Money, Australian-style

1 Real estate

Australia is deeply invested in policies to perpetually pump real estate speculation, which is a depressing drag on the profound potential of this country, in my opinion, and a tax upon wonder. We could build anything here, make anything, but instead we sell houses to each other, and vie for a slice of the passive income that we shave off the active economy, playing the intergenerational zero-sum game.

So long as I live here, a speculative real-estate economy will shape everything around me, so I must engage with it and, I suppose, find my own bit of peace at the expense of the wider economy. Currently, I am trying to minimise my exposure to the entire bubble via cohousing, which is a relatively good harm reduction strategy for my temperament. The whole thing is still sad, though.

2 Tax

Tax calculation in Australia is simple and automated. Except, not completely automated, especially for capital assets. e.g. I invested a lot in equities this year, fooled by the fact that some of my shares automatically entered themselves into my tax return, into thinking they all would. No. And some of the ones that did tidy up after themselves did so in a way that was not helpful, e.g. instead of identifying which equity by name, a mysterious 8-digit number appears, which doesn’t seem to correspond to anything in my records. So, I end up forensically accounting myself. This needs to be tidier.

Options for tax return preparation include:

• Neat Google Sheet from someone on Reddit

• Sharesight promises automating this tedious task as a feature and at USD7/month I am tempted to try it.

  UPDATE: so far it has saved me many hours of life. I am impressed, even at the astonishingly shit exchange rate where the subscription is AUD25/month. Here is a referral link. Tell ’em I sent you and get 10% off plus send me a USD10 kickback.

3 Superannuation

How we save for retirement in Australia.

4 ESG investing

I am not going to weigh in on the extent of ethical investing as impact to do good in the world. That is an interesting thing to question, but I will take it as given for the moment.

Pro-social superannuation/retirement funds in Australia include Australian Ethical and Future Super. (the former includes a referral code).

Wholesale Fees for Australian Ethical’s managed funds are IMO reasonable if you have AUD25K or meet some other criterion to be a “wholesale” investor.¹

Sustainalytics provides reports into the impact of various investments.

5 Australia-compatible online accounting and invoicing

Saasu, Xero work out of the box for the Australian tax and compliance environment.

hiveage can be made to support Australian taxes with their custom tax configuration, but it is ugly.