A few updates on the personal finance front - November 2012

There were several small updates that I've been meaning to write for a while but they have not been sufficiently important for me to dedicate whole posts to so I have decided to do one posts which will cover several of these smaller issues.

Employee share investment plan - shares finally sold

In several of my previous posts I outlined that many companies offer employee share plans to their staff and how it can be a way to make free money.  I also had a post in which I said that there were several strategies one could take when it came to selling the shares when they were allocated to you.  At the time I had said that I would sell these as soon as they were allocated to me.

In fact I let them run for ~4 months and got a very good return out of doing this (~35%). Where I did get shafted though was on the exchange rate which cost me hundreds of dollars more than it should have. I will do a post on avoiding these exchange rate fees soon.

Annual bonus hit the account - I had already mentally pre-spent the amount so benefit is only passing

In my 2012 financial goals at the start of the year I said that one of my goals was to buy a sports car when I was young and carefree enough to throw away a bit of money.  I realised that this would not help me financially however not all things in life can be driven by finance.

Although my bonus was in line with what I expected, I had mentally catered for too much tax so on an after tax basis I actually got more than I expected. In addition I have picked the model / year of car that I want and this was cheaper than I had originally budgeted for too.

I am therefore using the excess as my spending money for my overseas holiday. In my October 2012 net worth post I mentioned that I would need to start putting away money for this but it turns out that I wont have to.

Until I actually spend the money it will appear in my net worth but this is only transitory and will not count in the long run.

Tax return is finally done and MUCH better than expected

I will cover this more thoroughly in my next net worth post however I could not believe the amount I got back on tax (~$20,000) - it turns out that I really did pay too much tax over the year   This amount I will save and it is going to increase my net worth over the long run.

I have STILL not started my business

I confess between my last post and this one that I have still not got around to starting my business.  Several things (and life) have gotten in the way.  It is still one of my goals however I do not have a time frame on it because at the moment I cannot find a decent amount of time to dedicate to it.  If this actually gets off the ground in the next few months I will be pleasantly surprised.

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Profiting from your employee share plan
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Real time small business experiment - all posts
My 2012 financial goals
October 2012 net worth