Another major resolution down and another excel creation

Resolutions update

Major resolutions

1. Go to the gym three times a week

2. Drink less alcohol

3. Pay back the wedding by 30 June (Finished September 2014)

4. Complete the 26 Fortnight (52 week) saving challenge (finished 19 December 2014)

5. Practice mindfulness

6. Be a better friend - remember birthdays, think of good gifts, enjoy your social life

7. Get recording studio going, learn to use ProTools, keep up the good work with the band!

Minor resolutions

Music Tuesday and rudiments practice

Mind expansion Sunday

Writing this blog

Spring cleaning the house

Read 12 books this year - Done!

---

With the Thursday just past being the last pay week of the year, I can officially say I have now completed the 26 Fortnight/52 Week Saving Challenge. The fundamental idea is that you can save about $1,400 over the course of a year - starting with just $1 - by saving one extra dollar each week than the previous week. I made a couple of modifications to this to fit my circumstances. For instance, I adjusted the amounts for a fortnightly pay cycle and reversed the order of the payments. I did this so that it got easier throughout the year and so that I wasn't trying to put away more money during the time of year where I would need the extra disposable income (basically from September to December or birthday/Christmas season). After a few pays, I also upped the ante by adding a fixed amount to make the end result prettier - after all Jess and I are trying to save for a house deposit so I wanted to have very little disposable income available.

Looking at how I went over the whole year, I only actually missed four payments. However, they took a long time to catch back up on. The culprits? Clearing credit card debt and registering my car. While I always try to keep my credit card completely paid off, if left unchecked, it's easy to let small amounts grow into bigger ones. And car rego always buggers me up; every year I vow to make sure I put a little bit away to prepare for it, but it never ends up happening.

Thinking about trying the challenge for yourself? Well, luckily for you I've made a modified version of the Excel spreadsheet I used to keep track of how I went. You can find it by clicking the link below:

DOWNLOAD SAVING CHALLENGE SPREADSHEET

It's pretty straightforward to use:

1. Download the file and open it (you'll need Microsoft Excel to run it obviously)
2. Click 'Enable Content' near the top of the screen to allow the macros to work. The macros in this workbook just hide rows in the table that you don't need to see, depending on whether you say you are paid weekly, fortnightly or monthly
3. Complete the Salmon/Pink shaded cells on the Info worksheet
4. Click the button
5. You're done! Update this table each time you get paid to see how you are tracking.  

If you have any problems, suggestions, questions or feedback, let me know in the comments.

Book Review: Lord of Chaos by Robert Jordan

Making it the 17th book I've read this year, this week I cover Robert Jordan's Lord of Chaos.

So it turns out I was wrong, and I could actually finish another book before the end of the year. All this driving to and from Canberra recently has been an opportunity to make good headway on listening through audiobooks.

Lord of Chaos - Robert Jordan

Image credit: Amazon, you can buy it there in a number of formats

The sixth book in the Wheel of Time series follows a number of story arcs. Escaped 'false dragon' Mazrim Taim swears to the Dragon Reborn and is given the task of finding and training other men who can wield the one power; the rebel Aes Sedai and the White Tower both send emissaries to court Rand's allegiance; Nyaneve and Elayne are sent to find a powerful relic to try to break the Dark One's hold on the weather; Egwene's training with the Wise Ones is cut short when she is summoned without warning to the rebel Aes Sedai; Perrin is pulled to Rand, feeling that Rand will need him; Queen Morgase is detained by the Children of the Light; and Mat is caught in the middle of a lot of plots, and is generally shoved this way and that.

Book Review: Battlers and Billionaires by Dr Andrew Leigh

Is there a strain on the Australian social fabric? Battlers and Billionaires looks at the historical trends in inequality in Australia to find out.

I usually wouldn't make a post for just a single book, but it's getting close to the end of the year and I'm not sure if I'll finish another between now and then. That, and I've still got some catching up to do on my blog posts - so yay for extra content.

As much as I love my Kindle, sometimes you want to read a real bookbook. So I went down to my local library over the weekend, procured a library card and borrowed Battlers and Billionaires. As an aside, libraries are seriously underrated - I will have to write about this at a later date. Anyway, I had a bit of extra time to read this week because I was travelling for work, so I was able to knock this one over pretty quickly.

Image credit: Amazon, you can buy it there for Kindle or on Paperback.

I've got a fair bit of respect for Andrew Leigh. He's one of only a handful of federal MPs that I can think of who has a PhD, and I think he's one of the only ones that doesn't distance themselves from it for fear that being seen as an academic will somehow make him less relatable to ordinary folk. In fact, probably because he is an academic, you get the sense that he values data and evidence, and can be objective; other MPs might talk about 'evidence-based policy', but - for me at least - he walks the walk. It also helps that he has a passion for the dismal science - economics - so that gets points in my book.

Battlers and Billionaires, as the subtitle neatly describes, is the story of inequality in Australia; firstly looking at inequality over time through the lenses of income, wealth and consumption, then examining its drivers, effects and possible solutions. And it does this in a relatable, conversational tone which makes it easily readable, and easy to grasp his arguments. Note that Leigh doesn't argue that we should pursue perfect equality, or that we should attempt to recreate the 1970s-1980s. His main point is that inequality is an issue worth discussing and addressing, and that we could apply lessons learnt from this period to today.

A couple of things struck me while reading this book. The first being that your perspective of Australian inequality very much depends on when you were born; Leigh's anecdote is that older Australians have mostly experienced falling inequality throughout their lives, with the last few decades being "an aberration", whereas those in Generation Y have only seen increasing inequality.

The second was how high tax rates were during the War periods. In the later years of World War II, the top marginal tax bracket was 93%. Clearly this was required to shift resources from the private sector to the public sector to assist the war effort, but it also shows that Australians can withstand much higher tax rates providing it is linked to the national interest. This is quite relevant today, despite political rhetoric that 'Australians are paying too much tax'.

Overall, I thought it was worthwhile reading.