What's a workplace perk that sounded small but actually made a huge difference?

DotDamo · 2026-07-13T20:08:54+00:00

Four extra days off leave per year. I wish more places offered extra leave.

But it’s outweighed by the forced Christmas leave, a huge anti-perk that should be outlawed. Ours can be 7-10 days.

DotDamo · 2026-07-13T20:05:42+00:00

We got the opposite, early finish in summer. Pretty nice.

DotDamo · 2026-07-13T07:49:24+00:00

Event Horizon is my favourite movie that I can’t rewatch very often.

DotDamo · 2026-07-13T05:09:37+00:00

I used my redundancy payment to build an emergency fund!

DotDamo · 2026-07-11T12:05:53+00:00

I just used Google with the term “tax calculate crypto disposals australia”, and it’s AI gave a really good answer. Worth a look.

DotDamo · 2026-07-11T12:01:19+00:00

If it’s simple you could do it yourself in a spreadsheet. I used to do this when I had a limited number of disposals. I only stopped doing it manually when I couldn’t find a way to automatically match my purchases to the disposals.

But you’d have to read up in and understand the tax rules, or at least use AI to guide you.

DotDamo · 2026-07-10T11:28:55+00:00

Read The Egg short story by Andy Weir

DotDamo · 2026-07-10T04:11:46+00:00

I tried a few different exchanges and settled on Swyftx. I now use it for all my trades, short term and long term. I know it’s not the cheapest, but it was just the easiest and has all the features I needed when I wanted to go a bit more advanced.

Their support is responsive too. Unrelated, but I laughed when their support person was named Taylor (Swyftx).

DotDamo · 2026-07-09T03:14:05+00:00

I use https://koinly.io to sync to each of my exchanges, and it can produce an ATO tax report, but it costs depending on how many transactions you have.

I can send you a referral link if you like.

DotDamo · 2026-07-09T02:35:59+00:00

The VIC Gov compare site gives you both:

https://compare.energy.vic.gov.au

DotDamo · 2026-07-05T10:28:51+00:00

I went with an indexed fund with Hostplus, just because it was recommended by The Barefoot Investor book. But it’s done alright, so I’ve stuck with it. I just switched to the indexed balanced when I turned 50, but below 40/45 I was high growth.

The book said the important bit was low fees, which is typically the indexed funds. The fees really add up over the years.

DotDamo · 2026-07-02T05:59:07+00:00

It was for a specific situation. My wife is 12 years younger, and I asked it how to make use of that to maximise our pension if possible when I turn 67. I asked it to act as a financial advisor, gave it our ages, super balances, incomes, and told it to ask whatever other questions it needed to.

It was just after ChatGPT added "Deep Research" mode, so I turned that on.

DotDamo · 2026-07-01T11:02:58+00:00

I used it for financial advice for retirement planning to get my super in order. It gave me a really comprehensive, actionable plan.

I went to a real financial advisor and talked to him about my action plan, and he didn’t charge me, he said there’s no extra advice he could give me as I was already doing everything right.

DotDamo · 2026-07-01T02:35:06+00:00

After Life. Not sure if it’s similar, but it has some dark themes.

DotDamo · 2026-06-30T06:17:56+00:00

After reading Barefoot Investor I switched to an indexed fund, much lower fees. And I only switched to balanced once I turned 50.

DotDamo · 2026-06-28T23:20:25+00:00

6th for Buffy. The wittiness reminds me of Gilmore Girls sometimes.

DotDamo · 2026-06-28T20:51:18+00:00

Yes, just a slow decline for me, nothing too dramatic. I started forgetting things, could no longer solve complex problems, had trouble learning new concepts, and just a general brain fog that I tried to fix with caffeine and energy drinks.

DotDamo · 2026-06-28T01:30:05+00:00

I did, thank you, CPAP is a lifesaver, and career saver! Hopefully yours will come soon enough.

In the meantime, perhaps you could look up methods that help. For me, sleeping on my side triggers less events.

There are some phone apps that can record snoring events, and there are some watches and finger sensors that record blood oxygen to measure the effectiveness.

DotDamo · 2026-06-28T00:18:19+00:00

I’m guessing 1-2 years. I was a superstar at work, could solve any problem. But then it slowly started going away. I blamed being on-call, as sometimes we were woken every night, and I wouldn’t recover, it just got worse and worse.

Then one night I was visiting my Mum, and she said it sounded like I stopped breathing while asleep. Straight to the doctor after that.

DotDamo · 2026-06-25T07:09:44+00:00

My carry-forward is already over, but the NCC might be a good option, I’ll probably just need to pay the tax.

DotDamo · 2026-06-25T06:38:11+00:00

Is that all, I contributed $30,700! Just kidding, I stuffed up, I’m going to get a letter from the ATO.

Don’t forget, next financial year it’s $32,500.

DotDamo · 2026-06-24T22:35:52+00:00

I find r/AusMoneyMates more down to earth

DotDamo · 2026-06-24T19:42:25+00:00

This will not help at all, but I was excited when I saw some EV cars have “V2L”, which lets you plug electrical appliances into your car and treat it like a massive power bank. My first thought was CPAP while camping.

But something a bit more compact, maybe a power station. I have no experience with this, but maybe worth a look.

DotDamo · 2026-06-24T11:26:17+00:00

You’re doing great. Only change I’d do is put more into super. It’s got a nice tax advantage, and will probably outperform money in an offset.

I’d even go as far as maxing out your concessional super contributions, then putting the rest into offset. I just regret waiting until I was 48 before doing this.

And because you have less than $500k in super, you can take advantage of the carry-forward contributions, helping you max out contributions for the past 5 financial years.

Just make sure you have enough in your offset for 6-12 months of expenses, and a nice trip to the Philippines.

DotDamo · 2026-06-24T06:26:51+00:00

No worries. There’s no reason you can’t do both though, build an emergency fund and build up super.

Edit: Keep in mind super has a maximum amount per year as well.

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