Spend, spend, spend

Today I ended up spending a bit more than I planned. This afternoon we drove down to the music shop where we'd bought DS1's clarinet (second hand) a couple of years ago. He started learning the clarinet this year, and playing in the school's training band. He's pretty good at music (playing piano, recorder and now clarinet), but not so good as to make it into a career. He enjoys playing in the band, but, being only eight, the instrument takes a bit of a pounding - especially last week when he left it standing on the floor and DS2 toddled past and knocked it over. Fortunately I bought a second clarinet at Aldi last year, so I could play along with him and teach him to play (I learned bassoon in high school, so I can teach basic keyboard and woodwind instruments - very handy given the cost of professional music lessons!). So for the next two week's he'll be using my clarinet while his is in the shop being repaired. DS1 earn a bit of extra pocket money busking on the weekend after his piano lesson - so I've told him I'll take out 50% as a "tax" to pay for the repairs. Hopefully this will make him take a bit more care with his equipment.

We then visited Aldi to buy some nappies, and while we were there ended up buying some unplanned "extras". They had a convection oven for sale at $49, which seemed a good price. We already had an old convection oven we've used for everyday cooking for the past ten years (we haven't ever used the stove oven!), so I thought it was worth buying a new one before the old one died (the fan has been getting a but more noisy lately). They also had a self-inking stamp kit for $8, which I bought for DS1 to play with. It's definitely not something we need, but he's having fun type-setting his name and address and can use it to label all his school books, and the occasional letter to his relatives.

While we were at the shopping centre I dropped in to the Electronic Boutique shop to browse for computer games. Although I don't really have much spare time to play games, I enjoy the occasional RPG and would like to see what the modern MUD games are like to play. Now that my uni assignments for this term are out of the way, I may be able to squeeze in a couple of hours of game play. I bought "Vanguard:Saga of Heroes" which appears to be Vista compatible (a lot of my old PC games don't work under Vista), and only cost $20. The game only works online however, so I'll have to pay a monthly fee if I want to keep playing after the introductory 30 day game subscription expires.

All up, an extra $77 of discretionary spending. At least I didn't buy the $139 hedge trimmer while I was at Aldi!

Subscribe to Enough Wealth. Copyright 2006-2008

Getting things ready for the financial new year

Australia's financial year ends on 30 June, so I'm trying to tidy up some odds and ends and start the new financial year on the right foot. On Friday I finished off my assignments for the BTeach subject I was studying this semester, so this long weekend (Queen's Birthday) I have some time free to try getting my accounts up to date in Quicken.

I phoned Comsec margin lending regarding a reduction in the interest rate on offer (10.35%) for fixing and prepaying my loan for the next 12 months. Unfortunately they didn't come to the party, only 'offering' a reduced rate if I had a larger loan balance (which is their standard rate card). I don't really need to prepay too much margin loan interest this FY for the tax deduction, as I had salary sacrificed much more into superannuation this year than usual. So, I'll just leave the Comsec margin loan at the variable rate, paid monthly, and look to sell off some stocks to reduce the loan balance in the next couple of months, and possibly arrange for the stocks in this account to all be transferred to my margin loan account with St George. The combination of a lower rate (as a "gold" client) and getting a 50% rebate of the margin loan trail via YourShare (which isn't available on Comsec loans), means that borrowing from St George margin lending will be 0.50% cheaper than via Comsec.

I'll try this week to negotiate a lower interest rate for prepaying my other margin loan balance (with Leveraged Equities). If they also don't reduce the rate I'll do the same thing - sell off some shares to reduce the LVR and transfer the stocks to my St George account. Leveraged Equities was my first margin lender (more than ten years ago), but they don't offer the best interest rate and all trades have to be done via a "full service" (ie. expensive) brokerage firm on the phone. I much prefer being able to trade directly online, as with my Comsec account. I currently only have managed fund investments with my St George margin loan account, but I think they also allow you to trade shares on the margin account directly online via their DirectShare service. If I move all my margin loans to one provider I will get a rate reduction by having a larger balance. For loans above $250K rates reduce by 0.25%, and for loans totalling more than $500K another 0.25% is knocked off the rate. Therefore, just by merging my three margin loans into one loan of $330K I can save another $825pa in interest costs. There is probably some slight added risk associated with concentrating all my margin loans with one provider, but St George margin lending should be much more secure than some of the smaller, independent lenders such as Opes Prime.

In the past couple of months I've made some simple changes that will reduce costs by around $3,000pa. Some of these savings need to be put aside (for example as "self insurance" to offset the saving made by cancelling our private hospital insurance), but most will go directly to the "bottom line" of my overall investment returns. The next task will be to cut out some expensive habits that aren't very good for me - such as eating confectionery and drinking way too much diet coke. Hopefully keeping track of all my income and expenses in Quicken might also help identify some other areas of waste I'm not even aware of.

Of course some of my biggest expenses are beyond my control - for example the increase in our mortgage variable interest rate from 6% to 8% over the past couple of years had a big impact, especially with DW taking unpaid maternity leave and then returning to work part time until DS2 starts primary school. Hopefully interest rates might be at or close to the peak for this economic cycle, and may start to drop a bit in 2009. We have around half of our real estate loans on a fixed rate for another three years - hopefully when we have to refinance that loan, rates won't be too much higher than when we last fixed two years ago.

Subscribe to Enough Wealth. Copyright 2006-2008

The positive side of high petrol prices

With oil setting record highs on a regular basis, the hip-pocket pain of filling up at the bowser is set to increase. However, increased fuel costs do have a positive side. Public transport use (trains and buses) has gone up around 8% in the past year in Sydney, reflecting the shift away from cars for commuting to work. The reduction in peak hour traffic would be even higher than this, as some people are car pooling rather than using public transport, and there would be some reduction in travel as people focus more on finding work closer to home.

Although I've seen the cost to fill up increase from around $25 to $45 in the past couple of years, during this same period the peak hour traffic has improved remarkably. The typical trip to work in the morning used to take 45-55 minutes, while trips during school holiday periods improved to around 30 minutes. This year I've noticed that the daily commute is only taking around 30 minutes, even during school terms. So, although I'm paying an extra $20 a week on petrol costs, I'm saving around 2.5 hours travel time each week. Unfortunately there is a lower limit to how long the trip to work will take - the distance and the speed limits mean it could never get much less than 30 minutes even with less traffic. So, any further petrol price hikes are not going to be of much personal benefit.

However, there will still be the global benefit of increased fuel costs reducing demand for oil. This will both help to cap further increases in the price of oil, and slow the rate of increase in greenhouse gases.

Subscribe to Enough Wealth. Copyright 2006-2008

Is water frugality worth the effort?

There are many places on earth where water is a precious, finite resource. Sydney isn't one of them. Yes, Sydney recently had an extended drought - one of the worst in a hundred years - but our overall water storage never dropped below about 35%. Although this seemed very alarming at the time (the State government signed contracts to build a large desalination plant just before the last election, which is now being building but will probably never really be needed), it's actually a pretty good figure for the lowest point in storage. After all, if the low point was never less than say, 60%, you'd obviously have too much storage capacity.



Which brings up the obvious solution to Sydney's variable rainfall - more storage capacity. Our main dam (Warragamba) was originally planned in 1845, but construction was deferred until the severe 1934-42 drought got things moving. The dam was built in 1948-60, and it's capacity was actually reduced late last century when a new, lower spillway was constructed to guard against a "1-in-100-year" FLOOD!

Since Sydney has adequate, but highly variable, rainfall, there were plans for a second large dam to supply Sydney. Unfortunately the previous State Premier was a firm friend of the anti-dam green lobby, and declared part of the new dam site a national park in order to prevent a second dam being built.

So, we're stuck with an expensive desalination plant that will only be able to provide relatively small quantities of very expensive potable water during a severe drought. It also needs to be kept running the rest of the time (using expensive and environmentally unfriendly fossil-fuel generated power) in order to remain in working order. If we had a second dam of similar size to Warragamba our overall water storage would not have dropped below about 63% at it's low point, and we'd now be sitting at 80% of maximum capacity. A side benefit would have been some hydro-electric power generation to feed into the grid during times of high rainfall, when storage went above 90%.

Aside from the desalination plant, the government's main solution to solving Sydney's water problem during droughts is for consumers to "conserve" water. However, aside from the propaganda and peer-pressure value of small fines for "banned" water usage (eg. watering the garden on the wrong day of the week), there is actually little or no pricing signal used to encourage water conservation. For example, out last water bill was for average daily usage of 879 kL (down from 931 last quarter, and 934 the same time last year). However, out of the total $213.70, only $96.74 was "usage charge" - the remainder was for the general water service and sewerage service fees.

Therefore, in the past year we have reduced our water consumption by almost 6%, yet this would only reduce the bill by 2.7% (if water price and fees remain constant). The water bill was accompanied by a leaflet showing average daily water use targets for families of different sizes. For our household the target is around 750 kL/day. (They don't mention what the actual average figures are, or how an older house is expected to meet a target that is based on a modern house that uses all the latest water-efficiency devices!). If we somehow managed to reduce our water consumption by almost 15% to meet this target, our water bill would only go down by $14.66 (or less than 18c per day), or 6.9%! In reality, they are about to raise the water service pricing (to pay for the desalination plant!), so even if we cut our usage to the target figure we'll probably be paying more for our water bill this time next year.

Another example of government red-tape and ineffective incentives is the "incentive" offered to install rain water tanks for use as "grey water" (ie. flushing toilets, watering gardens etc.). Although quite large amounts are paid out by the government for installing a new rainwater tank, it's only available if you buy a brand new tank and get it installed by a licensed plumber. This means that you still end up with an "out of pocket" cost for installing a rainwater tank, and will take many years to recoup the cost through any water savings. Since the tank water can't be connected to the normal water reticulation system (as it isn't considered "potable" and isn't treated - some houses have dead birds, possums etc. on their roofs - yuk!), I can't see why a plumber is needed to stick a tank between your roof down pipe and the garden hose. I may install a small (preferably used) tank in our front garden to provide water for DS1's new vegetable garden, but it won't be eligible for the government subsidy.

Copyright Enough Wealth 2008

Time to lose my 'gold' card

I've had an Amex card since I graduated from Uni in the early 80s and started my first full-time job. Back then my "everyday" credit card (a National Bank Bankcard) was only accepted by merchants in Australia and New Zealand, so the Amex card was a useful adjunct to travellers cheques when I went on a holiday abroad (it was also a bit of a yuppie status symbol, at least in my mind). However, these days my Visa card is accepted by more merchants than the Amex card when travelling overseas, and I only use my Amex Gold card to charge my $150 monthly health insurance premium. I plan to pay off the balance in full each month, but a couple of times I've mislaid the bill and been slugged with a $20 late payment fee. This month I not only hit with a $20 fee for forgetting last month's bill, but the annual fee has increased to $185! So, it's about time I made the effort to arrange for my insurance to be charged to my Visa card and finally got around to closing the Amex account. Anyhow, these days the "gold" card is pretty down-market and definitely not worth the cost.

Copyright Enough Wealth 2008

A day of big spending

Ever since I bought a new Dell desktop PC last year my wife and son have taken over use of my older Toshiba laptop. It had gotten to the stage that they would complain when I had to take the laptop to work for a couple of days. I had been thinking of buying a new Dell laptop for a while - aside from having better performance than the older laptop it would also have built-in Wi-Fi which I think may come in handy when we're travelling around Europe on holiday in August. The theory being that it will be easy to find Wi-Fi hotspots to access the Internet, and safer to login to my investment accounts using my own laptop than making use of Internet cafes. Dell Australia had a basic laptop with Vista Home Basic on sale for $749 which I was thinking of buying, and today Emailcash had an offer to get a $200 discount on a slightly higher spec Dell laptop which normally sells for around $899. After adding a slight upgrade to the sound system, the laptop I finally bought today cost around $720 - still slightly cheaper than the lower spec machine I'd had my eye on. As with all computer purchases the trick to avoiding buyer remorse will be to now not browse through any computer sale catalogues for the next 12 months - otherwise I'm sure to see a higher performance laptop on sale for a lower price before I leave for my vacation!

By coincidence I also bought a 1 TB external HDD from Aldi for $300today. Although I've found USB drives very handy for moving files between my various home PCs and work, they don't quite have enough capacity to store everything I might want to access. And although I do back up my most important files onto DVD, I don't do it as often as I should, and don't have a very good filing system. Having a 1TB HDD that can connect to any of my PCs using the USB port will enable me to keep backups of all my files in one central location, and will also make it easy to take all my files with me when I go on holiday to my parent's farm a couple of times a year.

It's just as well I don't spend a grand on computer gear every day!



Yes, I did choose the purple colour for the laptop ;)

Copyright Enough Wealth 2007

Buying New or Buying Used?

Although I can afford to buy new stuff without having to put it on credit, we're not averse to saving money by buying used or freecycled items. For example, we bought a used highchair and child seat when DS2 was born, and I've collected free garden furniture that was being thrown out by neighbours during the quarterly council clean up. (The plastic garden chairs were the same design that we already had, and were in excellent condition, just slightly faded. They're fine for seating extra guests during a BBQ party, and new ones would have looked exactly the same after a few months).

However, sometimes it's worth paying a bit extra to buy new, even if you could save some money buying second hand. For example, DS1 is starting grade three this year, and I want him to develop good studying habits. So far he doesn't get much homework from school, but he has a list of five things to do every day*, which takes him half and hour when he concentrates. This year he will sit the grade three basic skills test (math and English) at school, and in the middle of next year will sit the selection test for entry to opportunity class in grades 5 and 6. At the moment he tries to do his study in the family room, but it is hard for him to concentrate when DW or I are playing with DS2 there at the same time. Therefor we've bought DS1 a Tempo study desk for his bedroom, which I'll assemble tomorrow. It was on special for $299 (normal price is $399), and as it has an in-built filing cabinet and computer shelf it should be suitable for his use throughout high school and even during uni (if he commutes to a Sydney university while living at home).



A second-hand desk would save $100 or $200, but I feel that taking DS1 to the store to select a new desk for him helps show how serious we are about his study, and makes his study time more exciting (we all like getting a new "toy" - even if it is a bit of office furniture!). Getting a second-hand desk with some other kids initials carved in the draws just wouldn't provide the same buzz.

Anyhow, if DS1 does study hard and get into OC for years 5-6, he is more likely to get a full or half scholarship to Sydney Grammar school (one of the better Sydney private schools), which would make it a good investment.

* Read part of a book (currently one of the Hardy Boys series), do 15 minutes music practice (piano, recorder and clarinet), read a few pages of his Macquarie concise dictionary, a few pages of children's encyclopaedia, and do a few pages of "Jump Math" book 3.

Copyright Enough Wealth 2007

Paying Bills

We all have bills to pay. Most are regular and some happen infrequently. The important thing is to have the money budgeted to pay them, and to pay them on time.

I don't use a precise budget - although many years ago I went through the process of recording all my regular expenses for a year and working out a detailed budget, these days I know what my normal total monthly spend will be, and get enough salary deposited into my credit union account to cover the expenses. The rest of my salary has been 'sacrificed' and gets paid into my retirement account as an additional employer contribution.

I used to pay nearly all my bills via phone or internet using my main credit card account in order to get rewards points which I redeemed for a credit onto my credit card account. As I always pay my credit card balance off in full each month, this was a better method of bill payment than cash or cheque. Unfortunately recent changes by the Australian competition authority meant that some bill payments made by credit card now attract an additional fee from the biller, making it not worthwhile paying those bill using a credit card. So, these days I now pay some bills using my credit card, but others now have to be paid directly from my credit union account using BPay.

I still get my bills sent via mail, as email isn't 100% reliable. I've also had many different email accounts over the years, some of which are no longer in use, so getting bills via email would be a nuisance when I change email accounts. (For this reason I also opt for getting dividend advice sent via mail rather than electronically). I cross as paid any bills setup from automatic payment (by direct debit) and file them away. Those that require payment are stored in my briefcase in order of due date, so I can flick through the bills once a week and pay them via phone or BPay during my lunch break.

If there is an occasional unexpected bill (such a for root canal dental work or a medical checkup) I can transfer some extra cash from my online savings account into my main credit union account to cover the extra amount that month. I don't maintain an 'emergency fund' as such, as I have a significant amount of cash invested online that was borrowed at 0% via a CC balance transfer offer, so I can always draw on that and repay it by liquidating some of my stock or mutual fund investments if needs be.

Copyright Enough Wealth 2007

Long Weekend Expenses

I spent the Labour Day long weekend catching up on some house and garden work. There was a dead patch in the front lawn where the council had removed a dying Eucalypus tree, so I bought a packet of lawn repair seed/soil/fertilizer at Coles supermarket for $8.00. It only covers two square metres, so I'll need another packet later on to finish the job - I'll see how well the grass takes in the half I've sown. I already bought some broom handles for $2 to use as stakes to rope off the area of lawn being treated - otherwise the postie will drive his motor bike over every day when delivering the mail. My dad said it would have been cheaper to buy some turf squares instead of seeds - but I don't think he includes the cost of time and petrol going to buy the turf compared to just picking up a packet of lawn seeds at the local supermarket.

We also bought a new leather-fronted gas-lift office chair for the home office. It was on special at Big W for $49 ($10 off), and I've seen similar chairs in the office supply depots for $100 or more. The old office chair had been given to me by DW seven or eight years ago and it had started to fall apart. The back had to be repaired when we moved house a few years ago, and recently the casters had started falling off every time you moved the chair. We'd tried removing all the casters, but the central shaft of the chair then extended below the level of the caster arms, and we had to sit the chair on a thick piece of packing cardboard to stop the chair marking the polished wooden floor. I haven't had time to assemble the new chair yet, but should get around to it after work this week. The old chair won't be thrown out - DW wants to put in on the front porch!

I also had to spend $43 on a 10kg tub of pool chlorine granules - now that the weather has warmed up the pool was starting to turn green. I fished out most of the debris that had accumulated in the pool over winter, but I'll have to spend some time cleaning the pool filter candles next weekend. Unfortunately the diatomaceous earth filter is a rather poor design. After a few years of use the plastic "head" assembly inside the filter that holds the filter candles in place starts to crack, and the filer candles tend to fall out during reassembly. I'll probably have to glue some of the candles in during reassembly to get it put back together in one piece. One day I'll have to buy a new filter "head" - but this one plastic part costs a couple of hundred dollars! The multi-way valve is also starting to leak, so I may look at the cost of replacing the whole filter unit with a new sand filter.

Copyright Enough Wealth 2007

Platinum Ho Hum

Through my workplace I have access to a "special deal" whereby I could get a "Platinum" card from one of the major banks for 'only' $200 per annum membership fee - which is a slight discount to the normal $250 annual fee. The only trouble is that I can't for the life of me see how this card would be worth even $200 a year to me. It does have a "free" rewards program which earns 1.25 pts per dollar spent on the card, and up to 55 days interest free on purchases, but I already earn FlyBuys points on my normal NAB VISA card (which I redeem for a cash credit on the account), so that would be of no net benefit. It also has a 0% balance transfer offer, but only for 6 months, so I wouldn't earn enough interest through CC arbitrage to pay for more than a couple of years worth of membership fee. That leaves me just a plastic "status symbol" costing about $4.00 a week - and even the "status" of a Platinum card has been devalued on the years, so that these days only a Black Amex or similar will make any impression. Overall I think I'd rather put an extra $100 a year into DS1 and DS2's bank accounts at Christmas time.

Copyright Enough Wealth 2007

Frugal Living: Wet Pet

DS1 was interested in getting a pet, so as a first attempt I decided to get him a small aquarium with one fish to look after. Rather than buy a tank from the pet shop, I simply chose a nice cylindical salad bowl from the discount housewares store. For only $5.00 it was lots cheaper than the smallest perspex tank available in the pet stores, and it looks very stylish. Being microwave and dishwasher safe it should cope with having a small 7.5W immersion aquarium heater. For decoration we simply washed some especially pretty marbles that we already had collected, and put them in the bottom of the "tank".

The trick with beginner aquaiums is too not buy one that is too small - it's a lot easier to keep fish healthy if there is plenty of surface area and not too many fish. As DS1 is seven years old he should be able to care for and feed the fish - it only needs a partial water change once a week with aged (dechlorinated) tap water and twice daily feeds. I bought specialist betta food pellets and some free dried blood worms - a few worms in the morning and 2-3 of the tiny food pellets each evening should keep the fish happy and not overfed. As DS1's favourite colour is green we visited five different pet stores/aquarium shops before finding one that had a nice pale emerald body but red and blue fins. There are much more spectacular green betta splendens bred by hobbyists, but you tend to get mediocre quality fish in the typical pet store. If DS1 manages to keep the fish alive for the next two months I'll think about buying a female betta - siamese fighting fish have quite interesting breeding behaviour with the male blowing a bubble nest and looking after the hatched fry until they become free swimming (at which time he'll often eat them, so you need a some spare compartments to keep the male and female adult fish when breeding bettas). If he's lucky (and carefuly looking after the fish) he may be able to breed some fish and sell them as a hobby.

All up the cost was:

"Tank"     $ 5.00
Heater     $39.95
Fish       $12.00
Fish Food  $15.05
           =======
Total:     $72.00

It paid off to compare the prices for the fish food and heater as we went around looking for a suitable fish - the heater was bought for $39.95 after seeing the same one in other shops for $49.00. Similarly we were able to buy the "bulk" 20g pack of Hikari Betta Biogold food pellets for $15.05 after only seeing the smaller 2g pack in other stores for between $7 and $8. Assuming the fish lives long enough to eat the entire pack it will work out to be good value.



Copyright Enough Wealth 2007

Delayed Gratification

Wife, kids, my parents and I all took a trip to inspect the Rolls Royce Silver Shadow II that is for sale for $29,000 ono. It's a nice car and seems to be running OK, but there were a few touched up spots on the paintwork, the air con needs regassing (which the seller, who's a mechanic offered to include in the sale price), and there was something a bit fishy about the car's alleged history. The owner claimed that the odometer reading of 61,500 km was legit, and it is possible for a 28 year old car to have that low mileage if it's been kept in garage and just used once or twice a month. But, he also claimed that it had been produced for sale in Australia (it has an Australian compliance plate), but the service log book that comes with car shows the first 40,000 km of servicing was done in the UK, prior to 1985. Then there is a gap of almost twenty years in the service records until the current owner bought it in 2003. The car allegedly only travelled 20,000 km in that intervening period while being used as a wedding reception car. It's possible for the mileage to have been that low if it was only used once a month for a wedding or two, but I would have expected the service log book to have been maintained while it was used as a reception hire car.

The running costs of the car would be high (it has twin SU carbys that would help fuel efficiency, but it would still probably use a full tank of gas, 103L, each week. Since it was designed to use leaded petrol it would run best on 'super' unleaded, which will add another 20% or so to the cost of fuel compared to regular ULP. Regular servicing should only cost around $500 pa, but if anything went seriously wrong it could cost a small fortune to repair.

The Rolls would be a sumptuous ride to and from work each day, but as my workplace is located in an inner city suburb with small winding streets and limited parking spaces close to work, it would be a pain to find a good parking place every morning. I'd also have to clear out the garage at home so it could be parked securely at night - currently the garage is used to store gym and gardening equipment and the Festiva just sits outside under the car port at night.

Anyhow, I'm in no rush to buy a "new" car just yet, so I'll think about it for another year to two. The price of RR Silver Shadows won't be going up in the meantime, and it will be interesting to see how the price of petrol changes over the next couple of years.

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

Spend, Spend, Spend!

I don't know if was the fact that I lost almost $3,000 trading forex in the last month, or because stock market and real estate gains had boosted my net worth by around $90,000 in the past two months (at least on paper - the recent stock market downturn may change things a bit!), but in the past week I've suddenly decided to go out and spend significant amounts of money on some "nice to have" items that have been on my wish list for several years.

Item #1 - a new TV antenna/mast for $780:

I'd bought a digital TV USB adapter at Aldi for around $100 before I'd bought my new Dell PC. The new PC had enough 'grunt' for the Digital TV adapter to work (it hadn't worked on my old laptop), but our TV signal at home is rather poor (the analgue CRT TV has a lot of 'snow' and ghosting) so the Digital TV adapter could only lock in on signals for channels 7 and 28. The other free-to-air channels (2, 9 and 10) were not being picked up at all. So I arranged for a TV antenna specialist to drop by on Friday and quote for a new antenna, 14' mast and patch panels in our lounge-room and breakfast room. All up a new antenna installation will cost $780. Which is a bit more than I'd hoped, but not too bad if I amortise the cost over ten years (only $1.50 a week). The TV software running on the PC allows me to record HD digital TV shows, so we'll probably get a lot of use out of this setup.

Item #2: A $1,200 water bed mattress:

I had a water bed in my 20s and 30s and it was very comfortable, with no pressure points and constant temperature all year round. When I got married we needed a matress for the Queensize four-poster frame I'd bought (but never setup), and DW was adamant that we get a standard mattress. After 8 years it's now time to replace that matress and we've decided to go with a water bed matress this time. The main reason is that my eczema has been getting worse for the past few years, and a recent visit ($200!) to a specialist confirmed that a water bed would be a good way to minimise exposure to dust mites (which I'm highly allergic to). The tricky bit will be getting the water bed mattress to fit inside the four-poster bed frame. Although the wood slates can be removed so the water bed pedestal and base board will fit inside the frame, the frame is 155x200cm internally, and the water bed matress is 154x204 cm. I'm hoping that the baseboard can just have a few cm lopped off the end and the water matress will quish in to fit OK. We'll see how this works out when the water bed is delivered next weekend...

Hopefully that will be the end of "big ticket items" until I replace the pool fencing in the Spring.

Enough Wealth

A Home Wi-Fi Network of my new Dell PC

The Dell PC I ordered a couple of days ago is "expected" to be delivered next Wednesday. It will have a wireless keyboard and mouse so I can sit in comfort in our lounge room, with the 20" LCD screen sitting next to our TV (which also happens to be a modest 20" CRT TV). I had been thinking of moving the current cable modem box from my computer table in the next room (where it's currently attached to my Toshiba Satellite notebook) into the lounge room, and then running an ethernet cable from the desktop PC to the notebook. However, I've decided to have a go at installing a wireless network, as there are some instructions on how to do this on my ISP's website (Optus), and Dell offers a Belkin wireless router and USB adapter, so they must be compatible with the PC I've ordered.

I was going to check if I could add the router and adapter to my existing order (as the Dell website says that accessories are shipped separately anyhow, and if they're not part of a computer system order they get charged shipping). However, I didn't have my order number with me at work today, so I searched the internet for an alternate supplier (and to check pricing), and found that I could order a package deal of the Belkin router and a USB adapter for less money ($101 plus $11 shipping) from Mitec.

I ordered the Wi-Fi router this afternoon (payment using a Paypal eCheque from my linked ING online bank account), and it should ship in 4-5 days, so will probably arrive around the same time as my Dell PC. I worked as a computer systems administrator several years ago, and networked PCs and macs using thin ethernet cabling, so hopefully setting up the Wi-Fi and getting the cable modem to work with the new PC and being accessible via the USB network adapter on my notebook PC won't be too much of a hassle.

Ideally I can use the desktop PC while relaxing in the lounge (ie. I can keep an eye on my forex trades while watching the cricket or "Lost" on TV), and can also use the notebook at my computer desk for uni assignments, or even while sitting next to the pool or having breakfast in bed. ;)

Enough Wealth

Yes Spend Day

I got $36.35 in dividends from Alinta today. However, I also spent $200 for DW and DS's dentist visit. Purely by coincidence I was also booked in for dental work today (with a different dentist). I'm getting a crown done for a molar that previously had root canal and a couple of fillings. I still have another appointment to get the crown fitted (today was just the prep work and mouldings), but the dentist charged for both sessions today - $1,450!

I also finally decided to buy myself a new PC today - a base model Dell with some extra RAM, bigger HDD, slightly upmarket graphics card and a 20" "ultra" LCD monitor. Hopefully it will be OK to edit my digital home videos with - although running Vista it could be a struggle with 2GB of RAM. Total cost was $1802.90 - it didn't sound so bad when I worked it out as costing $1.65 a day over three years. I'll mainly use it for maintaining my investment records and doing my university assignments, so the depreciation will be tax deductible, reducing the "out of pocket" cost further. Dell phoned when I got home to confirm the order (and try to sell me a four year extended warranty for an extra $165 - no thanks), and advised that the computer should arrive within 10 business days.

Anyhow, if I manage to quit drinking 4L of diet coke each day as planned, I could afford to buy a computer like this every 9 months ;)

Total net spend for the day $3,416.55. Oh, and we also bought a roast chicken for dinner and did some grocery shopping on the way home - call it a round $3,500.

Enough Wealth

Turning Lead into Gold

The bill from the plumber arrived today for clearing out our blocked sewer pipe. I'd initially expected it to cost a couple of hundred dollars, as he'd done the job before and I think it cost around $400 that time, which had included installing a new access pipe to "make the job easier next time". I started to suspect it wouldn't be all that cheap when I initially talked to him via mobile after he first arrived at our house. When I mentioned the access pipe he'd installed last time, he said that this time the blockage was in a different spot connected to the other bathroom. He also asked for the drainage diagram, which is never a good sign for a supposedly simple job.

It turned out that the diagram we had from the house purchase was out of date, and didn't include changes made after the house was built. So after digging around the back of the house looking where he thought the pipe might be, he went away and promised to come back after looking up a copy of the new diagram. When I had a look the next evening after he'd finished, I noticed the neat new cement work where he'd added in a permanent access port to the pipe he installed last time, and also the repair job he'd done to the paver he'd dug up looking for where the pipes might be. When I commented to DW that the cementing was very neat, but I hated to think how much it would all cost, DW replied that "Oh, that shouldn't cost anything as he guessed wrong about where the pipe was" - I didn't say anything, but....

Anyhow, the bill came to $832.15 (!) - $50 service call, $65 plant hire (don't they have their own gear?), $573.50 labour, and $68 materials (some cement and a new garden tap).

The funny thing is that the job sheet shows that the blockage turned out the be immediately upstream of the Inspection Opening that he'd installed last time - which I mentioned to him when he first arrived. But what would I know, I'm not a plumber.

Enough Wealth

Spending Money Like Waste Water

While I was home sick yesterday the plumber finished his second day of working to clear out our blocked sewer pipe. Apparently there is no accurate plumbing diagram for our house available (it was build about 40 years ago, and had some additions done before we bought it four years ago) so he had a few false starts digging around to find the sewer pipe. He said he'd send the bill, so I've no idea how much it will end up costing. I did opt for him just clearing out the blockage (tree roots) and coming back when/if needed again in a few years - the alternative was to reroute part of the existing sewer line outside of our house (for some reason it runs underneath our house), but this would cost around $1,500 and wouldn't guarantee we wouldn't get some more roots blocking a different section of the existing pipework anyhow.

I was back at work today and had an appointment with the dentist at lunchtime to repair a tooth that lost a large chunk out of it last week. The same tooth had root canal done a few years ago (around $1,000), and later on a repair job to fix a chunk of tooth that broke off the back of the tooth a short while later. This time a different part of the same tooth had broken off the front. The session cost $300 - $60 for two x-rays (my other teeth look fine, except for another molar on the other side that also had root canal done a few years back), cleaning, descaling, and fluoride treatment. Plus the actual repair job which "only" cost $90. Unfortunately the dentist recommended getting a crown done for the tooth asap, as it is badly cracked and won't last very much longer left as it is - this means the $90 repair job is only going to be used for a couple of weeks. I think she said the exact same thing two years ago when she made the last repair, so decided that it's time to "bite the bullet" and get the crown done. I've booked in for the two sessions required for the crown - it will cost around $1,400 for one crown! They have a nice, realistic tooth-like appearance, but at that price I almost expect solid gold like the "good old days".

We only have basic private hospital cover, with no dental cover, so this is all "out of pocket". I will get a 30% tax rebate for the amount of total "out of pocket" family medical expenses this tax year for any amounts above $1,200 or thereabouts. I may look into the cost of adding dental cover to our health plan, as the other molar that had root canal a few years ago apparently will also need a crown eventually. Plus DS1 has started getting loosing his baby teeth and has an overbite - so he may need braces or something later on. And DW doesn't have the best teeth in the world either...

I'll have to do a cost-benefit analysis based on the expected annual cost of the dental cover vs. likely dental work. I won't pay for dental insurance just on the off chance of needing some major work, as any emergency work (eg. from a car accident) would be covered by medicare in the public hospital system, and I've no interest in any "cosmetic" dental work that might be covered.

Enough Wealth

Medical Expenses

I took a day of work last week to have a medical test done - a couple of hours of "day surgery" was involved. The bill for the procedure was around $500 for the specialist, with the medicare "scheduled fee" being $295.40 for this procedure. This would mean that without insurance I would have had to pay around 15% of the scheduled fee plus the difference between the scheduled fee and the actual amount invoiced. ie. around $250 plus an extra amount for the anaesthetist.

As it turned out my basic hospital insurance policy covered the entire amount, so it ended up costing nothing for this procedure (the test result also came back "normal" which was also a *good thing* ;). And how much does the insurance cost me? Well, the monthly fee charged to my CC is $148.40 (the amount is reduced by a federal government subsidy for private medical insurance) or $1780.80 pa for my family policy. However, the actual "out of pocket" cost is less than this as there is a medicare levy surcharge of an extra 1% of taxable income if an individual's taxable income is over $50K ($100K for a family). This tax year we wouldn't be liable for the surcharge as DW is on maternity leave an will have little taxable income, so our family income will be below the threshold. However, in most years our family income is high enough to be liable for the surcharge if we didn't have basic hospital cover, meaning that we'd be paying an extra $1250 in tax. So, the "real" cost of having the policy is only around $530 pa ($10 a week). Well worthwhile, especially if any of us ever need elective surgery in a private hospital, such as a hip replacement. (The waiting lists for elective surgery in public hospitals are very high to constrain costs, to private hospital insurance can be essential).