository account each month.

Overall, NW increased by $253,166 (5.17%) to $5,150,305 during Jul.

After enjoying two weeks of retirement (gardening and tidying up the house and rearranging furniture) I already got a bit bored and reconsidered my decision to permanently retire and decided to see if I would get any responses to financial planning/associate planner/CSO/assistant job applications. I've applied for 15 positions and so far had 3 rejection notifications, 11 are in limbo (awaiting a response), and I had one phone interview today that resulted in a second interview via 'zoom' next week. The pay rates seem to range from slightly below to slightly above what my previous job provided, and any financial planner role would be more interesting than my previous IT QA role. I'm not too fussed about the salary as my tax-free pension payments provide about the same amount as my previous after-tax salary. I'll be mostly working for the pleasure of doing financial planning and helping people, but any extra income that gets added to my mortgage offset account will be nice. I'm only applying for positions that seem relevant/interesting and are in the Sydney area, and in the meantime will continue to work on my PhD.

I also started recording some youtube videos (well, one so far) and will see if that slowly builds up to becoming another stream of income (and a retirement hobby).

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