Wealth Inequality Rises (Again)

Figures published in today's Sydney Morning Herald show while the disposbale income of low-income households rose by 31% in real terms over the past decade, high-income households saw their disposable incomes rise by 40% in the same period.

The popular assumption is that this is a "bad thing" - and it is when the increasing the gap between rich and poor causes social friction and reduces social harmony. But it can't be all that bad when the "poor" households have still seen their disposable income increase by a hefty 31% in real terms over ten years.

Copyright Enough Wealth 2007

Jobs For Kids

DS1 is quite interested in the financial topics I've discussed with him. He enjoys doing his banking, earning some money busking, and I showed him how to apply for a business number online and how I fill in his eTax return. He's also been keen on using the computer - drawing using MS Paint and has worked his way through the QBasic tutorial I gave him. It therefore seems quite logical to combine his interest in computers and money-making to start his own blog. I don't want him to be posting anything personal on the web, but blogging about his busking and other financial adventures anonymously should be OK. So today I registered a domain name for him to use - Dotster has a special on 1-yr rego of .info domains, so I registered jobsforkids.info and will show him how to setup a blog using blogger and to setup some adbrite banner ads and inline ads. If we can setup a PayPal account for him linked to one of his existing online bank accounts I'll do that, otherwise we'll use my paypal account and I'll just keep track of how much he makes and add it to his pocket money. Hopefully a blog using the domain name jobsforkids.info and some strategic use of suitable keywords in posts should generate some traffic from search engines.

Copyright Enough Wealth 2007

Net Worth Update July 2007

My net worth as at 31 July dropped by $23,420 during the month to $1,126,770 (AUD), due to a perfect storm of asset classes all declining simultaneously (so much for non-correlated asset classes). My leveraged stock portfolios decreased by a net -1.39% last month due to the overall weakness in the stock market. Whilst the estimated valuations for my share of our home and investment property also decreased slightly by -0.85%. The valuation of my retirement account decreased quite significanlty during July (-3.23%) as there were declines in both domestic and international stock funds, listed property funds and bond funds.

Given today's large drop in the Australian stock market I don't expect this month to turn out to be a net positive either...

Copyright Enough Wealth 2007

Car Troubles = $$$

Our car is now 9 years old, although it's only done 78,000 km. Yesterday it developed an intermittent steering problem - every now and again when doing a LH turn it would "fight" against the left turn, before the resistence suddenly dissappeared with a bump. I took it in to the garage close to our workplace and during the day they changed the a ball joint on hte front LH wheel. Unfortunately the problem was even worse when the mechanic took it for a road test just before I was due to collect the car, so I drove it home and planned on dropping it back in for further work today (maybe an CV replacement?).

Driving home was very tense as the car would suddenly want to drift off to the right, and would then suddenly try to lurch to the left with a bit of a bang and a bump. Crossing the Sydney Harbour bridge was a white knuckle experience!

When we got home I decided to borrow my parent's car to drive to work today, and my Dad dropped our car off at a local garage for repair. It turns out that a couple of teeth were broken off the gears in the gear box, which will need replacing. $700 for a new gearbox, plus around $300 labour, plus maybe a new clutch (it still has the original clutch, which is probably quite worn out by now).

Copyright Enough Wealth 2007