Someone hijacked my old email account and sent spam!

Grrrr.

I noticed some odd spam email I received that seemed to be coming from one of my old, unused email accounts (an @netscape.net account I just keep open in case I want to refer to an old email from years ago). I logged into that account to check what was going on, and, sure enough, the "sent" folder has a record of spam emails being sent out. Fortunately it appears there were only a few spams sent every day or so, and the account is so old that most of the addresses in contacts list are probably no longer active.

Anyhow, I've changed the password so hopefully that will prevent any further use of the account by the mystery spammer. I suppose I was lucky that the account had security questions set up, which may have prevented the account password being changed by whoever/whatever was using the account to sent spam.

Anyone else had this problem with one of their public email accounts being hacked?

Subscribe to Enough Wealth. Copyright 2006-2011

Capital punishment wastes capital

I've never been a supporter of capital punishment, mostly because the legal system does occasionally get it wrong (and while you can pay compensation to someone who has been incorrectly incarcerated for years, the state can't "make things right" when it turns out they executed the wrong person), but also because I can't see that the principal of national "self defence" that could be used to justify the state killing people in acts of war can really be extended to executing convicted criminals rather than just incarcerating them for life in order to protect society.

But I had thought that execution was obviously cheaper than maintaining a prisoner in jail for the rest of their natural life. Apparently that isn't the case though - according to an article in today's SMH, it costs around $3 million per execution, while life imprisonment "only" costs around $1m. It seems sad that some US states may move to eliminate the death penalty for fiscal reasons, when instances of the wrong person getting executed for a crime had failed to see the practice banned.

Subscribe to Enough Wealth. Copyright 2006-2010

Cheap breakfast cereal and a free cricket cap

Coles currently has 750g packets of weet-bix on special for $2.09. I checked the unit price (28c per 100g) and it really is a lot cheaper than the regular price, even compared to the bigger 1.3kg packs (around 55c per 100g). I bought four packs as there is also a special offer from Sanitarium for a "free" baggy green cricket cap at the moment. The first 20,000 people to complete an online entry with four codes (printed inside each box lid) receive a cricket cap at no cost. After I entered the codes and filled in the online application I received an immediate confirmation that I would be sent a cap (well, DS1 will end up getting it to wear), so they can't have reached the 20,000 cap limit yet ;)

DS1 should like the cap, as he has previously expressed an interest in playing cricket (he tried out for the school cricket team last year, but didn't get selected as he's never actually played any cricket!). Maybe he'll put it on and actually practice a bit with the bat and stump set I bought he last year ;)

Subscribe to Enough Wealth. Copyright 2006-2010

Annoying 'test' transaction on my credit card account

I was checking the 1/1/2011 opening balance of my credit card account online when I noticed that an odd 'purchase authorisation' transaction for 10c had been processed on the 4th. I'd read somewhere that crooks will often make such a small transaction using stolen credit card details, and if the transactions gets processed without any problems they will then make large purchases a few days later. It seemed especially odd as the transaction was visible in the online transaction listing, but was missing from the electronic monthly statement that included transactions up to the 7th.

So, this morning I phoned the bank to check what the transaction was for. After being on hold for ten minutes before getting through to a customer service rep, I then had to wait another five minutes for her to find out that the transaction was 'probably' a test transaction done by FlyBuys. Apparently before they processed my recent request to 'redeem' some rewards points for a $100 credit onto my credit card account, FlyBuys made the test transaction to check that the CC account details I'd provided were valid. This 'test' transaction should be reversed off my account eventually. All in all, a total waste of my time.

Subscribe to Enough Wealth. Copyright 2006-2010

Sun Sets on NSW Household Solar Power Industry

A couple of days ago the NSW state government announced the outcome of their review of the solar power incentives scheme. As expected, the "feed-in tariff" was cut, as the scheme had proved more popular than expected and the targeted capacity had already been exceeded (and was therefore going to cost the government a lot more than expected). It was also proving to be a political liability, as people began to realise that to pay the 60c per kWhr tariff to those who had installed a PV system (usually middle and upper income households), all electricity consumers were going to be slugged with higher power bills (which would have greater impact on lower income households).

However, the cut to only 20c per kWhr was a lot more drastic than expected. At that rate, it really won't be worthwhile paying up front to have a PV system installed, even with the cost heavily subsidised by the federal government rebates. At 20c per kWhr for "feed-in" electricity generated by the PV system, and electricity consumption costing up to 17c per kWhr, the net value of electricity generated by the PV system will take a decade or more to pay back the up-front cost of installing the smallest (and most subsidised) PV system. Larger systems will probably never generate enough net revenue to pay for their cost.

Fortunately our application to have a PV system installed had been made well before the new feed-in tariff was announced, so we will still get paid the higher rate (for the first 4-5 years). On the downside, the change will probably drive all the PV system installers out of business in NSW. Our installer (NuEnergy) is based in Victoria, so hopefully they will stay in business and the reduced demand for new PV systems in NSW from now on will just mean that our new system gets installed on time (due sometime in December).

We'll see how this all works out. I'll track total installation cost, power generation data and net revenue and post occasional updates.

Subscribe to Enough Wealth. Copyright 2006-2010

All quiet on the blogging front

I haven't been blogging much lately -- DS1 was in and out of hospital three times in the past two months, and I've also had to take time off work due to illness (first for a bout of 'flu that lingered on for months and developed into bronchitis/sinusitis, and then for a leg infection that required a couple of weeks in bed/on the sofa and getting IV antibiotics twice a day).

All that put me way behind with my Master of Astronomy coursework, so I'm currently flat out catching up with assignments and lab reports before the end of semester. I somehow doubt that I'll be getting an HD for this subject either ;(

Nothing much to blog about - except maybe the cost of medicines and doctors visits...

Subscribe to Enough Wealth. Copyright 2006-2010

Recipe for contentment

The SMH reported briefly on a study on happiness published by Professor Headey in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. After tracking the happiness of 60,000 Germans for 25 years he found that over the long-term, happiness was variable, and depended on the life goals and choices of the individual, rather than being largely decided by personality traits moulded early in life and genetic factors.

In summary, the keys to happiness are:

1. Have a happy partner

2. Don't be overworked or under worked

3. Prioritise family and community, and have a partner who does so as well

4. Don't be materialistic

5. Don't be obese

I think that #1 is a bit rough on unhappy people - if we all tried to find a "happy" partner, the unhappy would end up even sadder and more lonely. #2 makes sense, although I suspect that being "under worked" would only be a problem due to lack of income, unless you had no interests or hobbies outside of work! I think the importance of #3 will depend a lot on whether or not you are an extrovert or introvert, and how social and emotional you are. And the benefits of community service to ones happiness will depend on how much satisfaction you get from helping others - if it gives you a sense of worth and "goodness", then doing volunteer work will add to your happiness and can be increased as much as you want for little financial cost.

#4 will help most people increase their happiness simply because most people will find it hard to earn enough to satisfy a seriously materialistic lifestyle without affecting items 1-3 above.

#5 is easier said than done (from personal experience), but I've no doubt that maintaining a healthy weight improves your happiness (if for no other reason than the deleterious health effects that being obese will eventually produce).

What other items do you think should be in a "top 10" list of the keys to happiness?

Subscribe to Enough Wealth. Copyright 2006-2010

Some little financial Christmas gifts

My company closed down for Christmas Eve, giving everyone an extra day of paid leave. They're pretty generous that way. On the other hand, they gave a minimal 2% "cost of living" pay rise last year to most employees (when the official CPI in Australia was around 3% and the average wage increased by more than 4%) and this year they gave no "across the board" rise at all, citing the challenging economic climate and uncertain profit outlook for 2009. As I anticipated, they decided to give a modest bonus ($250) to all employees just before Christmas. They normally don't give bonuses to non-executive staff, and a one-off bonus means that they have locked in the wage savings gained from keeping the general salary bill increase to just 2% over the past two years.

Aside from the $250 bonus at work, I also received a 1-for-12 renounceable rights issue from Woodside petroleum. As the 19 new WPL shares I'm entitled to are priced at $42.10 and WPL is currently trading at $47.50, taking up my entitlement will result in a net gain of around $100 (assuming the share price doesn't drop too much due to dilution when the shares trade ex-entitlement).

Overall though, the "Santa Claus" rally in the share market in the past week was a bigger boost to my net worth than these little Christmas presents.

Subscribe to Enough Wealth. Copyright 2006-2009

Am I underpaid, or is he overpaid?

Now, I'm not saying that David Tepper is being overpaid (well, actually I am), but he was paid my annual salary for every 6 minutes he worked in 2009! And although a 120 percent rate of return in excellent, a performance fee of 30% seems a bit rich -- especially since he won't be handing any of it back in bad years (like 2008, when his fund earned -25%). Overall, such performance fee structures seem designed mainly to transfer as much of the fund investors wealth into the fund managers pockets as quickly as possible.

For example, if such a fund started out with a value of $100b and made 120% in one year (and was paid a 5% base fee plus a 30% performance fee) and then -25% return the next (and was 'only' paid a typical minimum 5% base fee), the investors would end up with a return of around $34b over two years, while the fund managers would have been paid $40b in fees...

The $30 million pounds paid to Crispin Odey, a British hedge fund manager who made similar bets in 2009, seems a more reasonable payment for exceptional hedge fund management.

Subscribe to Enough Wealth. Copyright 2006-2009

Tiger Woods to be skinned alive

The latest rumour circulating about Tiger Woods infidelities is that his wife has had enough and decided to get a divorce. I suspect that while she may have known about (and tolerated) one or two 'flings', she isn't prepared to put up with a guy who has racked up more than a dozen affairs at a rate of more than two for each year of marriage. Apparently Elin Nordegren has a generous pre-nuptial agreement that would probably she her getting around $300 million in a divorce settlement, plus custody of the children and child support. That would make it the most expensive celebrity divorce to date - far exceeding the previous record Michael Jordan holds with his wife, Juanita, receiving an estimated $150 million settlement. In third place would then be Greg Norman with his $128 million payout to his wife of three decades, Laura Andrassy.

Subscribe to Enough Wealth. Copyright 2006-2009

Building a Castle, one stone at a time

I've always been an aficionado of castles, and even made a bid (unsuccessfully) to buy a small Scottish 'castle' (actually a manor house) a few years ago that was an ex-boy's remand school in need of substantial renovation. However, the combination of the UK property price boom and then the GFC makes it unlikely I could ever afford to buy a 'castle' fixer-upper, and DW was never all that keen on the idea of migrating to Scotland! So, I've now decided to build my own 'castle' as a holiday home on my parent's lake-side farm on the mid-north coast, with a view to eventually retiring there.

Not being totally insane, my 'castle' will actually be a modern DIY 'kit home' with some stylistic features reminiscent of medieval European architecture. Although I haven't even settled on a final house plan yet, the key feature will be to clad the exterior walls of the house with real stone panels, such as the 'rock face' granite cladding imported by Cinajus. The RRP for the granite cladding normally ranges from $106.33 per sq. m (white granite) to $136.67 per sq. m (for 'black' granite), and was recently on special for around $80 per sq. m. A few days ago I was checking that the product was still available, and found that Cinajus was having a clearance sale on some small 'remainder' stock for only $25 per sq. m! After much consideration (and two trips to the display yard by my parents to collect samples of the available granite colours) I've bought the stock of about 82 m^2 of white and 87 m^2 of 'black' granite wall panels. This should be just about the right quantity to clad a modest two-storey kit home. The cost of delivery of the 30 tonnes of stone to my parent's farm will add around $20 per sqm to the final cost, but the total cost will still only be around 30% of the normal RRP plus delivery.

Once I've found a few kit-home plans that I like, the next step will be to get an architect to draw up a plan with the features I like, and allows for the exterior to be clad using this stone. I'm not sure that a standard steel house frame will be strong enough to support this cladding, so I may end up building the exterior walls in hebel aerated concrete blocks, or plain old concrete 'besser' blocks. One major advantage of building the house will concrete walls and clad in granite will be a high degree of fire resistance -- very useful given the rear of the farm property adjoins the Wallingat National Park and is therefore at risk from bush fires.



Attaching the stone cladding to the new house will be a major endeavour - even though each 600x300mm piece isn't too hard to handle (weighing around 30kg), the entire consignment consists of around 940 pieces (28 tonnes in total!). Hopefully the finished product will end up looking something like this:

Subscribe to Enough Wealth. Copyright 2006-2009

Return to study next year?

I haven't been enrolled in any part-time postgraduate courses this year. Last year I'd been enrolled simultaneously in both a BEd degree and MIT degree (by distance education). The combination of full-time work, a young family (2 and 8 year old boys) with attention-demanding health issues (severe eczema), and going on holiday overseas for 6 weeks during the semester led to my dropping out of the BEd subjects I'd enrolled in and getting excluded for not making satisfactory progress.

I had been on an approved leave of absence from the MIT course, but then received a notice of exclusion just before Christmas for not meeting the progress requirements! I initially ignored the notice as they'd sent me the same last year by mistake. However, when I tried to complete enrolling in subjects for this year I found out that it wasn't a mistake. By then I had missed the deadline for appealing against the exclusion (I thought being on approved leave was a pretty good reason for not progressing), and would first have had to apply for special permission to make a "late appeal". In the end I decided that it wasn't worth the effort to even seek leave to appeal against exclusion, as I didn't fancy my chances of passing all the subjects I'd have to have completed this year to meet progress conditions.

I also didn't bother completing the assessment items for the Diploma of Financial Planning I'd enrolled in the previous year. I might still complete the items if I get bored during the Christmas holidays, but the career prospects in financial planning have dimmed a lot with the GFC and with the Australian regulator looking closely at commission-based remuneration in the planning industry. I really don't think enough people value financial planning enough to pay significant up-front fee-for-service.

Anyhow, I recently found out about an Internet-based MoA (Master of Astronomy) course run by James Cook University in Townsville. I've applied for admission, as I've always been keen on Astronomy as a hobby (I bought a 10" Meade SC telescope about 20 years ago) and have a suitable undergraduate degree and a Grad Dip in Industrial Math and Computing. I won't find out if I've been offered a place until the New Year, but I've already ordered a copy of the text for the first two subjects from Amazon.com (it cost around A$120 delivered from Amazon, compared to about A$150 for the same book from a local Sydney university book store!).

The MoA course *should* take three years to complete part-time, and cost about A$15,000. If all goes well I'd then like to progress to the DoA or PhD course (although I'll be in my mid-50s by the time I finish a doctorate). This study will be purely for fun, as I intend to stay in my current non-academic job until I retire, athough it would be cool to publish a few research papers "on the side". Sometimes I miss my old job as a research scientist.

Does anyone else think I must be mad to enrol in another part-time uni course? DW thinks I should just sit back and relax and not bother with any more 'study'. Perhaps this is my version of a "mid-life crisis" ;)

Subscribe to Enough Wealth. Copyright 2006-2009

Some good customer service from Westpac

The 0% balance transfer offer on my Westpac Ignite CC ended last month on the 13th, and my repayment of the full $22,000 balance due didn't appear on the CC statement until the 14th. As I'd left making the online BPay payment until the last minute, I wasn't surprised to see an interest charge on my next CC statement. However, the amount of interest was $32.08, which seemed a bit steep for only one, at most two, days of having a $22,000 balance accruing interest charges. The APR for cash advances on this account is 17.74%, which according to my calculation meant an interest bill of $21.38 should have be due. (The only way I can come up with something close to this figure is to divide the APR by the number of business days in a year, and apply that daily rate to the $22,000 balance for two business days).

As I wanted to make sure I now paid off the CC balance in full (so I didn't end up with another small balance on next month's statement for interest accrued on the $32.08 balance!) I phoned to enquire about how the interest amount had been calculated, and to find out the current balance due.

The call centre rep couldn't see how the amount had been calculated either (after checking that 0% had applied up to the 13th, and the balance had been paid in full on the 14th), so she told me she had reversed off the interest charge! Cool. Although their system is now showing $0 due she wasn't sure there wouldn't be a small interest charge calculated on the $32.08 balance from the 14th until the date of the reversal. I'll wait and see what appears on my next CC statement.

Subscribe to Enough Wealth. Copyright 2006-2009

Coin counting machine at CommBank

When DS1 and I went into a local branch of the Commonwealth Bank last week we noticed a shiny new coin counting machine had been installed. You pour you collection of coins into a tray, press a button and Hey! Presto! the coins are swept into the guts of the machine and a docket is printed out showing how much your coins were worth (you have to assume the machine never makes mistakes!). If you're a CommBank customer and use the docket to deposit the funds into your CommBank account there's no charge. But if you're not a CommBank customer you'll be hit with a massive 10% "service fee". We also found out that you have to use the docket to deposit the money that day (I suppose there's some sort of checking done when the docket is processed to verify the amount matches what the machine has taken - the docket would probably be easy to forge).

As the branch is open on Saturday afternoon when DS1 does his busking, I'll put a note with his account details into his busking bag so he can have his earnings counted and deposited into his account as soon as he finished busking. Currently we have to lug his bag of coins home, manually sort and bag them, and later make a trip to the bank to have the bagged coins deposited.

It will be interesting to see how the coin counting machine reacts if there are some foreign coins mixed in with the Australian coins - DS1 often gets some NZ, Chinese or Malaysian coins thrown into his busking collection box.

We'll probably just use the CommBank coin counting machine for counting and depositing the 'silver' (<$1) coins, and still take the 'gold' ($1 and $2) coins to put in his money boxes. DS1 usually gives a dollar or two of his earnings to his younger brother, and deposits the bulk of his income into his St George account so it can be transferred easily into the higher interest "online" savings account.

Subscribe to Enough Wealth. Copyright 2006-2009

Cub Scouting and Vacation Costs

DS1 enjoyed his second and third Cub Scout's meetings as a "new chum" and was keen to join up and start working towards some of the achievement badges during the upcoming school vacation. So I decided to go ahead and buy the required cub scout uniform (peaked cap, buttoned shirt and belt) from our local Snowgum store (the Scout product distributor in NSW). The clothing cost $64.85 from Snowgum, which is the same price as listed by the Scout shop. In addition, for new customers buying Scouts equipment Snowgum waives the usual $11 fee to join their loyalty scheme - so each May we will be sent a refund voucher worth 10% of the amount spent at Snowgum stores. I'm sure the refund will come in handy to buy some badges or camping gear. The Snowgum store didn't have any of the "official" Scout uniform trousers in the right size for DS1, so instead of paying $39.95 for a pair of tan-coloured cargo pants with zip-off legs we visited Target and bought a suitable pair of tan-coloured shorts for just $10. The "official" Scout uniform shirt and belt is made in China (the cap label doesn't mention where that came from), and the cheaper Target shorts come from Bangladesh. The label says to wash to shorts before wear, which I assume is to remove dyes and chemical residues (and possibly pins etc). As DS1 has eczema we will definitely wash the clothing twice before use. After the 10% discount the total cost of the basic Cub Scouts uniform came to $68.37. If the uniform doesn't get worn out too quickly, DS1 will use it until he moves on to Scouts in 18 months time, and we'll then keep it until DS2 is old enough the start Cubs three years later.

I handed in the membership application paperwork at the second meeting, along with the "[I'm not a] prohibited person" declaration that is required from any parent that wants to help out at Cub meetings. As a pro-rata fee amount due is calculated from the number of quarters remaining before the 31 March "year end", I listed 1 October as the joining date and post-dated the cheque.

For the school vacation period I have booked DS1 into a 4-day sailing course (cost $320) the first week of the holidays, and a 2-day art class the following week ($120). Hopefully DS1 enjoys the classes enough to make them worthwhile. We have a small catamaran sail-boat stored at my parent's lake-side farm, so sailing would be an affordable activity for DS1 if he enjoys it.

DS1 may also spend some time in the vacation learning JAVA programming - he worked his way through a couple of kid's programming tutorials last year using QBasic, so I bought a colourful introductory book on programming in Java that will help introduce him to object-oriented programming concepts and revise his previous work on variables, arrays, loops, i/o and so forth. Last week I registered him with the online training site http://orac.amt.edu.au/aioc/) used by students preparing for the Australian Informatics Olympiad programme. The site is really meant for high-school students (years 7-12) that are participating in the Australian Informatics Competition (AIC) or the Australian Informatics Olympiad (AIO), but the online exercises will provide many programing exercises for me to work through with him. When he submits his solution code to the site it will be automatically run using a suite a test data files and given an overall score based on program output correctness and run time. Cool. DS1 is only in year 4, so he can't enter the informatics competitions yet, which is a pity since he got a high distinction in the ICAS computer skills test this year (top 2%) and is interesting in programming and robotics. But if starts programming now for fun, he may do well in the competitions when he is in Year 7.

Subscribe to Enough Wealth. Copyright 2006-2009

DIB DIB, DOB DOB

Now that DS1 is old enough I had another look at what Cub Scouts branches are currently active in our neighbourhood. The closest Scout hall is long-abandoned and derelict, and the next closest packs have their weekly meetings starting at 6:30pm on nights that DW and I both return home fairly late from work. A 6:30 start is not really practical as DS1 and DS2 are at day care/after-school care until 6pm on those days. Fortunately there's another Cub Scout group a few km away that holds their meetings from 7pm-8:30pm on a non-working (for DW) week-night, so we dropped in for a visit last Tuesday to check them out. DS1 enjoyed the activity (building model rafts using corks and paddle pop sticks) and the overall club atmosphere, and he was intrigued by the list of tasks required for the various achievement badges and the bronze, silver and gold "boomerang" awards.

The cost for Cub Scouting is very reasonable ($10 each school term to help pay for materials, around $65 for the uniform shirt, belt and cap, and an annual association and club fee of about $180). I've filled in the application paperwork and will probably join him up after he's attended a few more weekly sessions as a "chum" (to check that his enthusiasm doesn't wear off too quickly).

I found it interesting that the cub "oath" is offered in two versions (one mentions the Queen of Australia and the other that just mentions Australia - to avoid putting off republican supporters I guess) but that both versions include an affirmation of belief in "my God". While the Australia Scout movement is less restrictive that the BSA (the "official" US Scouting body) in that girls have been allowed to join Scouts and Cubs in Australia since the 1980s, it still requires at least lip service to having belief in a God. It doesn't seem to matter WHAT God you believe in, but an expression of faith is an intrinsic part of the weekly meetings. Given the historic background of Scouting I have no problem with them including faith as one of the positive attributes they want to encourage in their young members, but making it a mandatory part of the oath for Cubs seems anachronistic given the relatively secular nature of modern Australian society. Oh Well, DS1 did attend a local church "Kids Club" for several years and knows the basic Christian Sunday school stories and he was Christened when he was one year old, so I suppose making the oath won't really be lying. I left the religion/denomination section of the forms blank though, as we don't attend church and therefore aren't affiliated with any particular brand of religion. There seems to be an assumption that having faith in "my God" means you will be a member of one of the organised religious movements. If I have to fill in the blank on the form it will be a toss up between putting down Methodist Christian (a simple answer) or Naturalistic Pantheist (possibly a more "honest" answer).

Next meeting I'll ask the pack leader what the process is for completing the various "achievement" badge requirements. A lot of the tasks can be done at home, but I'm not sure if DS1 will need to get approval from the pack leader before hand, or if DS1 can just do the required work and then make a presentation at Cubs when he's completed all the required activities. I remember from my short time as a Cub Scout many decades ago that the biggest hurdle to earning more than a couple of merit badges was the lack of interest from the pack leader (especially any topics they weren't "expert" in). There are only so many times that repeating the same course on "map reading" remains interesting for a child! The "new" (since 2004) list of 35 achievement badges includes a lot a topics DS1 is interested in (eg. music, entertainer, scientist, space, information technology) and can easily complete. For the "flight" badge it might also be possible to organise a day-trip for the pack to attend the Scout activity centre at Campden airport (there's a $53 fee that includes all the requirements for completing the "flight" achievement badge and also a half-hour joy flight in a Cesna 172).

Subscribe to Enough Wealth. Copyright 2006-2009

Down with the (swine?) flu

DS2 woke up with a temperature on Sunday morning, and it had hit 39.5C by early evening and wasn't going down with Panadol and cold towels. So we dropped DS1 at my parent's house at 8:30pm and drove to the local hospital's emergency department. The car park was completely full and there were people wandering outside wearing face masks. I left DW and DS2 in the car while I went to check out how long the queues in the emergency department waiting room were (I've had to wait over six hours to see a doctor on previous occasions), but didn't go past the entry due to a large sign stating that anyone with a cough of temperature could not enter unless they were wearing a face mask. There weren't any masks available at the door, so I decided to drive home to either collect some face masks, go to a local 24-hour medical centre, or call the locum to make an after-hours house call.

The locum service advised that they were very busy and it would be at least four hours before a doctor could attend us. Since it was already after midnight I decided to wait until Monday morning and visit our GP instead. By this time DS2's temp had dropped slightly and he was sleeping.

This morning we made an appointment with our GP in the morning for 11:30am, and I took DS2 in for a check-up. His chest and ears were fine, and the doctor thought it more likely to be a gastric virus than swine flu. We were given a prescription for a course of Tamiflu for DS2 "just to be safe" (since it's from the government stockpile we didn't have to pay anything, other than the normal GP consultation fee), and DW and I should go back to the doctor tomorrow if we're feeling worse (we both have a slight cough and temperature, and DW has some aches and pains). I was having bad chills last night, but was feeling reasonably OK today (although the cough seems to have settled in my chest), so I suspect we may just have the normal "seasonal" flu rather than swine flu that is spreading around Sydney at the moment. I had a seasonal flu vaccination last month, which would explain why I'm not as sick as DW or DS2. DS1 is still feeling OK, so he's staying with my parent's for another night. Fortunately it's school holiday this week, so my parents had previously arranged to have him during the day anyhow.

Hopefully we'll all be feeling better tomorrow morning.

Subscribe to Enough Wealth. Copyright 2006-2008

Pensioners hold advisor 'accountable' for bad advice

An interesting story regarding the back-lash some advisers are experiencing due to the GFC. I'm glad the advisor escaped with just a few broken ribs, but I think the 'furious five' old-age pensioners who kidnapped and tortured their financial advisor for losing their savings by investing in a failed Florida property scheme will probably end up with the short end of the stick. Apart from still being out of pocket $4.1 million, the five pensioners are now facing up to 15 years jail time for hostage taking and torture.

I wonder if the advisor invested (and lost) any of his own money in the dodgy Florida property scheme, or if he just made money (via fees) by getting his German "clients" (marks) to "invest". It would be interesting to know the details regarding his actions - was he licenced to give financial advice, what advice did he give the pensioners regarding this investment (risk, returns etc.), and was the advice he gave "suitable" for his clients given their age, risk-tolerance, need for diversification, understanding of the investment. It appears to be another example of how high fees paid to advisers by risky investment schemes can lead to massive conflicts of interest and unsuitable advice being provided to clients.

Subscribe to Enough Wealth. Copyright 2006-2009

Coles Gift Card promotion

I received an email today telling me that I had accrued $3.51 as at the end of May. Provided my total exceeds $5.00 by the time the promotion ends on 31 July, I'll be sent a Coles gift-card for the amount accrued. When you spend over $30 in one transaction you receive 1c credit per dollar spent. There are also some 'Boost' products advertised around the store where you earn an extra $1 credit for buying them. I did buy one such product a few weeks ago, but I can't tell if I received the $1 bonus as the monthly gift card statement doesn't provide details of the individual transactions that accrued credits. It's a pity that this promotion ends next month - after that happens the QFF points available with the Woolworths loyalty program will entice me compared to the standard FlyBuys points available at Coles.

Subscribe to Enough Wealth. Copyright 2006-2008

Neighbour dispute starting to cost real money

As I previously posted my next-door neighbour wants to add a couple of feet of new retaining wall to the existing brick retaining wall, demolish, realign (our respective property identification surveys disagree on which side of the brick wall the boundary is), and replace the existing wood boundary fence (which has started to rot due to the earth he piled against it soon after he moved in). Initially he tried to sell me that this work would be an improvement that would "add value" to my property, and that he was only asking for half the cost of the new boundary fence - he would generously pay for the cost of increasing the height of the existing retaining wall.

Since I didn't agree with my neighbour's "generous" proposal (and in fact complained to council about his intended works, and told him to send future correspondence on this matter via my solicitor), he has now officially demanded payment for half the total cost of his intended building works along the boundary (around $4,500). It looks like this will end up going to the Land and Environment court, so today I had to give my solicitor the go-ahead to spend around $2,000 getting the boundary properly pegged by a surveyor and to get a report from a geotechnical expert on the current situation and what drainage problems my neighbour has already caused by his previous "landscaping" efforts. The black line on the picture below shows how high the earth has been piled against my neighbour's side of our boundary fence!



My solicitor is also going to send me a costs agreement, as his bill will most likely exceed $1,000 if this matter does proceed to court...

On a purely economic cost:benefit basis it may end up that I would have been better off just letting my neighbour do whatever he wanted - but I want to defend my rights and the amenity of my backyard, even if it costs me a several thousand dollars.

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