Journey to 90 million: November 2012 Expenditure Tracker

Item	Nov 2012	Target (new)	Over/(Under)
Share Investments	-$28,968	+$3,100	-$32,068
Offset Acct.	+$72,252	+$1,300	+$70,952
Personal expenditure	+$2,777	+$2,000	+$777

As with my October 2012 post, this post will only have my performance versus my reset expectations. In this month's post you will see how I have achieved on a cumulative basis) all my goals for the year thus far with the exception of my personal expenditure goals. This may seem strange given I split my income up between the three categories that I track.

However the big impact this month was my tax return and the bonus that was paid to me by my employer. The tax return is something inherently uncertain and I cannot bank on this in any given year - I have discussed more below why this years return was so large. My bonus, however is more stable, and forms a reasonably large part of my compensation. However I prefer not to include this because it tends to fund a lot of my large extra curricular activities such as overseas holidays which I like to do on an annual basis. As I pointed out in my November 2012 net worth post I expect a lot of the bonus amount to be spent in the coming months as I go overseas and buy a new car so the effect of this will be virtually zero.

There were two particularly large impacts this month on my income

My tax return was much larger than expected (~$20,000)

This was due to several factors including paying a higher tax rate at my old employer (an investment bank) as I was earning more and then dropping to a lower tax rate so I got the excess in tax I had paid back
Paying off my HECS debt also reduced the tax rate that I had to pay

I received my bonus for the year

About 40% of this bonus was in deferred compensation and I have included this amount in my share investments. Although I am not entitled to sell them until it vests it still is subject to fluctuations in the share market and I have no intention to move from this job in the near term

If I now look at my 3 accounts in turn:

Share investments

If you look above you will notice that I moved a LOT of money out of my share investment account. This was for several reasons.

A lot of it was sitting in my brokerage cash account and was related to amounts I had transferred into it for the FKP rights issue
I sold out of my employee share plan during the month and this amount was transferred into my home loan offset account (I did a post on this during the month)

However this was offset by the purchase of shares as part of my deferred compensation scheme (mentioned above) and I also continued to participate in my employee share plan
If you look at this account on a cumulative basis it is still well above what my target is (see below)

Home Loan Offset Account

This account was in serious deficit. Look at last month's expenditure tracker and you will see that I had under-invested in this account to the tune of ~$41,000 compared with my goal
However with the transfers from my share accounts, my cash bonus as well as my tax refund this account is well above what my aim for it should be (see the cumulative effect below)

Personal expenditure

I spent a similar amount this month compared with last month which I am pretty happy with. It is rather controlled although I have been putting off several expenditure items including my work clothing which is definitely reaching the end of its life

December 2012 is likely to be a month which sees decreases in my home loan offset account (due to over-saving of my bonus which is likely to be spent) as well as general Christmas gift purchases and holiday spending. I should get more clarity around some of my deferred compensation which may see a step up in the share account.

On a cumulative basis my personal expenditure (versus goals) is as follows: