What are /r/AusFinance's favorite Products & Services?

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If you're interested in reading about this and other subtle strategies used to influence, I suggest you check out the book influence: the psychology of persuasion. It's one of my faves. It details:

• Reciprocity
• Anchoring
• Scarcity
• Decoy effect
• Similarity bias (fear of difference)
• Small commitment to influence longer term commitment
• Making efforts difficult to increase eventual satisfaction (Ikea effect)

All very interesting stuff that you can see in action every day.

This is a great post - thanks for sharing, and proving context to those looking to engage with the residential building industry. Glad you have been recompensed financially, but can’t imagine the stress you’ve been through.

With close family in construction (form work) I can attest to how confrontational even minor issues can get with subcontractors not receiving payment, builders disappearing etc.

I’m currently reading a great book on Australia’s relationship with debt - “Just Money” https://www.amazon.com.au/Just-Money-Misadventures-Great-Australian/dp/0702262757 The section on where we have got to with builders / developers and the tenuous safety net insurance provides is eye opening.

They all appear to be moronic gimmicks too. "Transfer x% of my weekly pay" would have been vastly more useful than "transfer money when I post on Instagram"... ugh.

https://ifttt.com/ing_australia

Give this a listen

https://mrordinarytruecrime.com/new-podcast-series/

https://player.fm/series/series-1488595/mr-ordinary-goes-to-jail

It's a man about your age who went to prison for a similar amount of time. He gives some advice in regards to what to expect socially and some practical tips like keeping money in your pocket when you go in so you can immediately buy items from the store. Hope it helps.

Cyber Sec employee here. Dealing with this PageUp shit at my place of work as well, woohoo!

Sign up to receive Veda alerts to be notified of fraudulent credit applications under your name.

Ensure you have strong passwords to any online accounts that are important to you (bank, share trading, etc.) and do not use the same password for different systems. A good password usually has multiple, non-personal words (14+ characters) in them to create a 'passphrase'. Check your password strength here - https://howsecureismypassword.net/

Call your telephony provider and ask them how they can secure your account to avoid someone re-burning your phone number to a different simcard. You want to do this, as SMS is generally used as multi-factor authentication for banks (which is a joke but anyway) - people with this data can quite easily impersonate you on the phone to do a sim re-burn. Your password to your bank account is likely something like 'Password1!', they've got your phone number to MFA, and suddenly it's all gone.

I use ynab. It gives you a free trial, but it costs after that, around $60/year.

It's ok, not great, but I like that it's web based as well as having mobile apps. You kind of have to buy into their methodology, which I am doing not sold on.

I discovered bluecoins the other day, very highly rated, nice looking Android app that supports cloud backup. Relatively cheap as well. Haven't tried it yet though.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rammigsoftware.bluecoins

I like this one a lot, and it's available for free online: The Richest Man in Babylon

It won't teach you how to pick/buy/value shares (for this I would recommend "The intelligent Investor"), but it's a great read on how to achieve wealth. It's fairly small as well, won't take you more than a few hours to read.

Cheap or expensive doesn't matter. It's like saying flour costs $5, but that doesn't tell you how much there is. With ETFs you'll near enough always get what you pay for.

As for literature, I've read this cover to cover and followed it up with Boglehead's Guide to Investing or The Intelligent Investor.

An ETF is just a fund run a bunch of people like State Street/SPDR, Vanguard or BlackRock/iShares. That fund takes investors' money and puts it into a cap-weighted pile of whatever trades on exchanges. Including, possibly, bonds. They will do that for a fee, typically less than 0.5% annually of the money you'll have in an individual security of theirs.

One thing I did before going into the stock market was to trade on BTC-E. Waste of time and money apart from education. It familiarised me with buy and sell orders and how fees operate. In a similar vein, Roulette with a Martingale system is pretty related to random walks and helps you see the futility of trying to beat the market without a lot of knowledge that the market as a whole doesn't know. I then just opened an account with the lowest brokerage, CMC (but they also have some CFD idiocy). There wasn't any free brokerage around right at that time.

I also recommend the literature on Vanguard's website, but also read up on franking credits. I have broad market ETFs as a core, but am branching out a bit to NYSE Arca and LICs. Here's a list of ASX listed ETFs, together with their MER: http://www.asx.com.au/products/etf/managed-funds-etp-product-list.htm#ETF

Also, probably put your money in UBank, at least a 3 month buffer. 1.9%, WTF is this? 4.02% with UBank.

Rather than either of those, YNAB is my preference (https://www.youneedabudget.com/method or the reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/ynab). Combined expense tracking and budgeting. The main revelation is that you only budget money you have, which means you are always aware of overspending.

Main difference in terms of functionality is that you manually track your expenses, but that takes like ten minutes a week and it means you know exactly what's going where. It's made me much more aware of what I'm spending.

You can go "from noob to better-than-96%-of-all-fund-managers" by learning about indexing.. :-)

Start by searching "index fund" on YouTube..

If you still want to pick stocks, and maybe start a new career and become the next Warren B., I suggest reading "The Intelligent Investor" by Ben Graham..

Final year medical student here.

The medical profession does its best to look after its own. There are always jobs for Aussie doctors who studied in Australia, but the issue is trying to get specialist training once you're a doctor.

But that wasn't your question.

My advice would be that if you're good at something, willing to move, and want to work, there's almost always work for skilled people.

I suggest considering what skills you have (are you a leader, a people person, are you a fast reader, do you communicate well, are you good at focusing for a long time, are you good at recalling information that you don't really care about all that much).

Then read a book called "So Good They Can't Ignore You." by Cal Newport.

It's all the career advice you'll ever need. The answer to your question is pretty much "it doesn't matter which industry you pick", only that you find a niche within it and become excellent at an element of the career you select.

While you do not need formal education, it helps you get a job with no past experience. An institution is certifying that you're competent as some things, and know a bit. Often they make you do placements and work experience for free.

I can say that tertiary education is an excellent investment, but will benefit you more if you pick a degree that had a job tied to it "Lawyer, teacher, doctor, nurse, physiotherapist, accountant, plumber, pathology lab technician, anaesthetic technician, software engineering" etc. as opposed to something vague like "political sciences, psychological science, international politics, pure chemistry, genetics". These are all great degrees if you have some kind of connections (or can get them, maybe via family) and already have financial security to give you time to find a job after graduation. But "work" based degrees as opposed to "concept" based degrees are often a safer investment.

Any accounting package can do what you ask, it is just a matter of setting up the system.

https://www.manager.io/

Either use the cloud version and pay or use the free version on your local PC.

I'm moving away from individual shares slowly and now only buying ETFs when investing in the sharemarket. "The Bogleheads Guide to Investing" is a great read on the subject and certainly helped me to change my mind.

My current recommendation is YNAB (You Need A Budget).

It won't link to any accounts in Australia, so you have to enter your transactions manually, but I like that as it keeps me more aware of day-to-day spending. I just update it every morning on the train, so it works for me.

I mostly like YNAB for its budgeting. It's slick and allows easily setting goals and seeing progress. It also handles credit cards really well and makes it very obvious when you're getting yourself into debt. Oh, and it makes it easy to track recurring payments and budget for them. I guess there are lots of features I like.

It has a subscription, but you can trial it for a month. I easily saved the cost of the subscription after using it for a month. But my spending was a mess :)

There's some 3rd party software that will use the YNAB API to feed in your bank transactions automatically, probably using Yodlee, but I'm super uncomfortable giving my banking password to anyone, so I've never tried it.

• pocketbook
• YNAB

Both have good apps for mobiles, and also are accessible via web browser on your PC.

Pocketbook is free and developed by an Aussie, can also link into your bank and automatically download your transaction data (optional feature).

YNAB is very highly regarded as the best app for budgeting/tracking, however has a $5pm fee and is designed for budgeting your money. It also has the auto-import feature but I don't believe it's working for Australian banks.

I personally use YNAB to track expenses, simply because I found YNAB first. Both my partner and I have the app installed on our mobile and use the same account so that we can easily enter transactions we make and track it all.

If I was starting fresh I'd probably give pocketbook a better go. Both applications are great options.

Didn't Singapore's population grow at 1.5% in 2017 & 2018, and have an annual average of 2.0% over the decade to 2015?

Source

No idea how good that source is because I'm on my phone on a bus.

Australia's population growth was 1.6% in 2017.

I'm not saying that I love to pay fees, but I'm suspicious of their business model.

If you see this page they say that they don't have fees because they don't have to support "costly brick-and-mortar storefronts" and costly primetime advertisement.

But neither do the online brokers. It's a competitive business with very efficient operations.

Moreover, they have to pay trading fees themselves, to the exchanges. Which means that their business model is based on the assumption that they can cover those costs in some other way.

Their story is a little bit bullshit, too:

> They began to realize that electronic trading firms pay effectively nothing to place trades in the market yet charge investors up to $10 for each trade

Hu, they pay effectively nothing because they're making markets; they're providing a service to the market by adding liquidity. Nothing to do with what a broker does.

And I don't like the whole "let's save the world" vibe, coming from Silicon Valley venture capitalists.

What happens if, down the line, they start introducing trading fees, even small ones? Suddenly, you realize than the hundreds of securities you've bought "for free" end up costing you a lot if you want to exit those positions...

They're backed by venture capitalists. Those guys try to extract as much money out of their companies, and flip them. They're not building sustainable businesses.

My verdict: it's less likely that the trading platform of a Big four is going to end up screwing you.

Source code (https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome/releases) on github is public and downloadable mate (basically anybody who knows their stuff can see exactly what the program is doing) - you can see the star rating up top right too!

If concerned and you know a developer get them to look it over. I use this myself though to bypass AFR/Australian/SMH/bloomberg

I like pocketbook, simple and easy just works. I put in 15 min of my own time a month to categories items that are in an unknown category. The rest it works for itself. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.getpocketbook It's free as well!

I'll try and help the guy above though a very vague answer would be - READ. Learn and read everything you can - business books, small business books, books on efficiency (4 hour work week), books on investing (Bogleheads Guide to Investing) on how to think like a millionaire and become one (The Millionaire Next Door). Learn from others, those that have started a business, investors etc. Remember to also learn from your mistakes - though of course it's better to learn from other people's mistakes.

I bought into iShares Global Clean Energy ETF a few weeks back. The other one I was contemplating was TAN which has a focus on solar, which I actually personally think will come out on top in the renewables.

I would be interested to know of any ASX companies that are in solar that might be worth looking at.

If it's anything like the Acorns US fees, I'd currently be paying something along the lines of $4-$7 AUD a month... is that really all? I pay more in brokerage fees when I do my monthly buy ins. So confused. What's the catch?

Almost half the price of the cloud version of what you are recommending

I pay $27/month (but still in the first 6 months at half price). That's only a tax deductible $324/year.

https://www.manager.io/cloud/pricing/

Check haveibeenpwned.com to see if you have been affected by other data breaches. If you reuse a password, it's quite possible that someone is trying to use your login details for a site that was previously breached to see if you used the same username/email and password combination.

Check out the BOQ Property App. It'll send you a Property Report for free.

Alternatively, ANZ has a similar thing.

I was in a similar situation beginning of this year and felt helpless. In 9 months I have paid off $15k in credit card debt and have saved another $10k.

I first read Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover and started listening to his podcast. It is American but the psychology is the most important part of getting out of debt. I then read the Barefoot Investor which is similar.

The important part is to be intentional, have a plan and start budgeting. It gets addictive once you start smashing debt.

Read Making Money Made Simple by Noel Whittaker, The Australian Stockmarket by Ron Bennetts, The Australian Property Market by Ron Bennetts and The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham.

Seriously. The amount of money you have available and coming in isn't enough to do much with direct investment or saving or even emergency fund levels. But learning all the basics will benefit you greatly going forward.

In the meantime park the money in a relatively high interest savings account.

I've read The Millionaire Next Door before - thought it was a great read; highly recommend it.

What did you think of the Barefoot Investor book? I've read a few of his blog posts before and seen the book in Target recently and was considering picking it up. I'm in my early 30s with no debt and have been investing in ETFs for 2 yrs, but don't own any property. Just wondering if I'm his target audience.

I guess what you're missing from this equation is that Telstra's share price has increased by 90% over the past five years, whilst paying dividends. There is risk involved in the sharemarket which is why you always need to do your own research and evaluate the company and it's future share price based on that. I would recommend reading The Intelligent Investor before you make a move with your money.

For this to work both parties (Sender (Your sending Bank) and Recipient (SelfWealth)) need to support NPP or Osko fast payment transfers. In some cases not just your bank but the particular account you have and whether you're using BSB/ACC, PayID, etc for the transfer

As a start you can find your bank in the list here and see if there is support and/or any account limitations here: https://www.notion.so/7d612d9c52d4479785d4237cb8bd772a?v=8f0789b8c973434c8cec24ab1014e396

A lot of articles shared about how and why the property market will crash on this subreddit. Here is an article with a contrarian view.

I'm interested in looking back on all the different views/sentiments in the near and distant future, to look back and learn from it all. For anyone interested, I'm capturing them here: https://www.notion.so/elbbub/Australian-Property-Bulls-and-Bears-484bc389c26440e992defa9d33bee637

GST is compulsory for turnovers over 75k. So do you plan to make over 75k in billings for your business? If yes you need to sign up for GST. You pretty much add GST to all your billings and you can claim the GST from anything you buy for the business in as simple terms as possible.

If you plan to have billings significantly under 75k, you can get away with not charging GST. but you cannot claim GST credits. This may be a better option for you if you are mainly a freelancer as you may not have many GST credits you can claim. As soon as you project you will be anywhere near that 75k you should register for GST straight away as there are penalties if you don't

For more reading:

https://www.xero.com/au/resources/small-business-guides/accounting/guide-to-gst-and-bas/what-is-gst-and-how-much-is-it/?escape=true

​

Potentially you need to do a BAS quarterly or annually depending on your situation. When you need to submit depends on if you have a bookkeeper or not.

You can decide how to use the money and do not necessarily need to take it out of the business . If you do take it out it is classed as owner's drawings and you will need to pay tax on it. You do not need to pay compulsory super as an owner.

I would sit down with an accountant and have them explain the process to you as well as your obligations etc. you seem very new to this and I think you will learn more from an accountant explaining things to you.

Good luck with your ventures

If you're looking for something more big picture (i.e. app plus full support) to help you, that's more budget-oriented and getting your finances under control (as opposed to just tracking spending), YNAB seems to be very well recommended. It costs $60, but when you read the feedback, it pays for itself in no time.

Website

Subreddit

The Millionaire Next Door will teach you people who look like millionaires are probably drowning in debt.. (Book is pretty boring after few chaps)

Richest Man in Babylon has a nice narrative, easy to understand, touch all the basics to wealth accumulation..

Money Master the Game: 700-page US centric mostly useless for Aussies, except for power of compound interest, keep fees low as possible (index funds), save consistently, diversify, etc..

Total Money Makeover: too American, directed to people with '000s of credit card debt..

Once you got the basics covered, Rich Dad Poor Dad will teach you to think differently to what we are programmed in school, and The Cashflow Quadrant will teach you difference between good and bad debt..

Read "The Intelligent Investor" by Benjamin Graham, "One Up On Wall Street" by Peter Lynch. Read. Read. Read. Forums, blogs, websites about how to approach investing rather than what to invest in.

Just keep an open mind and understand that you'll probably lose money along the way, and that's good - as long as you understand where you made the mistake, whether it be emotions or some other factor contributing to the mistake. The earlier you lose your money, the better, because it won't matter too much early on.

At your age, it's less important that you make money and more important you learn. Remember that.

I think you may be misled a little about having cash around = have to invest.

As I identify two things from your post:

1. you have cash lying around

2. you want to understand investing

I think these two are somewhat independent of each other. You can do No. 2 without having No. 1, for instance- through gearing.

Having excess money lying around doesn't mean you have to invest it. A couple questions you might want to ask your self are: are you insured enough? do you have emergency fund? do you have any holiday plans? etc etc.

A good financial advisor will be able to point you out in the right way.

However, I may be wrong- may be you do know what you want to do with your cash savings = that is to invest it somewhere.

I say, given the amount of time that you should spend to understand all investments opportunities out there. Your investment potential is unlimited- Thus, 4-5 books won't do enough justice for it. But overall, at the very least- you should at least know the difference in the types of assets; such as: cash v. domestic shares v. international shares v. property (direct v indirect) v. domestic fixed interest v. international fixed interest v. infrastructure.

If it's not a book that you ask- I'd refer you to MoneySmart to get the fundamentals

I'm still too young to recommend the meager amount of books that I've read. But I've seen some very positive reviews on

• The intelligent investor By. Benjamin Graham

• Investing Against the Tide: Lessons From a Life Running Money By. Anthony Bolton

• A Random Walk Down Wall Street By. Burton Malkiel

if you're referring your safe stock as the market index.. the market declined by around 2% on the day. I don't see why this is such a drama.

if you become unnerved by this fact, then the stock market probably shouldn't be your game. there are other assets that you can invest in other than the stock market.

Also, your speculative stocks "happened" to have made you more money. you did not expect this, and you have all the right to be happy about it. But as this was invested on a mere conjecture rather than knowledge- imagine if your speculative stocks has dropped significantly instead. And imagine how relieved you would've been in diversifying your investments into the index as well.

pretty good book I'd suggest are:

The intelligent investor - Benjamin Graham

A Random Walk Down Wall Street - Burton Malkiel

You could potentially automate something like this with IFTTT but I would hesitate to give it your credentials to perform any kind of transactions.

I would also say if your income fluctuates that wildly, you would be smart enough to structured as a business. If you were a business, you would only have to pay these things every three months, so you could potentially have software track these amounts for you so you know how much you need to pay out of a one account every three months. Businesses usually do this with an accounting package of some description.

If you don't want to use an accounting package, you could pay a developer to write you some software that leverages Yodlee to pull this information out and keep a tally of what you are supposed to to pay at these times. Yodlee costs $250 a month for basic API access in Australia which only gives access to the big four banks. You would be looking at $3000 a year just in API access costs alone, potentially more if you didn't move your accounts to the one of the Big 4.

I imagine it would be cheaper to just get a bookkeeper to look after the books for you and tell you how much you have to pay for each category every quarter.

EDIT: The easiest option would be to just import your bank transactions into Excel and setup some calculated fields to work it out for you. You would still have to pull the trigger on the transactions yourself though.

PM me if you think you could use a developer to do this, I can point you in the right direction.

According to the 4% rule, the perpetual monthly 'salary' for 5 million dollars would be about $16,000 in the first year.

>One frequently used rule of thumb for retirement spending is known as the 4% rule. It’s relatively simple: You add up all of your investments, and withdraw 4% of that total during your first year of retirement. In subsequent years, you adjust the dollar amount you withdraw to account for inflation. By following this formula, you should have a very high probability of not outliving your money during a 30-year retirement

https://www.schwab.com/resource-center/insights/content/beyond-4-rule-how-much-can-you-safely-spend-retirement

You don't need to follow the Barefoot investor plan, you need to follow the YNAB methodology. You need to be more precise with your income and expenses, for instance you mention you have a housemate, but don't say anything about rental income.

Your car is a huge expense. Do you actually need a car for work? Can you cycle to work or use public transport? If not can you sell the car and get a cheap second hand one instead or a motorbike?

Do you really need a $70 bring your own plan when you could get a decent prepaid ALDI plan for $25 a month.

This is gold, I've captured it for posterity to examine here: https://www.notion.so/Australian-Property-Bulls-Spruikers-and-Bears-Realists-484bc389c26440e992defa9d33bee637

I use Interactive brokers.

$1 US trades. $6 ASX trades. there is however $10 minimum spend per month.

Another option that will be available soon in Australia is Robinhood. $0 US trading commissions. It will be launching in Australia later this year.

You can sign up for the waiting list here:

https://robinhood.com/?ref=mNmUSW

Great advice, if you stay within that circle you'll find out all about the goodness of passive investing, modern portfolio theory and how basic investing is quite easy.

Incase you inhale that book quickly here are two more for you.

The Four Pillars of Investing and A Random Walk Down Wall Street.

Even though they are US based they still apply. It will let you into the reality of the market and the mistake and thinking of most investors.

There are a lot of people with a lot of bad advice in finance and it's hard to tell them apart, these books helped me a lot with that issue.

Leave it in the account unless you really need $15k to restart in the UK. I reckon your concerns around exchange rates and recession are valid but overstated if you look at things in the long term.

Over 10 years the exchange rate has been flat, more or less. Worst case scenario over that 10 year period you've got a swing of 18 cents- still better than a guaranteed 40% tax.

I'm guessing Brexit is having an impact on the UK economy, or at least it will if/when it occurs, so better to bring money in after the fact then rushing to put your money in the UK before Brexit.

Exciting times! Freelancing / consulting is great. Register as a sole trader on the ato site for free don’t use any services that offer to do it for you they just take your money. No great advantage to starting a company / pty ltd for you just yet - all it will do is require more of your time to manage the books and pay your accountant more.

Start a seperate bank account so it’s easy to keep track of income and deductions. If you’re being paid in Canadian dollars you’ll get slugged on exchange rates so try something like wise I really like them https://wise.com/au/business/

For Android, Expense IQ. I have the paid version, and there's so many features that I like: Sync, Recurring transactions, bill reminders, auto categorization based on historical categorization of payee (Aldi, Bunning). The part that I like the most is Split Categories. Like I may buy $45 of household stuff on Aldi Special Buys, and $10 of groceries. I'd like one transaction to be split in this proportion.

The downside is EVERY transaction is manual. No bank import.

I'd be happy if someone can point me to an iOS app that does split categories. Preferably a paid one. I don't want to be the product.

Not quite a book, but moneysmart.gov.au is a great resource for young and old. Speaking of internet resources, the Khan Academy has videos on micro and macro economics (stuff you might learn if you took an economics subject in high school). For a book, John Bogle's "The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns" as it succinctly explains passive investing and how fees can dramatically reduce your overall returns. Perhaps that would give you knowledge in investing wisely in the future.

It's a pretty obvious advice: Don't invest something that you don't fully understand.

Read the book A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton G. Malkiel to understand the concept behind passive investment (just ignore the last few chapters)

I also had people recommending The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing for personal finance.

And also subscribe to /r/personalfinance and /r/ausfinance and just see what questions people have (chances are you might have them in the future too) and look at the top comments. They are not professional advice but it will give you some food for thought

Also check out this one, it's a great read, takes only a few hours and is available for free online: The Richest Man in Babylon. It'll take you through basic principles, and is quite entertaining as well!

> A spokeswoman for Orlando said he was not available to give an interview because of a "claws" in his contract.

nice pun lol.

A Random Walk Down Wall Street is definitely my next reading. I've heard and seen some praises toward it.

they've done many of this test before with monkeys and chimpanzees, but it's the first time I see a cat doing it. Also reminds me of Paul the Octopus

The stock tanked because of the company's poor disclosure in its response to the report. If you were concerned the short report had merit, the company response would have swayed you to the short side. As a simple example Blue Sky could have disclosed high level metrics like gross assets under management vs net assets under management but chose not to.

Thought this quote from Dirty Money S1E3 (48:50) about Valeant Pharmaceuticals was relevant:

>One investor told me that he thought, well, they're going to have answers for this on the conference call on Monday. They're taking the weekend, and they're going to have this conference call, and they're going to tell me everything I need to know. And when they didn't, and they were evasive on the conference call and didn't really give answers, he said that's it, I'm selling all my stock.

https://www.netflix.com/watch/80149535?t=2930

Well, we don't give out financial advice here, so it can be difficult.

I'm in the middle of setting up a core portfolio at the moment, actually. Looking at this map: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-the-map-of-the-world-if-size-was-determined-by-market-cap-2015-08-12 (or a chart if you prefer: https://www.quandl.com/collections/economics/stock-market-capitalization-by-country)

it gives me an idea about how big each market is, and leads me to a rough rule of thumb of 40% US exposure, 30% world ex-USA exposure, with the rest being a mix of domestic + emerging markets. I'm still open to changing this mix, but it's a lot better than making up an ETF split based on gut feel.

Considering that most of my assets are domestic, that means I'll be ploughing money into international investments for a long time to rebalance.

(Sorry for commenting with answering your question)

I'm curious about the transfer cost between TransferWise and deposit to Charles Schwab directly.Charles Schwab accpets AUD and exchange to USD with a good rate as far as I know. Would it be cheaper to transfer via TransferWise?

Wire Transfer Instruction from Charles Schwab https://www.schwab.com/public/file/P-10740369

If you use ynab you can set repeated transactions, and then see if anything is expected to come in/pay for the month.

It is still a manual transaction to enter but you can get pretty close.

Bare basics - use an online calendar for reminders and enter them all in. Can be rough dates to begin, but over time as things pop up you can enter them in and put repeats on.

The graph was taken from this article:

https://www.prosper.org.au/2013/02/a-long-ugly-list-of-house-price-precedents/

According to the graph, the source is ABS and this paper.

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/A-History-of-Housing-Prices-in-Australia-1880-2010-Stapledon/a47f44cba46ced98b30ea746134f418bf7abd9f3

But sources aside, look at the arithmetic. If the median real house price in Sydney is $1Mil in 2020, and house prices continually rise 7% pa in real terms, it means the median real price in 1900 was $1 233 (so roughly a week's wages) and in 1800 was $1.42 (so roughly the price of a loaf of bread).

Don't dwell on the past; heaps of well educated people don't have a great history with money. For various reasons most of us didn't even get an education in managing money! Luckily this can be changed!

As others have said the Barefoot Investor book is a solid starting point. The basic principles there would at least allow you to vaguely track spending and allocate funds. You don't need to do everything exactly as he lays it out, but let it guide your own research. And pay off that credit card ASAP! CCs are only ok if you pay them off every month and avoid interest (and I mean every month, forever, without fail); if not then pay it off now and cut it up.

There was also a basic financial podcast aimed at women earlier this year called The Pineapple Project. It's a great series, doesn't take itself too seriously, and covers lots of crucial areas.

Personally the thing that got me on track was a proper budget. I use YNAB (I have an old version but it's a subscription now), which makes you allocate funds to categories and track every dollar spent. This approach worked for me but is not for everyone. Alternatively you can use excel to make a simple (or complicated) budget to your preferences.

Most importantly don't worry. You're earning really good money and have low debt; you can catch up easily if you focus on your goals.

https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome#:~:text=In%20Chrome%2FEdge%20go%20to,not%20delete%20the%20folder%20afterwards).

This one works for me

The worlds largest all-remote company (tech sector of course, but model can be adapted) has produced a remote manifesto. They have over a thousand employees around the globe and are going to be a public company soon. They’ve been remote only since founding in 2012. Other commenters have questioned whether middle management and sales roles could be successful remotely - this company is a leading example of it working out, as they have a traditional enterprise sales model too. All of the common issues that people new to remote working raise, have been addressed and dealt with by this company. They’ve also produced a remote work manifesto.

The 9 points of the manifesto:

1. Hiring and working from all over the world instead of from a central location.

2. Flexible working hours over set working hours.

3. Writing down and recording knowledge over verbal explanations.

4. Written down processes over on-the-job training.

5. Public sharing of information over need-to-know access.

6. Opening up every document for editing by anyone over top-down control of documents.

7. Asynchronous communication over synchronous communication.

8. The results of work over the hours put in.

9. Formal communication channels over informal communication channels.

The company is called GitLab and you can read about them in the Atlassian rival GitLab launches in Australia

GitLab’s Guide to Remote Work

Getting your accountant to set up the file and inviting you as a user with all user rights can save you up to 30% (depending on the accountants status with Xero).

The way you interact with Xero will be the same. You will be able to reconcile accounts, run payroll, generate reports etc. I think the only difference will be that you aren't able to access the subscription settings and some of the organisation settings.

If the time comes that you wish to move accountants, they will transfer ownership of the subscription to you.

I don’t know about the main Xero type accounts through a third party, but you can get Various cutdown “Cashbook” versions of Xero for cheaper rates through accountants and bookkeepers. These basically are Xero but missing some features (Invoicing for example).

See https://www.xero.com/au/features-and-tools/practice-tools/ledger-cashbook/

Not sure about any others but when I was on the Xero site today looking at their pricing I saw they have a cheaper ‘payroll only’ option, purely for people looking for STP compliance.

https://www.xero.com/au/pricing/plan-details/#payroll-only

Just saw it’s only for 1-4 employees :/

Have a look at wave apps https://www.waveapps.com I use it for a startup I'm erm starting up.. :-) It's free and should do all you need. They make money on the invoicing side but if your just using it to reconcile accounts etc it's completely free. I've also found it easy to use and similar to Xero. Enjoy. Edit looks like your already on to it. Great. Good luck with your business.

That was another annoyance. Because TD only let me do direct debits from abroad and not wire transfers I had to split it up just as part of the transfer protocol. If you can do a wire transfer the caps are much higher though. Details here: https://wise.com/help/articles/2932153/guide-to-cad-transfers

TD themselves never objected though. I suspected they might ring me up to check what's up after I emptied and closed my account pretty quickly, but no one said anything.

If your question is more generally about whether I'd trust Wise with a big transfer, my answer is definitely yes. The CAD->AUD conversion and the transfer on the Australian end (into my brokerage account) I did both do in one big go without problem. Thankfully transferring on the Australian end is easier (and free).

One potentially helpful tip: Whenever I'm doing some new transfer like this I'm not familiar with I usually do a $10 test transfer and wait for it to fully clear. That way if I screw up and typo an account number or something stupid I don't lose much, and I can find any hidden fees or catches I hadn't anticipated.

https://getpocketbook.com/ (Aussie)

https://www.mint.com/ (More US I think)

Not OP or in anyway as organized as them. I did make a pocketbook account ages ago. Yet, I've never spent the time setting it up properly. It looks nice, so there is that.

It goes deeper than this. Highly recommend this book:

https://www.amazon.com.au/Wilful-Blindness-network-tycoons-Infiltrated/dp/0888903014/ref=asc_df_0888903014/?tag=googleshopdsk-22&linkCode=df0&hvadid=463551517885&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=17013766995816929295&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9071333&hvtargid=pla-1322264553522&psc=1

Like for like with Aus, incredible.

Try these:

https://www.amazon.com/jeremy-siegel-Books/s?k=jeremy+siegel&rh=n%3A283155

https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Market-Cycle-Getting-Odds/dp/1328479250

I liked them , they are not part of the traditional books always recommended

I dont understand what you're saying - you put 50% of your pay into a savings account, but then you end up dipping into it, andd for hte last 4 months the balance hasn't increased because you're dipping into it too much? Is that the gist of it?

If you're having issues of self control, is there someone you would trust enough to set up a 'two to sign' account with? The way that would work is that you can deposit to it like any otrher account, but you could only withdraw with both your and a nominated persons signature (say your mum or dad or whatever).

Also, as far as your feelings of iinsecurity and your life revolving around money etc. that is unhealthy behaviour and I highly recommend you read and internalise this book:

https://www.amazon.com.au/Meditations-Marcus-Aurelius/dp/0141395869

I don't know about the comment but have a read at this book https://www.amazon.com.au/Mastering-Market-Cycle-Getting-odds/dp/1473695686/ . It has a real estate chapter which talks exactly about what you are saying. Real estate goes up until it doesn't anymore.

Mybudgetbook (Android only)

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.onetwoapps.mh

It deliberately doesn't have network permissions.

There's no way I'd ever allow anything access to my accounts.

Paul Krugman's Arguing with zombies

If you are going to understand what to invest in and how to plan for the future, you had better better understand what is happening with the economy.

Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future

The best thing you can do is to learn the skills of decision-making in general, and apply it to your own specific situation.

I have some big life-altering decisions to make and came across the book How to Decide by Annie Duke.

https://www.amazon.com.au/How-Decide-Simple-Making-Choices/dp/0593418484/

I only finished the book today, so I haven't run through the entire suite of tools/techniques the author describes for my own big decisions yet... but even just reading it has given me a tonne of perspective I didn't have when I started.

>2FA is expensive. SMS may not be available in rural areas and soft tokens are expensive (on a great scale) and need replacing every few years.

They can always make it opt in. If the user has internet access (Who doesn't?) they can use an app such as https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.authy.authy&hl=en

Building Wealth And Being Happy: A Practical Guide To Financial Independence (Investing, Lifestyle, And Retirement Concepts Book 1)

It's written by a redditor who is quite active on /fi and /pf an a really solid summary of all the principles for success. The Kindle version is $3 something - best money you will ever spend.

Thing is, you can be making $1mil a year and be broke if your living costs match income..which most folks tend to do.

Best way for you to learn the answer to you question is read "The Millionaire Next Door". Covers this in detail :)

No need for conditional orders when buying ETF's for long term investments. Just place a limit order halfway between the highest bid/lowest ask if you are willing to wait for the order to fill.

Or if you want the order to fill instantly, place a limit order at the current ask price, or slightly below the current ask price.

You don't need any special analysis tools to buy etfs. Those kind of tools are for active investors who think they can use analysis to beat the market. Passive investors buy and hold, they don't care about the daily fluctuations in price because they are in for the long haul, and will ride the ups and downs for years to come.

You said you expect your investment to appreciate at a rate better than average. Not sure what you are going to be benchmarking against, but etfs like VGAD are literally designed to match the average return of the market/s they are invested in. This is a good thing.

Regarding active vs passive, the short answer is, a good passive portfolio is a better option than actively managed funds because there is no way to reliably predict which actively managed funds will outperform the market (and a majority do not outperform the market). Furthermore, when you take fee's in to consideration, which are higher for actively managed funds, passive investing comes out even further ahead.

I suggest reading some passive investing books such as "The Four Pillars of Investing" and "The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing".

Definitely start making an income, and learn all you can about personal finance! Khan Academy has a course, and there's also plenty of awesome books (I recommend: Your Money or Your Life - only comes in UK or US editions, but a lot of it is still applicable). It's awesome you're thinking about this stuff this early. Keep asking questions, keep learning, hustle & save!

What are your objectives / goals of investing? Knowing that is a good start in determining what you should think about investing in

When I was 22, I never thought about super. Heck, 10 years later and I still don't think much about super. It is so far away. In your case, you won't get access to super for 43 years, almost 2x your lifetime! So even if you can get govt co-contribution, that option only makes sense if you really don't want to use the cash for the next 40 years.

A lot of people start saving after uni w the view of buying a house. I wrote about how that might not work and ideas around it here

Overall, it is important to start getting educated about investing. I believe a good book to start w is Benjamin Graham's The Intelligent Investor - even Warren Buffett says it is the most important investment book written

There you will start to see why so many people in this forum favour index based investing through ETFs. The stats are pretty compelling - stock picking is unlikely to help you grow your money vs investing in the entire market. To that end, I don't believe ETF investing is purely lazy, it is actually smart and proven, except it is boring. Then again, do you want to have fun investing or be bored but make more money?

It really depends on how "active" you want to be in managing your investment. Will you be the type who will hawk on stock tickers all day or the type where you're too lazy to care and stick it in a savings account.

I really like the book A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel. Do take the chance to read it before making any major investment. Burton's book shows more realistic scenarios in investing, cooling down over-eager investors.

Have you read any investing books or educated yourself at all?

Earning 4% interest in a savings account is much better than 'putting the money into property for capital gain'.

If you have never read any books on the subject, I suggest reading, in this order: 1. Rich Dad Poor Dad 2. The Bogleheads Guide to Investing

The Bogleheads Guide to Investing is the only investing book you'll ever need to read in my opinion, but I learnt more about modern portfolio theory from a finance lecture on YouTube. The wiki article is probably enough even.

As others have said... the difference is risk. To be specific - risk of capital loss.

Money saved in banks are guaranteed by the Australian government. There is essentially zero risk of capital loss (in nominal terms).

Money invested in stocks are subject to risk of capital loss. It is possible to buy high and sell low.

You alluded to blue chip stocks. Those are stocks that typically have lower beta, so they have lower price volatility relative to the market. That means that if the overall market goes up, the stock price tends to go up by a similar proportion. If the market goes down, the stock price tends to goes down by a similar proportion. Blue chip stocks do not guarantee against capital loss. The risk is just lower, according to the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) definition of risk. That does not preclude blue chip stock prices from trending down in a general recession/depression when the entire market is trending down. As such, it is possible with bad timing to suffer capital loss on blue chip stocks.

You also mentioned "ya never too poor for some vegies and coke." Remember that there's quite a lot going on between company revenue and share price. The fact that people buy vegies and coke in difficult times doesn't mean that they won't reduce their spend. There are also lots of costs factors affecting a company's profitability. And then there's what multiples the market values the company - which can magnify variances in the company's profitability and stock price.

If you're interested in learning more, I'd highly recommend reading The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham, particularly Chapter 8.

TBH, I think /u/GlowInTheDarkDonkey's original answer is quite reasonable. I'm not sure why you reacted so negatively to it.

Funny you should say that; I am reading The Intelligent Investor right now, I am about halfway through. Last week I also printed off the Berkshire annual reports for the last decade. At least I got that part right.

I’ve also thought about getting Grahams other book, Security Analysis and giving that a go too. Is it still relevant today?

Thanks for the information though, I was not sure how to go about trying my hand at the next step (the actual market), your advice has given me a way to do that.

Low cost index funds. Read the book A Random Walk Down Wall Street - if you don't really have the time to focus on investing, the best you can do (and in fact arguably the best ANYONE can do) is to invest across the whole share/bond market with the lowest management fees possible.

Open a nabtrade or similar, with 10 or so free trades, use it to buy Vanguard index ETFs in bulk, and watch it grow. And if there's a market crash, buy tons more while they're on discount.

I gather up my funds in a USaver and whenever it hits $10,000 I transfer it over to nabtrade and buy VAS/VTS/VGE/VAP. Up 6.41% so far this year across the board.

Also I'm not instantly losing almost half of it to tax, like I would with bank account interest.

Classics:

1. The Intelligent Investor
2. A Random Walk Down Wall Street

First you need to build up some savings and budget your expenses. Depending on where you live, 55k may barely get you by (e.g. Sydney).

Don't even think about day trading and Forex, it's a sucker's game, unless you know what you are doing.

While you are saving up money, read something like "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" first, you'll have a better idea where to go from there.

I suggest reading "The Intelligent Investor" - Ben Graham. Underlying principle is to invest at a regular amount each year to ensure losses are minimal. This also has the side effect of limiting too much of a yield in any given year due to the averaging out of the strategy but its a pretty effective method of keeping your investment strategy moving along.

Warren Buffet quotes Graham as one of his main mentors in life so take from that as you will.

YNAB may now be prohibitively too expensive to subscribe to. There's a 3 month free trial for it though so OP should still check it out. Also GNUCash is meant to be just as good as YNAB, and it's free.

https://www.gnucash.org https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.gnucash.android&hl=en&referrer=utm_source%3Dgoogle%26utm_medium%3Dorganic%26utm_term%3Dgnucash&pcampaignid=APPU_1_1UQOWsTQPImt0gSslKGoBw

I'm with YNAB BTW, but only because our fee is grandfathered.

I found an app from a guy here on Reddit that made one because there was nothing else available. It's called Market Wave. Here's a link to the Google Play Store.

This is a digital security post in a personal finance sub but sure I'll roll with it. Lazy digital security could cost you a lot of money after all.

2FA is really important, you should have it on any account you don't want to lose. I go the extra nine yards and have YubiKeys, but if you have google authenticator or authy on your phone with TOTP that's just fine. Avoid SMS unless it's the only option, it's better than nothing but it's not as secure. Don't set up SMS as a backup option for a stronger form of 2FA. Try to imagine scenarios where you lose access to your 2FA device and/or your home burns down, and make sure you can still bootstrap at least your email account so you can start the recovery process. TOTP users would typically do this with backup codes stored in a safe place.

A VPN is nice for accessing region locked content and I do have one, but you don't need one for security. Simply do not use dodgy public wifi networks, use mobile data instead. Don't do anything important over unsecured HTTP either. I use ProtonVPN and it's fine but there are lots of perfectly good options out there.

Backups are obviously important, have at least one local backup to a separate drive (to protect from hardware failure) and one in the cloud (to protect from your home burning down). If you're paranoid about your cloud provider having access to your data, then you could encrypt it before backing it up, or use a physical backup at a friend's house instead. I use pCloud which is fine, but the upload speed is lackluster, I don't think they have any datacentres in Australia.

I also recommend using a password manager if you don't already, keepassXC is good, free, and multi-platform. You can use the same cloud provider you picked for your backups to make your password safe easily accessible from all your devices.

There's the Spotify Premium Duo plan for $15.99/month for 2 users at the same address and Premium Family plan for $18.99/month for 6 users as the same address.

I've set up a Family Plan at work where the linked address is our office address so there's 6 of us going in on an $18.99/month deal. Makes Spotify very affordable.

Not sure if you were addressing me? Either way, here is a copy of the spreadsheet. It's nothing fancy but might form a base to start your own. We get paid fortnightly so that's how wages are entered, however most bills are monthly, quarterly or annual, hence splitting those off below.

https://tinyurl.com/yfbdm763

I'm just getting started in this space myself but here's a great free option for learning R from Udacity/Facebook.

Currently on $5618 a month but according to paycalculator its $1296 a week.

Currently i spend about $420 a week on everything including rent and bills. Comes out to be around $1677ish per month. I'm about to put away close to $4000 away in savings if i REALLY save hard.

Budget is the following for those who don't believe me lol. I budget monthly as i find it far easier to do than weekly. Everything i pay is monthly and i get paid monthly so works out well. Some months do end up being a bit more than others like when electricity bill comes in or there is a triple rent fortnight cycle in a single month but most of the year it looks like this.

Salary (Monthly) = $5618

• Rent: $1360 - 4 bedroom house in sydney's west. 1 other roommate with me.
• Phone: $20 - 30GB of data with Circles Life.
• Internet: $65 - Split half with my roommate (130 total) for Aussie Broadband 250mbps down and 20mbps up
• Electricity: I pay this when it comes in usually. So quarterly. Does drop the savings for the month it comes in.
• Youtube Premium: $6.60
• Spotify Duo: $8
• Google Subscriptions on my phone: $2
• Newshosting: $16 - $32 usually and i go halves with my roommate on this.
• Food: $200 - I aim for $50 a week usually. For a single male with no dependants its completely possible. Just have to think hard about quantities!

Total: $1677.60 a month. Average Savings per month is $3370.80 providing i give myself 10% fun money which is about $561.80. Providing i don't give myself the fun money then i can max my savings out around $3932.60.

I've cut every single expense down as hard as i can. Last thing i can cut is the rent. Hoping to move back home early next year so i can gun it saving for a house deposit and up the savings to $5000 a month.

This is the one I bought.

https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B09BQMS4PJ?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details

Got delivered in two days and seems of high quality and sturdy enough for the price.

Read this book called Your Investment Philosophy recently: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0BCCYSN6L

It was featured on Rational Reminder a month or so ago and Cameron was talking it up, didn't seem like Ben had read it. Thing that took my interest was they said the authors were from Sydney, so I thought it was worth a look.

Anyway, it was very short and easy to read. As far as the info in it, it's not exactly a "how to", but a this is "info you use to make an educated decision". It's broken up into chapters on markets and indexing, risk/return, diversification, asset allocation, behaviour, mentions factors, DCA vs lump sum. There seemed to be a Dimensional influence (probably explains the factor stuff) and it was written by advisers so there is a chapter promoting advice, but on the flipside the first chapter says the best thing to do is index and in the advice chapter they admit not everyone is suited to advice so figure out what type of person you are. Again, it wasn't a how to, but if you're looking to start it would probably put you in the frame of mind before wandering off to Vanguard.

I didn't want to have to bring out the budget sheet because i thought it was fairly believable. trust me i'm amazed even myself i managed to get it this far on my budget sheet lol. But i'll run everyone through it. Just wanna point out this on average and not every month. Some months are less due to electricity bill coming in quarterly which i just pay in full.

Anyway live in a 4 bedroom house with 1 other roommate. Both of us get a bedroom and office each.

Salary: $5522 after tax. Paid monthly. Yearly before tax its $86,700

Rent: $1360 paid fortnightly (twice a year there are 3 fortnight rent payment days that fall in a month so this can go up to $2040 for those 2 months). Water is also paid by landlord.

Phone: $20 a month (30GB of data and unlimited calls with

Internet: $65 a month (250mbps down and 20mbps up unlimited with AussieBB, shared with roommate)

Food: $200 a month aka $50 a week.

Subscriptions

• Youtube Premium: $6.60
• Spotify: $8 (using spotify duo with my house mate)
• Google Subscriptions on my phone: $2
• Newshosting (usenet) $16 (also shared with my housemate)

Comes to a grand total of $1677.60 per month

That leaves me with $3844.40. I also take 10% of my pay for fun things for the month so thats about $522.20.

That comes down to $3322.20 to be able to put into savings a month. It's not every month when electricity or a triple rent month come in but for most of the year thats what i'm able to put away into savings. Could honestly get this to $3500 if i cheaped out on food more and cut all the subscriptions but at that point i'm severely cutting my comfort of life to only save another $150.

So what do i do for fun? I usually just hang out at home playing games all afternoon after work. Or just hanging in VR. I don't go out often or feel a need to spend money on that.

Read this a couple of weeks ago: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0BCCYSN6L from Australia, but was recommended on the Rational Reminder podcast. Key basics in about 100 pages, also got a chapter on advice and what questions to ask yourself and what to watch out for, basically says anyone promising investment performance should be avoided.

This was featured on the Rational Reminder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDxPFIXP3u8&t=5009s podcast a few weeks back: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0BCCYSN6L I bought it out of interest on kindle because it was from Australia, but lent my mum the kindle because she's been ill, anyway got it back and finally read it and I can recommend as a starters guide because it was short and so easy to read.
It's written by financial advisers so there is an obligatory chapter on why you need an adviser at the end and it seems obvious they're Dimensional types from a few things said, but the first chapter says indexing is the best place to start and everything else is solid info, diversification, risk/return asset allocation, dollar cost/lump sum, crap to avoid, although in that they didn't include avoiding thematics which would have helped.

Well its a good thing i tallied them back in april haha.

• Adobe Creative Cloud: $29.99
• Amazon Prime: $6.99
• Office 365: $10
• Rekordcloud: $20.02
• Beatport Link: $46.19
• Discord Nitro: $12.99
• Spotify: $11.99
• Various subs on my phone to small apps: $12.47
• Newshosting (Usenet): $28.12
• Xbox Game Pass Ultimate: $15.95
• Youtube Premium: $14.99
• Express VPN: $18.25

Total: $227.95 per month on subscriptions.

Right now i've cut it down to the following.

• Office 365: $10 (need this for excel lol)
• Youtube Premium $6 (Sharing with my roommate)
• Spotify Duo $8 (Again sharing with my roommate for this one)
• Google Subs: $2
• Newshosting $16 (Sharing with my roommate)

Total: $42

Thats a 81.31% saving on subscriptions every month. Honestly if i gave up a few more things i could get it cheaper but i'm happy paying $42 a month for these little things.

A price increase of $300 is alot. YOu need to look at more past bills like this one for same time last year.

Yes, electricity has gone up, I think where we live its risen by 17%

If you have alot of items plugged in, like a heater etc I would suggest to get a Electricity usage monitor which will give you visibility, cost around $20

Theres a lot to choose from, this is an example:

https://www.amazon.com.au/Electricity-PIOGHAX-Overload-Protection-Consumption/dp/B0B7QXZ29D/ref=asc\_df\_B0B7QXZ29D?tag=bingshopdesk-22&linkCode=df0&hvadid=80539300077512&hvnetw=o&hvqmt=e&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvlocint=&...