I am absolutely blown away by how cool the new wordpress.com monotone theme is. I haven’t seen anything like it before. Each page displays a single post (a photo and some prose) and the page automatically changes the background colour and width to suit the photograph creating a truly elegant photoblog.
It makes me want to learn photography, buy a digital SLR and start a photoblog.
If you do photography and don’t have a free wordpress.com blog then now is the time to start one!
There was an excellent debate between Simon Castles and Karin Derkley in yesterday’s Sun Herald about buying vs renting homes in Australia.
Simon is a writer for The Big Issue and Karin is the author of Buying and Selling Your Home for Dummies and Getting Started in Property for Dummies.
I am quite opinionated about this topic but I was interested in what both sides had to say nonetheless.
Simon Castles quickly dismissed the ‘rent money is dead money’ fallacy:
…renting makes financial sense. The old argument is that “rent money is dead money” but in truth, you either rent a home or “rent” the money to buy a home. Isn’t that, in effect, what interest is? And, boy, aren’t home buyers paying a lot of that right now. Interest must feel an awful lot like dead money when you keep having to pay more of it.
and finishes brilliantly:
A home, we too easily forget, is not something that you can buy. A house you can buy but “home” you can only feel. I’ve felt at home many times – and it has never come with a big mortgage attached.
Karin Derkely’s argument is mainly around financial security pointing out that the Australian economy, and tax & social security laws are built around the idea that people own the property they live in. She also points out the capital gains tax exemption and encourages “trading up” which I believe to be one of the main contributors to our housing affordability dilemma in Australia at the moment.
Karin also discusses the benefits of having a mortgage with equity in your home. She says you can use the equity in your home to borrow money for depreciating assets: overseas trips, cars etc. The problem I see with this is that this equity makes people feel “rich” so they go and buy these things with a “rich” mindset and without thinking of the consequences. Although interest rates on home loans are lower than credit cards, home loans usually have a long repayment period so the amount of interest is still large.
Last Monday I had my bottom two wisdom teeth removed (the big ones) in hospital. The procedure was straightforward but interesting since it was the first time I had ever been given a general anesthetic.
I was advised to take a week off work which I thought would be plenty of time to recover. I went to work on Wednesday because we had a team building day I didn’t want to miss. My mouth was still way sore so I took the remaining two work days off. Yesterday my mouth was just as sore as earlier in the week even when taking the prescribed pain killers. I noticed that one side of my face was a lot larger than the other but just put it down to different healing times.
When I woke today one side of my face wasn’t any better. It felt like my cheek was enlarged and throbbing with pain. I opened my mouth in front of the mirror and gently touched where it hurt which caused a large wad of yellow puss to explode into my mouth. I realise now that it is very infected. It hurts a little less after the release, but I have already finished my antibiotics and the surgeon isn’t contactable until Tuesday (due to the long weekend). I can go to the emergency room at the hospital but it will cost me another $180 which I’m not keen on spending. My GP also isn’t working until Tuesday.
So it looks like for now I will have to deal with the discomfort for a bit longer. I can’t wait until I am all better and can actually enjoy food again.
The Big Issue is kicking off its first Do a Favour Day next Friday in Brisbane. They are holding a free breakfast in Queen’s Park, George Street from 7am.
Participation involves doing someone else a favour next Friday. Suggestions include:
You can also do The Big Issue a favour by making a (tax-deductible) donation to:
The Big Issue Brisbane
Brisbane Homelessness Service Centre
62 Peel Street, South Brisbane, QLD 4101
This is what I am going to do.
In the past, in Australia, it has been expensive and difficult to find out how much people have paid for their home because real estate agents have tightly held onto this data.
A new website has been launched called ‘on the house‘ that provides this data to anyone, for free. That’s right, free. At the moment data from QLD and NSW is available but other states will be added soon.
It is very interesting looking at the data, even if you don’t want to buy a property any time soon. It does debunk the myth that property prices only ever go up.
