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

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morgen housel says to save money you should focus on the big costs. he is in the US, the big ones there are housing, transport and education. luckily for most of us here is australia education is not a huge cost overall. on the other hand housing costs are out of control in some places if you want to own. renting and investing is a much better option for most australians right now.

>I heard something on the radio this morning that made me shake my head. It was a segment about tips on how to save more money. What came was a predictable list of "brew your own coffee," "buy generic products," and "bring your lunch to work!"

>I can't stand these lists. I think they're dangerous, because the average American's dismal financial state has little to do with coffee, name brands, or lunch. The people writing these articles mean well. But they're the equivalent of telling a drowning man how to dry his clothes -- advice that seems helpful but misses the bigger problem.

>Most workers reading this article earn enough money to be saving a lot of it. If you can't, it's likely because the gap between reality and your ego is larger than it should be. And if you dig into that gap, I think you'll find just three things:

>• your house

>• your car

>• your education

>If you want to actually save money, start there.

https://www.fool.com/financial-advice/2014/06/24/save_money.aspx

https://foragerfunds.com/news/retire-happy-comfortable-property-free/

Pocketbook is quite useful. No subscription, and features automatic transaction monitoring via linked bank account. The web interface is very detailed and has great analysis tools with automatic categorisation of your spending habits.

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

Desktop, but I'll use the browser on the phone even if there is an app available because I only install an app for things that I frequently use. But I hate those websites that have only half the functionality when you visit them on a mobile.

I'd like the pay the same fee as these guys...

• https://pricing.stake.com.au/
• https://robinhood.com/au/

...But I'd move for anything less than my current broker.

If you're aiming for people in this community, maybe have an integrated "how many days to xxx..." calculator.

All the brokers have their own internal account to settle cash. I think CMC uses HSBC, selfwealth uses ANZ.

The basic plan is free. Silver $6/Gold $14 - is very reasonably priced - you can check here:) + I am happy to give you 30% discount. ASX should be up within a few months - we do have ASX stocks covering news and reports/filings are on our roadmap.

Dev Raga Personal Finance is a guy that I enjoy listening to. He is just a guy that loves finance and is sharing the info he knows about how to be a better informed Aussie when it comes to finance.
https://castbox.fm/channel/id1375530

This was a PDF I put together that I had my Spreadsheet generate (PDF). The intention was to have this quarterly to discuss finances with the wife. It was fantastic for the start of our journey. My plan is to get back into it but to simplify the output into two pages with a month to month growth (I did not previously have the data) and a big picture growth on another page of total NW. The items of most interest to my spouse were the FI by Numbers and FI Journal section, that and easy to read graphs.

Hopefully it gives you some ideas at least on what you could put in your spead sheet.

I run a lending bot on Poloniex that lends to margin traders who are usually going long (2.5x leverage) alternative crypto-currencies.

You have to weigh up how much you get for renting vs buying.

Say your rent is $500/week. That's the minimum interest repayments of a $400k loan. Think about what kind of flat you'd be able to purchase with $400k (a literal cardboard box) vs what kind of flat you could rent for that amount of money.

Sure, at the end of 30 years you would own that cardboard box, but you'd have paid about $750k all up because of interest.

So, sometimes renting is okay.

As far as budgeting goes, I think a year's subscription to https://www.youneedabudget.com is $50 (probably tax deductible) and is money well spent.

On the PC I just run DarkReader (https://darkreader.org/) for most sites (have exceptions turned on for some)

Can play with the settings a bit but this is what I found I liked: Brightness -10, Contrast -30, Sepia +5, Grayscale +5

I did see the Sheets iPad app now has a dark theme though

You can read the book with your children: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B093FM1R1X/ .

It is the experience of ten years old kid about his started journey to FI, his plans for a future. It could be useful because it's very important to have a role model in front of you, not just an experience of adults.

I assumed this one: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.getpocketbook&hl=en&referrer=ts%3D4238e5ce-c981-11e9-ad7b-f23c91505711

If not OP I'd recommend it!

Glad you found the other post for links. Don't bother with SMSF, you need a lot of money to make this feasible. Unfortunately super does suck and there are only so many choices you can make but roll them all together definitely.

Have you read many investing books? Just keep reading is my advice and you will pick it up.

Start with Rich Dad Poor Dad, but don't "read" too much in to it, if that makes sense, it just gives you a general overview of money and helps to change your thinking.

Also read Think and Grow Rich, the Bogleheads Guide to Investing, Richest Man in Babylon. I've heard The Millionaire Next Door is good though i've yet to get around to reading it.

> At the end of the day people that dismiss it just don’t want to / have the time to invest I. Understanding a new asset class.

I mean this guy who wrote a 2 hr 20 min documentary about why crypto is all shit:

https://youtu.be/YQ_xWvX1n9g

Or this publisher of multiple books on why it's shit:

https://www.amazon.com.au/Attack-50-Foot-Blockchain-Contracts-ebook/dp/B073CPP581

Clearly weren't lacking in time or desire to understand it.

But isn't the climate science settled among the scientific community? It depends on the amount of greenhouse gases that can be stopped from being emitted, but based on current pledges by countries, the modelling is that there will be 3 degrees or warming by 2100.

Then there is the issue of whether the "precautionary principle" should be applied. Read the book Countdown by Dr Shanna Swan for a great example of this. BPA is found in many plastics and it took about 20 years before the scientific evidence shows that it can cause health problems and lower fertility rates. The plastic companies simply replaced BPA with another bisphenol plastic that has similar if not worse impacts on health and fertility rates.

But of course, an argument can be made that lower fertility rates is a good thing due to human overpopulation. More plastic pollution and even more climate change can help bring human population back down from where it is now.

Start by reading The Honeybee (a business parable about getting unstuck) by Jake Stenziano & Gino Barbaro and then read 23 Passive Income Blueprints by Gundi Gabrielle, (ignore the click-bait tag-line "how to get $10,000 per month in 6 months!" - you won't be doing that, but it's a great book).

Each are short reads; you could likely get through both in 1-2 weeks of reading 1 hour per day.

Then, reflect and go from there.

This is better than just "choosing some action to do, to make money". You need to understand the fundamentals of building income streams first, and the first book will do that. The second book is a good overview of some different income streams you can build - clearly marked which are suitable for beginners.

Good luck!

I’d read the Allocator’s Edge, should give you good ideas if you want to diversify. Fundamentally you need to make a decision whether you want to concentrate and double down or diversify and lock in some of your position.

Where are you living? Buying a home might be a good option but Sydney won't be an option.

I really like shares. A great introduction is this book: https://www.amazon.com.au/Starting-Out-Shares-ASX-Way-ebook/dp/B00XYCE04I

It covers various investing styles. If you do this you would still want part of your portfolio in an interest bearing account.

To clarify, what do you mean the fees are non-existent? According to this, they charge a 1% conversion fee for amounts under $100k.

https://www.schwab.com/global-trading

The exception to this rule is technology-based or internet-based side gigs, imo.

If you're tech savvy it's possible to set up a SaaS platform (for example) that once set up will consistently bring you in income with minimal work/updates required. Or to create an app that can bring in a bit of extra income.

For an example of what I mean, check out IndieHackers.

I don't understand the amount of hate that side gigs get on this subreddit, however if you're just talking about physical side gigs (e.g. walking dogs, doing surf lessons) then yeah I see what you mean.

Hey OP, a lot of people here are pointing out the high crypto allocation, but there is research showing that focussing 100% on higher-risk assets early in your earning years and then transitioning to safer asset classes later leads to better risk adjusted returns in the long run.

You can read the book here, or the shorter research paper here, but the approach the authors analyse is using margin investing to invest in equities at 2:1 leverage until your target equities allocation is reached, and then focussing on paying down the loan and then transitioning to bonds at the end. With the same logic, it is fair to suggest that if your target portfolio is 2M and should contain 20% crypto, then you should invest 100% of your cashflow into crypto up until the target allocation, then switch to buying equities, and then to bonds later on. This is the approach I am using now, and I think given your post that you'd find the approach an interesting read.

Give every dollar a job. (https://www.youneedabudget.com/method/)

I’m surprised more FI people don’t use or talk about YNAB - controlling your expenses is key to FI.

I thought that the “no Aussie bank feeds” would be a deal breaker for me, but tbh I don’t trust those screen-scraper feeds anyway. The .OFX export/import works great.

Try this for paywalls: https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome

The 38-page page was linked separately in this thread, so you can judge for yourself if you like.

If helpful, I’ve been trying Airtable for personal projects, fitness tracking, etc. I’ve used it at work for 2+ years and it’s amazing. About to try it with our personal finances (which sound very similar to yours). Benefits: -free version is full of usability -also shareable -entirely cloud and the iOS version is great to use -integrates with almost anything -visually miles ahead of excel or sheets. EG here https://airtable.com/universe/expsDoChnpqGU3Vns/personal-budget-base

Hope that helps 👨🏽‍🌾

+1 random walk

also,
One Up On Wall Street https://www.amazon.com.au/One-Up-Wall-Street-Already/dp/0743200403/
Value Averaging https://www.amazon.com.au/Value-Averaging-Strategy-Investment-Returns/

It is an oldie but a goodie. Read The Intelligent Asset Allocator:

https://www.amazon.com.au/Intelligent-Asset-Allocator-William-Bernstein/dp/1260026647

It explains why what VDHG does is the better strategy.

website

Guide

You lend out the bitcoin on Poloniex, you choose the interest rate you want, choose from 2-60 days and then after that is excepted for a loan you get the profits, Poloniex takes 15% of the profits. People use the margin lending to go long or short on other alt coins, and if there is a margin call their position is liquidated immediately and you get your bitcoin back. There's even trading bots that do it all for you

https://actualbudget.com/ - new and a bit rough, but it allows you to encrypt a file that's synced between your devices rather than have them sitting on the server ready to be data-mined, which is nice.

It was non-traditional. I was doing traditional enterprise sales at a vendor prior to Atlassian. They don't take customers out on the golf course and have expensive lunches. They don't need to. It is a low-touch sales model for a lot of it but there is still a relatively small team of sales professionals. The Enterprise sales people that they get in are there mostly doing Enterprise License Agreements and they pass a very strict culture test . This post on Atlassian's unique sales model describes it well.

Wrote a bit about India for a stock pitch for a fund manager, also compared them to China;

https://gofile.io/?c=c1MTvq

Not sure why the BetaShares ETF only has 30 holdings - probably a bit too much idiosyncratic risk to be a major holding in your portfolio. Don't know enough to suggest one way or the other but i wouldn't make this a key component of a portfolio.

Chucked it up on excel;

https://gofile.io/?c=Kuc1cK

Numbers look a bit strange but i pulled them from ABS so they must be right, guess it depends on their measurement methodology because i swear the growth rates are higher than what i came up with.

That or i did it flat out incorrectly. Anyway VAS wins and somehow Hobart is second???

Oh i agree, i think in general it's a poor idea but a good thought experiment.

Here's a copy of the model - change things in yellow and F9 to recalculate portfolio performance https://gofile.io/?c=elggsM

Should be done - haven't checked over it so might be some things missing;

https://gofile.io/?c=elggsM

Change anything highlighted in yellow - leave everything else as is. Press F9 to recalculate portfolio returns. Let me know if i'm missing anything

75k seems low for a career in web development. How many years experience do you have? What technologies are you proficient in?

Have you looked at getting a remote job with an international company? A lot of developers are based in Australia earning US dollars and with the Aussie dollar so low, it would double your current wage for mid level positions. Check out gitlabs compensation calculator to get a good idea of a benchmark rate. They are a fully remote company.

https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-compensation/calculator/

I'm a web developer in a remote team and I've recently become a father, having the work flexibility has been so valuable for all the appointments you need to get to but also just to be around to help your partner and see your child grow. I can't imagine many other careers that this is possible with, I recommend taking advantage of it.

Also, I recommend anyone in tech to read The Gervais' Theory.

https://www.amazon.com.au/Pro-Club-Heavyweight-T-Shirt-X-Large/dp/B0734GHM4C/ref=asc_df_B0734GHM4C/?tag=googleshopmob-22&linkCode=df0&hvadid=406768065537&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=12312223776397418662&hvpone=&hvptwo=&h...

The worlds greatest T Shirt

I made an app that does exactly that.
It will track your entire portfolio - showing current values, profit/loss & percentage breakdowns.

It's free to use and supports AU shares, US shares & Crypto.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gamestudi.asxsharetracker&hl=en\_AU&gl=US

As with most economics, there are opinions on both sides, but I have found these two perspectives most compelling:

Michael Pettis has a strong view on this based on trade and investment.

• In Japan, government policy favoured business growth and capital investment which led to a huge boom and some massive trade surpluses with the rest of the world. Capital accrued to a wealthy upper class. Eventually the pro-growth policies start to stall under their own weight, and increasing incremental investment becomes less productive; each additional dollar of investment produces less than one dollar of wealth as ever more piles of debt are used to try and achieve growth. Eventually this unwinds.

Following this, Richard Koo describes the balance sheet recession that follows.

• Businesses have to spend a lot of time paying down debt to repair their balance sheets, in order to get to a position where they can start to spend and invest again. This period is net deflationary. Japan has mostly gotten through this period now.

Interestingly, this draws a lot of parallels to China's situation today. 30 years ago, we thought it would be Japan taking over the world, today we wonder if China will take over the world. With policies supporting huge capital investment, a massive trade surplus, and now the growth/debt driven over-investment leading to empty cities and other unproductive businesses.

Hey mate, if you go the route of a margin loan I wouldn’t suggest an LVR as high as this - beyond 2:1 I believe the cost of more regular margin calls outweighs the benefits. This is the reason I use the equity builder product - I have no risk of margin calls so I can lever up to 75% and don’t have to worry about getting called as the market drops. The downside is the amount of principal to be paid back each month makes those repayments much higher, however this will only become an issue as the loan amount goes above $500k. At that point I can drop the LVR to 65% (still a ~2:1 ratio) and switch from a 10 year up to a 15 year loan term, dropping my monthly repayments by around 30% and allowing me to then borrow more as the portfolio grows.

I would suggest checking out this book, it has a lot of supporting info and talks specifically (with evidence) about why a 2:1 ratio is ideal when margin calls are a possibility: https://www.amazon.com/Lifecycle-Investing-Audacious-Performance-Retirement/dp/B005X4I7ZI.

As for your emergency fund estimate, you would have to run the numbers to figure that out - I haven’t done this as I’ve gone the equity builder route. Hope this helps!

I am very interested in knowing how you set up the spreadsheet. I prefer spreadsheet over anything else, really. I'm a simple minded person I guess.

I use: - My stocks Portfolio for my money invested in stocks: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.peeksoft.stocks - MoneyManagerFree for all my expenses. I just record them there manually each time, and set a category. You can extract this into a CSV and put it in excel. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.realbyteapps.moneymanagerfree

I recommended the latter for tracking all expenses as you can export to CSV and put it in excel pretty trivially.

The way my spreadsheet is set is: - amount in savings account 1 - amount in savings account 2 - amount in CommSec (what I put, not what is currently there, I get that info from the app above) Then in a fourth column, the total at the end of each month. A 5th column compares previous month to current month, so i can see a trend of me saving more or less each month. I then have my recurring expenses (rent, phone, gym, etc.) And then " last month + salary - what actually is in the total - recurring expenses" tells me how much I spent in variables things this month.

The variable things are food, eating out, public transport, occasional clothing, doctor visits, tennis lessons... Anything. I check this using the second app. So I can see "oh shit, this month I ate out a lot!"

I wonder, what else do you have on your sheet that is a good idea to have? Honestly, what comes out of my expenses tracking app, I look at it at the end of the month, see if it matches the sheet then I think to myself "i should eat less out" or "i did pretty well, let's keep it up". But I have no use for it afterwards. I wonder what you use have you been finding with this information?

https://www.amazon.com.au/Mortgages-Made-Easy-Investment-Properties-ebook/dp/B00SYHKJ16

I read this one a few years ago while I had a subscription to Safaribooksonline. I might just buy the Kindle version myself, it's only $10. Key takeaways is that you can't time the market but what you can do is maximise your tax benefits. e.g. Maximise your investment home loan and minimise your live-in home loan since interest repayments are tax deductible on investment loans. And since there's no CGT on your live-in home, in general you're better off selling it when you move out rather than just keeping it as an investment property, and then buy an investment property separately if you were planning to. Based on info like this the book breaks down what a typical strategy of buying/selling houses might look like over a few decades.

I‘ll send you a standardised path to become employable/useful via PM, but essentially: - A Python corse to learn the basics (codecademy from memory) - A general data science course on Udemy - Some Machine Learning courses and a textbook, though I’d recommend Aurelian Gueron’s book - Some deep learning specific resources (I’d recommend fast.ai’s ML and DL courses) - An AWS solution architect associate certification to get a taste of the cloud - Projects. I built a data imputation library, got involved with a couple research papers after seeing someone speak at a meet up, and a few Kaggle projects.

Once I landed the role, just kept learning, doing more courses, reading more papers. Python/software engineering has been the thing that has taken the most time overall. If anyone else wants the resources, just PM me.

Thanks for reading the piece.

It will be very interesting to see if it remains as dominant, or is superceded. I think the concept has something in it and think of it as my small hedge against very unusual states of the world. Found the Bitcoin Standard a very interesting read.

Thanks, this is another book you might find of interest.

I would not really be able to give you sensible advice, as I'm not qualified and don't know your personal circumstances.

My own view is that ETFs or passive index funds are clearly superior than individual stock picking, and far less risky and time-consuming. A piece of advice I've sometimes seen for those who enjoy the stock picking element is to wall off a small part of your portfolio (10%) and make active choices around that. That allows you still to potentially add some value, but minimises and future regrets! :)

No, unfortunately not. Best of luck! One more good blog series that might be of interest is this from JL Collins.

Theres a pretty eye opening book called The Millionaire Next Door. Really highlights the difference between looking wealthy (who are actually poor as) and being wealthy (who understand money comes from smart work and dont waste their money needlessly as a result).

That's fantastic that you're 18 and already thinking about this. I promise you if you start now by the time you're in your early 30s you WILL be financially independent. That said, you are young so please don't forget to have fun, go travelling while you work towards this - they are not mutually exclusive goals.

I assume you are a subscriber to /r/financialindependence? If not, go there now! Read the links on the side bar "How To Get Started" and start READING everything you can. Books, forums, blogs online.

A good book to get you started is "The Bogleheads Guide to Investing"

Firstly congratulations on saving such a large amount in your early 30s. Definitely good to see you starting to look for ways to invest, your money can grow a lot better if properly invested!

I personally recommend you start by reading two books:

1. Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kioysaki
2. The Bogleheads Guide to Investing.

Read the books in that order. Be careful of Rich Dad Poor Dad though, it is a very old book now and a lot of people do not agree with his investment approaches. Just use the book as a bit of an "eye opener" for you. Don't bother with any of his other books.

The bogleheads guide is a very good way to learn about the market, Exchange Traded Funds and low cost investing. You will need to skip a couple of chapters (on US Taxes and US IRA/401k information) though otherwise it is a great deal.

Do some reading first, particularly these books, seek financial advice if you want to - you have to be picky though, their fees can be very expensive and eliminate any returns you might achieve through investing.

Good luck!

If you're interested in investing, I recommend "Index Revolution" and "How a Second Grader Beats Wall Street".

Obviously both advocate index investing :)

https://www.amazon.com/Index-Revolution-Investors-Should-Join/dp/1119313074

https://www.amazon.com/Second-Grader-Beats-Wall-Street/dp/0470919035