Our investment rental property is still vacant (the last tenants moved out at the beginning of July), and we also haven't had any realistic offers to buy the property, although its now been on the market for nearly two months. Meanwhile the lack of rental income has meant a cashflow shortfall of about $2,000 each month, which I'm having to meet by drawing down on our 'portfolio loan'. It is times like this, when real estate values are stagnant, if not declining, and mortgage interest charges are producing a negative cashflow, that real estate seems more like a "liability" than an "asset".
Depending on whether or not we get a new tenant, or get a good offer to buy the property, we may either continue to rent it out for a couple more years (while we decide whether or not to build a new house on the block and move there ourselves), or else just sell it and use the net proceeds to pay off the mortage on our current home.
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Wednesday, 5 December 2012
Tuesday, 4 December 2012
More 'study' next year
Although I was originally intending to proceed from the Master of Astronomy degree to a professional doctorate in Astronomy at JCU (with the possibility of 'transferring' to a PhD subject to satisfactory progress), the unexpected closure of the astronomy department by JCU earlier this year left me wondering how to proceed after completing the MAstron course. It now looks like I'll be starting a research MSc next year at a local university ("SU" = 'Some University', situated about 4km from where I work!), as I received a 'conditional offer' of a place last Friday (the 'conditions' were simply to provide certified copies of some of the supporting documents I'd included with my application to enrol in their PhD program).
Although I didn't get offered direct entry into the SU PhD program (as the JCU Master of Astronomy was deemed to be a coursework degree, rather than a 'research' masters - which has to be at least 2/3 research), I will be able to 'upgrade' my enrolment to PhD candidature after a year or so --providing I make satisfactory progress with my research project.
As there is no free parking available close to SU, I've bought a 16" push scooter and will experiment using it to speed up the commute from work to uni one afternoon each week, which should mesh nicely with my plan to loose more weight and get fitter in 2013 (although riding around Sydney on a push scooter I'll probably look like a real dork). At least there's a suitable precedent in astrophysics...
Subscribe to Enough Wealth. Copyright 2006-2012
Although I didn't get offered direct entry into the SU PhD program (as the JCU Master of Astronomy was deemed to be a coursework degree, rather than a 'research' masters - which has to be at least 2/3 research), I will be able to 'upgrade' my enrolment to PhD candidature after a year or so --providing I make satisfactory progress with my research project.
As there is no free parking available close to SU, I've bought a 16" push scooter and will experiment using it to speed up the commute from work to uni one afternoon each week, which should mesh nicely with my plan to loose more weight and get fitter in 2013 (although riding around Sydney on a push scooter I'll probably look like a real dork). At least there's a suitable precedent in astrophysics...
Subscribe to Enough Wealth. Copyright 2006-2012
Finished my MAstron degree
The results for my final subject in the Master of Astronomy course came out this morning - I managed to get another HD, so my overall GPA was 6.5 (out of 7). This is just enough to be 'eligible' for the university's academic medal for a masters by coursework, but I probably won't know if I get one until graduation day. Initially I wasn't going to bother travelling from Sydney to Townsville for the graduation ceremony next March unless I was sure I was going to receive a medal (I didn't bother attending my last couple of graduate diploma ceremonies, just got the testamurs mailed out to me), but in the end I decided I might as well take DS1 to Townsville for a four-day 'holiday' as he is in the second year of selective high school and may find the university graduation ceremony interesting. In any event, spending several days snorkeling at nearby Magnetic Island or taking a day cruise out to the inner reefs of the Great Barrier Reef will be fun for him. The return airfares are about $500 for the two of us, and four nights accomodation in a 'family room' costs about $600 - I've invited my parents to travel to Townsville to attend my graduation and share the room for the four days. As they are both about 80 years old I can't assume that they will be fit enough to attend my next graduation, if I eventually qualify for a PhD in 5-6 years time (doing a PhD part-time is a s-l-o-w process!).
By happy coincidence one of my nieces is also be graduating at the same ceremony (with a first class honours science degree majoring in marine biology), so my eldest sister may also be there on the day.
Subscribe to Enough Wealth. Copyright 2006-2012
By happy coincidence one of my nieces is also be graduating at the same ceremony (with a first class honours science degree majoring in marine biology), so my eldest sister may also be there on the day.
Subscribe to Enough Wealth. Copyright 2006-2012
Tuesday, 2 October 2012
Blog issues
I've been busy with work, my assignments for my final MAstron subject, and putting together an application for entry into the PhD program of a local university. So I haven't been blogging. I also haven't been checking my blog stats, so I only just realised that there were issues with the blog. It seems that a change by blogger in August caused problems with 'custom domains' that were redirected to a blogspot blog. Apparently blogger is aware of this issue, but to date hasn't fixed it (since the change, the 'custom domain' setting for a blogspot blog is incorrectly assumed to mean that the content is NOT being hosted by blogspot). Since no fix has been implemented, I've removed the custom domain setting on the enoughwealth blog account, so the content is at least accessible directly via the http://enoughwealth.blogspot.com.au/ URL. However, going direct to the http://www.enoughwealth.com URL was displaying an ad page (the default content for dotster accounts until content is loaded), so I've had to put in a simple link to my blogspot URL until I can work out how to setup automatic redirects using dotster. Unfortunately the http://enoughwealth.com URL still displays the dotster default ad page, and I don't know how to fix this just yet. Sorry for any inconvenience to my readers.
ps. I also had to fix a problem with the enoughwealth yahoo email account having been hacked -- which resulted in a spam post added to my blog via this email account (as well as some spam emails sent to the contact list of that email account). Hopefully that's all under control now, so, if you received any spam emails from that email account that got by your spam filters, I apologise.
*** UPDATE: 03 Dec 2012 ***
I decided today to have another go changing the blogger settings to get my custom domain redirection working again. After an unsucessful attempt to modify the CNAME settings in my Dotster hosting account (per bloggers instructions), I stumbled upon a new setting in the Dotster control panel for redirecting my domain straight to the blogspot URL, rather than travelling to the parking page (where visitors had to click on a link in order to finally get to this blog). It looks like the redirection is now working, although we'll have to see if it lasts - I may have created other problems by trying to edit the DNS name settings in Dotster before I came across the redirection option!
Hopefully this change may get my traffic back up to the traditional 100+ blog readers per day, rather than the handful of visitors I'd been getting each day since the sudden change several months ago...
Subscribe to Enough Wealth. Copyright 2006-2012
ps. I also had to fix a problem with the enoughwealth yahoo email account having been hacked -- which resulted in a spam post added to my blog via this email account (as well as some spam emails sent to the contact list of that email account). Hopefully that's all under control now, so, if you received any spam emails from that email account that got by your spam filters, I apologise.
*** UPDATE: 03 Dec 2012 ***
I decided today to have another go changing the blogger settings to get my custom domain redirection working again. After an unsucessful attempt to modify the CNAME settings in my Dotster hosting account (per bloggers instructions), I stumbled upon a new setting in the Dotster control panel for redirecting my domain straight to the blogspot URL, rather than travelling to the parking page (where visitors had to click on a link in order to finally get to this blog). It looks like the redirection is now working, although we'll have to see if it lasts - I may have created other problems by trying to edit the DNS name settings in Dotster before I came across the redirection option!
Hopefully this change may get my traffic back up to the traditional 100+ blog readers per day, rather than the handful of visitors I'd been getting each day since the sudden change several months ago...
Subscribe to Enough Wealth. Copyright 2006-2012
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