Friday I did absolutely nothing but went to work. I went to bed really early, I've been really tired lately.

Yesterday we did the grocery shopping and we also went to check out some new fridges, we are looking at getting a new one soonish. We were just trying to get an idea on what is out there, we probably won't get one for another year but it's good to start looking into it.

These are the things I've done so far this weekend apart from shopping:

1. 2 loads of laundry.
2. A lot of cooking - I think half of my cooking for the coming week is already done.
3. Cleaned the kitchen benches.
4. Watered the garden.

I'm aiming to still do the following today:
1. Ironing (Half-way through)
2. Clean the bathrooms (DONE)
3. Do some cleaning in the garage.
4. Vaccuming
5. Mopping the kitchen floor (DONE)

--------------------------------

Stock Talk:

It's company reporting season at the moment here, which means dividends are being paid. I think all up I got about $300 worth of dividends, and DH got more than $500. A lot of it has been reinvested via DRP or will soon be used to buy more shares.

Our stock market is still going up. Our economy have now recovered, they even increased our interest rate by 25 basis points few days ago, which means our mortgage payments will start to go up again (I've always known that the low rate will not last that long, it was nice though but I've always made sure that we didn't get used to it). The recent employment numbers were a lot better than expected too. People here are seeing a lot of positives in our economy which is being reflected in the stock market. DH and I already got our plans set up for when this opportunity were to come up.

DH just received $194.60 dividend for one of his stock, it will all be reinvested.

Most of our dividends are being paid this time of the year & I love it.

Stock market talk - could be boring for some.

I'm just thinking out loud here, just sorting out information in my head.

Few entries back I talked about my share portfolio. It is still doing well and it is now up 31%. The Australian stock market has been going up for 3 weeks up without a decent retracement. SO you know sooner or later this thing will need to go down. Right now there is this urge of selling all or some of my shares, but really I don't want to do this because:
1) I still think they could still go up in the long-run and I don't mind keeping these investments for few years yet.
2) Capital Gains Tax is also an issue - most of them are less than 12 months old therefore here in Australia I will have to pay full tax on them (here if it is more than 12 months you only need to pay CGT on 50% of them).
3) They are all about to pay dividends in the next month or so. That should be another 3-5% increase in the portfolio.

The option that I am leaning at the moment, instead of selling up, is to maybe cover some of it by going short on the Aust index (futures contract). And at the same time just keep moving up those stop loss order.

I got to do more research.

A year ago, when the share market was sliding down and our mortgage interest rate was being reduce month after month, DH and I decide to stop putting extra money into the mortgage and start buying individual shares instead. So, 12 months ago I opened a trading account with a low cost online brokerage fee. It's under my name for tax purposes.

Well it has been a year and I thought I should analyse the result so far. Our mortgage interest rate at the moment is at around 5.5% (for some reason I can't find the latest statement, I don't know where DH put it - found it and its actually 5.04%). Overall, I end up buying 5 different stocks, some of which I average in and some was bought because the company did capital raising scheme and some was also increase because of DRP. The last shares I bought was back in early May. I just check the account and it is currently up 27%, not including about ~$100 cash (some of our stocks don't do DRP) received in dividends.

So overall, it was a pretty good decision in our part to divert cash to equity instead of paying extra to the mortgage. The year or so before that when our mortgage was almost 9% (and when the share market was too expensive for us), we put as much money into it. And we will probably start doing that again when the interest rate start going up again, there's been some talk of interest rate going up in the media already.

NB: We are very aware that this "decision" could have gone the opposite way too. And who knows what the market will do tomorrow or next month.

*Here in Australia the situation is a bit different to that in the US.*

I bought some yesterday, well actually the order was put in over two weeks ago. In the last week the Australian market has been going down and the stock I bought finally hit my price yesterday. It was for only ~$500 worth. I normally get around $2K parcels but this stock is a small cap (high risk), but it got great potential so I was only willing to commit 1/4 of normal investment capital. I'm planning to keep it for at least 5 years. Historically they pay pretty good dividend.

Now I just hope the market will start going back up. Although I think this recent run down could keep going until next week. Our market went up quite a bit from it's March low and now need to retrace.

Well the $500 will come out from my Sunny Day Savings.

We didn't need a new tyre after all, they just had to plug the hole. It only cost $25 in total. So now it's as good as new, according to the repairer guy. It should be our tyre are pretty new, not even two years old.

---------------------
DH just got his tax return form, he should be getting $2,000. This is great news, we didn't expect anything. The most maybe couple hundred dollars. Our tax system is a lot diffent to the US, we don't do the witholding thing. Most of these money will go towards funding the household fund. Just in time really because we need a lot of work done around the house. Our dishwasher will definitely need replacing soon, I'm hoping not until next year. We also need some electrical work done. The front garden could also do some work. Oh man the list could go on. Really 2 grand is not enough for what we need done to the house. We are just prioritizing at the moment. Important things will have to come first.

-----------------------

I finally bought some shares today, I've been waiting to get in for 2 weeks now. Today it finally hit my price. There's another stock that I want to get, just waiting for my right price.



That's all folks!

Well today I got up early and straight away clean the bedroom and put a load of washing in the washing machine, before I had my breakfast.

Yesterday was our end of financial year, so today I wanted to tidy up our finances. I called to get an online account for my managed fund, that took 5mins of waiting. I should get my access info in few days time. Also called my Super (retirement) fund to get access to my online account. I got log out because I forgot my password. That took about another 10mins of waiting. My account went down a bit. Can't wait for this market to turn around.

I'm in the process of calculationg our net worth for the end of the quarter. Had to get the end of yesterday's prices for our shares. I doesn't look good. So far it is not looking good at all. It is not finalise yet, I got to wait for my managed fund and also DH's retirement account. I have to wait for him to check it out.

Even though the numbers are not looking very good, I'm very satisfied at the work I've done today. I really got to keep on top of all these financial accounts we got. Calculating our Net worth every quarter sure keeps me motivated to check our accounts. I just got to get DH to keep up with his accounts too.

On another topic, last week's expenses was not too bad. We had 3 NSD which made it 11 NSD for the month (that's $55.00 towards the Laptop Fund - see My Pages).
The biggest expense was for textbooks, $200 worth. Home phone was also paid and I got train ticket.

I will put up my $20K Challenge later today.

We had a NSD yesterday, and today should also be a NSD (fingers crossed DH doesn't spend any money today). He shouldn't need to fill up the car, he did that the other day. There is no bill due until next week. But we have a birthday lunch to go to on Sat, so I will have to get a gift and lunch will cost a bit. We also need to get some more milk and maybe some bread.

I'm looking at getting some shares next week or so. I took some money from saving to put into my trading account. Some of it is the money from the car fund. Since we are not looking at getting another car for at least another 5 years, I rather use some of the money to get some shares. I put $5,000 in the account; $1,700 is from the car fund. I left $300 in the fund for the upcoming car service cost. I guess I will find out in the future whether this was a good idea or not. I don't think I will loss all $1,700, if for some reason it is not going the right way then I can always pull it out. Also I should also be able to getting some dividends.

Enrolment was done the other day. Payment is not due until late next month so we should have enough money for it if I put extra money in it this month and next month. Will be doing 2 subjects and it will cost over $2,000.
Have a great day everyone!

Finally opened 2 managed funds (1 domestic and the other international). I used the $2,000 that we got from selling some of DH's company shares. I've opted to put in $200 per month, so $100 for each fund.

Hope to keep these funds for many years to come.

Well, we managed to stay under budget. We still got just over $21 left in the Xmas fund.
I think I will use the left over for NY eve celebration. Our christmas was good, ate too much as per usual. Spent most of it buying great gifts. Just love giving gifts. It's great to have money set a side for this kind of occassions, no stress at all. We will be doing it again next year. I'm thinking of putting $70 p/month for it.

I'm still tinkering with my spending plan for next year, pretty much done. I'm getting really excited about next year, we will be focusing more on investing and saving. There will be quiet a bit of money coming in around early next year.

We are about to open 2 managed funds (maybe be 2?), domestic and international. Pretty much decided which once ones we want to get, we already got the money set aside for it (from the company shares that we sold few months ago). We will then be putting $100 p/m for each funds. Hoping to keep these for at least 10years or more, maybe until retirement. We'll see.

Overall, our spending this year has been very good, way better than the previous years. But I would like to do even better next year. I've already told DH of an idea I got on lowering our expenses (it will be our personal challenge for 2008), he seems to be with me in this one. I am in the process of putting together a plan to achieve this goal/challenge. And will blog about it once it's done. In my head it's achievable!

He will be getting some company shares, worth around $700+. That pushes us over the $5,000 mark, which means Goal #9 is now done.