Property Renovation and Weddings

When the weekends ain't enough, the weeknights are used. I was out on Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Property Is Not Really A Passive Investment

Rental investment property and rental income in reality is a semi-passive form of income. Theoretically it is considered passive but you could find yourself painting, gardening and scooping up dog crap like me and that doesn't convey an image of passiveness does it? Or tenants asking you about this or that which has broken and needs repairing.

Last week, my folks wrapped up paperwork on an investment property that they bought. The house requires some cosmetic renovations so on Saturday, my friend(W) and family did some painting. First the undercoat of paint. Holes and dents were puttied over. This weekend should be the final coat of paint. The garden will require some work and redesigning. I've been thinking about the garden. It's currently a mess with overgrown weeds and the worst plant combinations. I would have thought it'd be more logical to plan the garden before landscaping and planting anything. But alas, they planted everything in an adhoc manner. This is how it currently looks:

I plan to do some weeding, fix up the garden bed and clearly separate the garden from the lawn. Painting and gardening is quite fun and enjoyable. I love transformations. It's not the first time I've painted so I'm slowly improving without dripping too much all over the place and applying a more consistent layer. The paint rollers are like my new best friends! The previous owners were rather unhygienic. There must've been almost one kilo(two pounds) of dog crap on the lawn.

Didn't they realise that all the dust, dog crap and fur smothering the place detracted from getting the best sale price? If that was my house, I'd have given it a good scrub, cleaned up the lawn and wiped up every dusty surfaces to maximise the sale price and entice would-be buyers to fight for the property.

A clean, well maintained property with beautiful interiors and landscaped lawns will always trump something dirty and untidy. It will lure a more affluent class of tenants too. There's a lot of work to do on the place before it can be rented out so hopefully I'll remember to document before and after shots of the renovation and redesign.

The Wedding

Two friends got married on Sunday at St Thomas' Anglican Church at North Sydney. The church was originally built in 1846 but since then replaced by a larger design which opened in 1884. It's a grand, historic church with huge organs and a rich, red carpet leading up to the altar.

The reception was held at WatersEdge situated on Pier one. The view is breathtaking with unobstructed views towards Luna Park, Walsh Bay, the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. The alternate entrees and mains were average and nothing special. Fortuately for WatersEdge, they have a beautiful location and specialise in functions rather than in the business of restauranting.

Some scenic shots around the venue:

On the left: These aren't books. They are super cute boxes for inserting wedding cards and 'hong bao' (red moneybags) which are traditional in a lot of Asian weddings. Money as a gift form has been gaining popularity ever since couples started cohabitating together prior to marriage. By the time they actually marry, their abode is jam packed with household goods and items already, so the traditional gift registry is heading down the path of the dinosaurs.

How much to give? The general guildline absolute minimum is $100 and that's bordering on stingy believe it or not. Due to inflation, wedding gifts of hong baos should be over $100. At least $150 as a starting point per person if you're not struggling financially.



Our table was a corner one with sweeping views of Sydney Harbour and the Harbour Bridge. I should have entered prior to guests entering so that I could get uninterrupted and unmussed up shots of the place.
The wedding cake was cute with the dress decoration on top, custom made to resemble the bride's actual wedding dress.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House looks nondescript in the daytime, but when night falls, they obtain their beautiful glow. It's as if the daylight is harsh on their features while the night light softens their wrinkles:

 

Hope you've enjoyed these photos and the renovation recaps.

Social media is killing me softly

The Buggles once sang 'Video killed the radio star" in 1979 and I can now write that DVDs killed the video and the DVD was killed by downloaders and YouTube.

I'm slowly dying via social media. There's just so much around. Replying to family and friends now involve me texting/sms, phone calls, emails and facebook. Then there is this poor little ol' blog that's not getting much love from me because I'm so busy trying to live life and reply to all these other forms of communications which is just insane. Who's slowly dying trying to keep up with this inundation of Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, smartphones and multiple email accounts? Technology is flying along which is awesome but then on the other hand, we are always switched on 24/7. Are you wondering why you've subscribed to a blogger who doesn't really blog? Me too.

I can't wait until a great aggregator comes along. Google Wave was supposed to knock us out with its amazingness, but sadly that didn't happen. My friend sent me an invite to the beta Google Wave and it didn't succeed because it was just four of us on Google Wave and then Google decided to pull the plug anyway.

My new resolutions in regards to social media: Reply to all personal text/sms/missed calls more promptly, reply to emails more promptly, keep more up to date with Facebook messages, post more frequently to this blog, keep on top of my computer documents/files and photos, file stuff I wish to keep and delete/dump stuff that isn't relevant, maintain my RSS feeds and delete blogs and websites that I no longer enjoy.

Employee Theft: Management Liability Insurance Cover

At work, I received a booklet and paperwork from the insurance company about half an inch thick, pimping their 'Management Liability Insurance Cover' scheme. First thought that popped into my mind was, 'What IS that? Do we have to insure?'

Basically 'Management Liability Insurance Cover'(MLIC) is insurance for employee crime/theft, occupational health and safety liabilities, employment practice liabilities accruing from business operations and liabilities accruing from the actions of directors and officers.

One of our clients at work had a staff member steal several thousands of dollars from the company. Email records were pulled out from the archives and embarrasingly personal emails that were sandwiched between the corrupt dealings were paraded around the court. The person in question was using her work email account to setup liaisons and steamy dates with her boyfriend and all these were supplied to the court as evidence along with all her other unsavoury emails.

The insurance brochure provided a few case studies but in terms of relevance to this PF blog, here's the financial case study of one of the claims they provided as a lure to convince companies to buy MLIC insurance.

"Employee theft is the most common type of crime claim, specifically theft by a staff member in a position of trust, through the manipulation of accounting systems. Over a period of nine months, an employee of the Insured misappropriated $80,000 of client's money by pocketing cash from sales which was to be banked into the Insured's trust account. The employee had a gambling problem and admitted to stealing the funds. The employee is being prosecuted by the police but is unable to pay the stolen funds back their employer as the funds were gambled away."

I can't even begin to grasp the craziness of that employee for stealing $80,000 to gamble and lose. The list of negatives resulting from that action is astounding:

* Criminal record in police database
* Being unemployable for the rest of their poor miserable life (no work=no money=no life=miserable)
* Gambling habit/problem will probably result in them pawning off the rest of whatever possession they haven't yet already pawned
* All those years of study and work history down the drain because no employer will hire them in that position nor industry ever again
* Being cast out from their professional association or disbarred depending on your industry and qualifications
* Being banned from travelling in countries which frown on criminal convictions

One of my colleague at work says, "If someone is going to steal, they should be smart enough to realise that you need to steal enough to beable to retire for the rest of your life in a foreign country where you can obtain a new identity."

In the Leonardo DiCaprio movie, Catch Me If You Can where he plays Frank Abagnale Jr, the moral of the story is that you can be talented at theft and fraud, thinking that you can get away with it, but in the end - you will be caught.

Spirits: Dreams of white and blue lights

I'm sorry to really stray from the topic of this blog but hopefully someone out there may beable to tell me something, sometime about the existence of spirits and lights.

I may have seen a spirit. It's hard for me to fathom whether it was a dream or it was reality. If you had asked me if I believed in ghosts and spirits, I would have said yes but that I have never personally seen one myself. I think I have finally seen one for myself. 

On Monday, someone I knew passed away early in the morning. I can't mention too much details suffice to say that I have known him for over 8 years now and I knew he had cancer and that death was a possibility but it still was a shock when it happened. He was full of life and as life was given and now taken away by whatever greater entity is out there.

This year is horrible. Earlier in the year, I attended a funeral of someone who was dear to me and those that I love. This Thursday, another funeral. It is a sad, sad year. Is it possible to have a heavy heart? Is it possible to feel sadness that beyond such that even tears does not come sometimes?

On Tuesday, I tossed and turned all night and couldn't help thinking about Monday and our loss. Closer to dawn, but not quite dawn, I may have been awake or asleep - it was hard to tell but when I dream, my dreams are usually set at someplace else in some unknown land. This dream or reality had me lying in bed in the bedroom and that's why it felt real and perhaps why it didn't feel like a dream.

I'm lying in bed (whether it was a dream or reality will never be known) and suddenly I hear footsteps that were light and yet loud enough to be heard approach the bedroom. Instead of a person, it was a large ball of blue and white light that was hazy about half a metre wide and not a perfect sphere. Just a hazy roundish light. The essence of the light had the essence of the person that I had known. I wasn't scared. I eagerly called out his name and the voice came clearly into my mind, "It's ok. I'm alright." I call out his name again and instead of answering me, the light floated towards the window accompanied with the sound of footsteps leaving the room.

Then the light and sound was gone and by then I was wide awake. Unsure whether it was a figment of my imagination or whether it was real. The footsteps were very realistic and never have I ever dreamed myself lying in bed. When I dream, I'm always elsewhere and never simply in the bedroom lying on the bed. Either way, I am reassured by what happened and I feel that he is at peace now.

Do you believe in spirits? Does this sound fantastical? It's hard to believe that something like this happened or that I dreamed it up. The memory is so sharp.

To everyone and anyone who has lost loved ones, my thoughts and prayers are with you. May this year improve and bring happier times. RIP to those that we love and have cared about and may their spirits find happiness wherever they have gone.

HECS HELP Loan: Calculating final lump sum payment

You want to make a final lump sum payment on your loan right? I've got plenty of Googlers landing on this blog because they want to understand how much, when and where to make that final lump sum payment.

The latest budget is cutting lump sum payment discounts from 10% to 5% starting 1st January 2012. That's going to hurt for the current batch of University students and also for graduates like moi who make erratic extra lump sum repayments because there are heaps better returns on your money invested elsewhere rather than paying it off early.

A few important points about paying off your HELP loans (previously known as HECS debt):

* Lump sum payments of $500 and greater attracts the discount
* HELP loans are indexed to inflation(CPI) on 1st June every single year
* If you have spare money and wish to make lump sum payments, aim to make your lump sum payment in amounts of $500 or greater prior to 1st of June(saving yourself the indexation on that payment)
* If you plan to make a FINAL lump sum payment, ensure you pay the lump sum before you lodge your tax return so that you're applicable for the discount. If you did your tax return first, then you'll have to pay a compulsory amount which is not applicable for discounts. You can save yourself hundreds and possibly thousands depending on the final payment amount by paying that final lump sum before your lodge your tax return

If you're like me and plan to make a final payment to kiss that student loan goodbye, then I'll show you how you can calculate your final repayment:

A) My formula that you can use:

$Balance of your HECS&HELP debt /110 * 100 = $Final payout figure

B) If your final HELP loan amount is $8800 for example
$8800/110 * 100 = $8000 final payout figure (discount= $800)

C) If your final payout figure isn't a whole number, just round it up and pay the rounded up amount and any extra will be either be a refund or reduce your tax payable after you lodge your tax return.

Eg, if you HELP loan amount is $9000
$9000/110 * 100 = $8181.8181, just pay $8182 (discount =$818.20)

How you can make extra HELP repayments:

A) Call the ATO on 13 28 61 and ask them to send out your HELP debt statement with payment options
B) The statement will have a final payout figure- easy peasy
C) You can ask them for your balance and payout figure over the phone
D) You can ask the ATO for a repayment booklet which has information for payment options such as BPAY, direct credit, post office and mail payments

So before I lodge my 2010/2011 tax return, I'm going to make a final lump sum payment on my HELP loan and it will be FINIS! Time to celebrate the end of me babysitting my loan lol

Further reading on HECS/HELP debt:

1. Liabilities at tax time
2. Making a lump sum payment on my HECS/HELP loan

New Zealand, Wanaka, Treble Cone & Cardrona

What you see is Lake Wanaka in New Zealand. Just before we drove back to Queenstown after a hardcore day at Treble Cone in 2008.

Only a few more weeks before we leave on our NZ snow trip for 2011. I'm pretty excited. My last memory of snow was spending three hours in solid rain at Falls Creek in Victoria trying to snowboard in slush and then fresh powder falling from the sky when we were packed up and ready to drive home.

Rain, hail or shine, I'm out there. Especially when it took us a total of 18 hours to drive down to Falls Creek and back home. This year the snow destination is New Zealand. We are praying for snow in New Zealand.

Powder + my board and I = perfection

“Happiness is like a butterfly: the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder…”– Thoreau

When I first came across this quote, I was 16 and thought it was such a powerful and meaningful quote. Several years later and it's still a meaningful quote. There are a few things in our lives that we have little or no control over and there's no need to worry yourself over what you can't control.

Happiness isn't the only thing that is like a butterfly. Relationships are like butterflies. If you chase after anything or anyone too much, they may never come to you. Sometimes you just have to accept your life, enjoy what you can and then happiness will come your way. And no, I'm not smoking weed or turning hippy on you ~ A friend of mine who I no longer keep in touch with much, was always unhappy and swinging between depression and feeling suicidal. He thought that he could find happiness by moving overseas but not only do problems follow you, misery does too because happiness really is a state of mind.

Escaping overseas to avoid problems that you have at home could be effective if you have a maniacal ex or some creepy stalker that you're trying to get away from. Otherwise, those same old troubles just follow wherever you go until you confront them and resolve those issues.

Anyhoo, I've been in a happy state recently. Life has reached a few milestones and almost everything that I thought I wanted when I was 18 have come around. As Meatloaf once sang, "2 out of 3 ain't bad". The world is always promising with so many events left to unfold. I'm young and healthy with a great family, great friends and plenty of people that I love and care about very much.

We are looking forward to our ski trip to New Zealand that's coming up shortly in a few weeks. Our last trip to NZ was awesome. If you've never been, it should be on your list of countries to visit. The craggiest mountains and the most beautiful vista.

Do you think happiness is a state of mind? Can happiness be elusive no matter how hard you try?

Beautiful Winter Weekends

Spring is tender green buds and pretty flowers blooming, Summer is fish and chips by the beach, Autumn is blazing red and oranges while Winter is suppose to be dull and dreary.

For the first time in a long time, I fell in love with Winter again for reasons other than snow sports. We enjoyed a Sri Lankan lunch at Roselea Community Centre, where a friend of mine was involved with organising a Sri Lankan fundraiser.

It's the first time I've tried Sri Lankan cuisine. It's similar to Indian cuisine (Dosai anyone?) but not as oily. Chilli was litterally used and that had me huffing and puffing but other than that, it was delicious-particulary the potatoes and the spice combination used. Fish hopper, pronounced as 'Op-pah' in Sri Lankan. It was delicious. The flour net had the consistency of a French crepe. It was a batter mixed with rice flour, coconut milk, water and a bit of salt? Cooked on a tiny gas stove pot:

Went for a much needed walk around the neighbourhood afterwards to aid in digesting all the rich and spicy food that we had consumed. It was amazing to see that all the succulent plants were blooming madly. Other winter plants that I adore are the Camellia trees, African daisies, Dandelions and well, pretty much anything except for huge electricity power plant poles ^.^

 

Ducked into a house that was having a for-sale-open-house and saw the oddest looking tree with what looked like a white fluffy beard dangling down. Also saw a fat, fluffy cat idly lazing on a table. It was adorable, cute and friendly. Contentedly meowing as I petted it :)

Books and Chocolate Chip Cookies

Found myself making a trip to the library last night. I ended up borrowing so many heavy books that I could barely even carry them back to the car. I needed a luggage or shopping trolley to cart them back! With the library closing at 9pm, I really didn't have much time to slowly deliberate, so randomly grabbed piles of books from different sections. The top ones are romance novels by Jude Deveraux, one of my favourite authors along with James Patterson. James Herbert is probably a better writer but I didn't see any of Herbert's books. The Ten Trillion Dollar Gamble is a book about the downfall of Wall Street and hypothesising about America's future. The Barefoot Investor is rather popular in Australia so I thought I'd have a read to see what the fuss is all about. Find It, Buy It, Fix It is a real estate book about renovating because I'll probably be doing some renovations in the near future. Female Entrepreneurs sounded interesting. Grow Herbs...well I've always loved gardening and am always looking to learn more about everything. Sunday Roast, The Country Table and The Food and Cooking of Vietnam and Cambodia are cookbooks.

With a name like mine, there's no disguising my Asian background. Although I've never mentioned it before, I'm an Australian Cambodian. My family migrated to Australia as refugees. Maybe someday soon I'll write about that part and how we can to be Australian citizens instead of French citizens. That's why I was excited to finally see a Cambodian cookbook that has pictures of food that my beautiful mum cooks. It was only earlier in the week that I stumbled across an American Cambodian blogger, blogging about Khmer/Cambodian food recipes.

Much as I love finance/accounting/economics, I also love food, cooking, gardening, outdoorsy stuff, snowboarding and plenty of other stuff and can only blog regularly if I make blogging detours. Anyhoo, whilst on the subjects of books and cooking, this is the cookbook section of the cupboard:

Recipes from friends, newspaper or magazines are filed into the ring binder folders in plastic sleeves as Entrees, Mains, Desserts and Favourites. With the books and magazines, I tag the recipes I plan to try so that I don't have to keep flicking through all the time. It's more inspiring to pick one up and see which one was on your to-try-cooking-wish-list.

Last weekend, I baked Salted Chocolate Chip Cookies from Stonesoup's recipe. I failed to salt them haha ..but they still tasted wickedly, deliciously good even without the salt. Good quality dark chocolate is KEY. I used 50% cocoa Lindt dark chocolate. The higher the cocoa content, the bitterer the chocolate. My baking efforts yielded GINORMOUS cookies about 9cm in diameter ;p~~

 

Two dresses for $500: Bargain or not

Bargain of course! If you read my previous post on the Chanel dress and Burberry coat, $500 for two dresses is a bargain compared to buying just a single Chanel dress for $15000 ;)

"Everyone has a price" is a quote that is often bandied around to illustrate how vulnerable humans are to briberies. It assumes that 'everyone' is only moral to a certain degree and if you throw enough temptations at them, they'll fold and buckle in to your negotiations.

It also has an economic application. Companies and marketers need to price their products correctly in order to get their prospective customers to spend. Price it too high = no sale, price it too low = it's too cheap and they wait for it to get cheaper. If you're interested in reading up on pricing strategies and how it affects our buying behaviour, you can read up on 'price elasticity of demand'.

While I was studying, I spent several years working part-time across several retail sectors such as merchandising, seafood and food retailing. When certain products were deeply discounted, instead of rejoicing and buying tons of the discounted item or food, shoppers would ask me suspiciously, "Why is it on such a large special? Is it off? Is there something wrong with it? Is it damaged?"

If instead, the discount was only a minor discount, it was insane to see how many people thought it was a bargain and thus bought piles of the discounted item/food. I never quite understood that mentality and the cynical, distrustful queries that accompanied any deep discounts yet minor discounts triggered hoarding behaviour.

Would you spend $500 to buy two dresses? Directed at my female readers of course. If you're a male reader thinking wtf are you reading this post, would you be fine with your significant other spending that much on her dresses?

Oddly enough, the "everyone has a price' quote just plonked itself into my mind when two friends were discussing dress prices and how they couldn't believe one of their colleagues spent approximately $500 to buy two dresses.

Their opinions were along the lines of 'It's outrageous...a waste...so expensive' and my opinion were along the lines of 'That's cheap...what a bargain...' 

So there we were, clashing in our opinion on how much was too much to spend on fashion and clothing. Having said that, there are other friends out there who buy luxury labels and wouldn't baulk at spending $3k on dresses.

I <3 dresses and yes, I know my weaknesses and dresses are one of them. If you did decide to read about price elasticity of demand, then you'll know why some fashion labels price their products outrageously knowing that the demand for their clothes are price inelastic.

 Check out the drool worthy Christian Dior cream booties that have three buckles and is retailing for $2050. Or the glamourous Salvatore Ferragamo woven gold clutch purse that is retailing for $3290? ...now that's expensive! @_@

So what are your weaknesses?

Greece: Are we in for another financial crisis?

When the GFC crisis started in 2007, I thought we were all doomed. Fortunately Australia scraped through relatively unharmed. Our equity market was hammered but employment wise, we weren't losing 500,000 jobs per month like the U.S during the peak of their crisis.

Lately, I've been thinking about the domestic and international economy and the more I think about the situation and read the statistics, the more concerned I get.

The blogger, 'My-Wealth-Builder' wrote a recent post encapsulating his worries and they are similar to my concerns, which is why you are now reading a post about it. In terms of equity, I'm not heavily invested into equity right now and won't be for the foreseeable future. If Greece defaults, the equity markets will be hammered. If anyone thought the GFC crisis was bad, this could be worse because Greece has borrowed off several European banks and defaulting on those bonds may trigger a European financial crises.

Problematic areas:

• Looming potential default by Greece
• Struggling nations with huge debts such as Portugal, Ireland, Iceland and Greece, will they require further bail outs too? Are we looking at dominos lined up for a collapse?
• The U.S deficit, trillion dollar debts and woeful economy that is not recovering anytime soon. When will the U.S deal with their debts instead of printing off more money to band aid this problem?
• Australia's own flat housing and construction market, call centre and manufacturing jobs lost to cheap labour in Asian nations
• Japan, the second largest economy in the world is struggling with no end in sight to the struggle
• China, one of the largest economy in the world, heavily reliant on U.S citizens and their appetite for consumption will be affected if the U.S falters. There are also rumours about their property bubble but we'll never know for sure how accurate those rumours are. If the U.S falters, China's demands for Australia's commodities will drop

Right now, like 'My-Wealth-Builder' I also prefer to ere on the side of caution and am not increasing my equity holdings. I am also not buying any property this year and the goal is to buy one next year but again, need to review the economic situation around the world again next year not to mention our own domestic property market.

My most recent move was transferring some online savings to a term deposit that is earning 6.15% compounded monthly and 100% risk free. I do have equity holdings which I'm not going to liquidate. They're set on DRP (dividend reinvesting plans) and are held with a long term intention since I've got several decades to go before I reach my sixties so there's no harm in riding out the market with what I've currently got in equity.