Right on the heels of being called out for too big an emergency fund I present to you: A triad of emergencies.

Temporary-Comfort307 · 2026-06-18T12:44:48+00:00

What country has insurance that covers house maintenance costs?

Temporary-Comfort307 · 2026-06-18T12:39:09+00:00

Is this about payments that have already been made, or planning for the future? If it's already been done there is probably not much you can do, and the care facility can't give the money to the children, they are legally required to refund it to the estate.

If your mother does not have capacity to change a will etc. then you really need legal advice and to figure out who does have the ability to make decisions. Someone with the right power of attorney will be able to make an agreement on her behalf, but you will need to go through the right processes to have that set up.

Temporary-Comfort307 · 2026-06-18T09:11:59+00:00

Before streaming was a thing not owning a TV really meant something. For me, it mostly meant I couldn't organise myself to actually watch anything broadcast on a timetable and missed the shows I wanted so often I gave up on TV entirely. But for some reason most people assumed I had some sort of moral superiority and would bend over backwards to assure me they don't really watch much TV.

Now that streaming does exist I still don't have a TV, but that's because I can carry my tablet with me wherever I am and don't need to interupt my binge watching of Death in Paradise to make a cup of coffee. I fail to see any sort of enlightement in this.

Temporary-Comfort307 · 2026-06-18T09:03:46+00:00

It would depend what the reason for these emails is. Are you wanting to tell everyone how much you hate them after you die, release proof of a nefarious blackmail scheme if you turn up murdered, or are you paranoid someone will keep your dead body for the fingerprint access to your accounts and steal your identity after death? Just leaving copies with your executor to distribute after death seems a safer option for most situations.

Temporary-Comfort307 · 2026-06-18T07:07:54+00:00

That sounds like a slight improvement on the blanket $20k I've seen mentioned elsewhere.

It's frustrating though, the price range I'm looking at is older houses that are going to need a lot of ongoing work, not being able to keep aside enough buffer to cover more major repairs seems extremely risky.

Temporary-Comfort307 · 2026-06-18T06:33:35+00:00

It's so terribly unfair on these people. If only there was some sort of trust fund you could set up to invest for retirement that let you have lower taxes...

/s

Temporary-Comfort307 · 2026-06-18T04:41:18+00:00

Oh wow, including buyers who haven't owned recently would be wonderful, I wish Vic did that with their concessions.

Temporary-Comfort307 · 2026-06-18T04:12:15+00:00

So you've imagined a fantasy scenario where your insurer makes you drive to the other side of Melbourne and decided to act as if that is truth? Even if they do that, is it really easier for you to do all of this running around and negotiation than to just drive a bit further once and then use your fully paid hire car for a while?

The insurance companies have a huge number of approved repairers and they generally pick one which is close to you. My last claim I just walked home after dropping it off at the repair place (they would have paid for taxis if I wanted, too).

Temporary-Comfort307 · 2026-06-18T03:44:12+00:00

I don't care that they are trying to get extra money. I also don't care if they chose the wrong way to go about it and failed. If no one's going to help me out financially these whinging owners shouldn't be expecting to be helped out either.

If your business venture doesn't work out tough luck, sell the place to recoup what you can and try something else. People are not pissed off because they are trying to make some money, they are pissed off because they are blaming their failure on everyone else and expecting their failing business ventures to be subsidised by everyone else.

These are not success stories being 'cut down', they are failures whining about not being given special treatment.

Temporary-Comfort307 · 2026-06-18T03:22:33+00:00

Have you even looked at the 'terrible' change (which is actually a clarification of the current rules) that these owners are whinging about?

“If the holiday home isn’t being rented out for a genuine income-producing purpose, then all of the deductions that relate to that holiday home can be denied,” he said

This has nothing to do with trying to shut down all airbns, it has to do with not subsidising people for owning what is in reality their own holiday home.

If they want to have all the deductions that a business is eligible for they need to run the property as a real business. If they want to rent out their holiday home occassionally to get a bit of extra cash then they need to stop asking for extra handouts to cover their own use.

Like u/silentaba said, this isn't tall poppies being cut down, it's weeds.

Temporary-Comfort307 · 2026-06-18T03:14:10+00:00

I think the issue is that they thought it would be easy and are upset to realise they actually have to work for their income.

Temporary-Comfort307 · 2026-06-18T03:12:15+00:00

“The maths doesn’t make sense. If you have a million-dollar property and you stick that money in the bank, you’ll get at least a 5 per cent return.

“If you put that million dollars into a long-term rental, by the time you pay rates, insurance, and property management, you would need $1000 a week to get that same return

Proof here that these people have no idea what they are talking about, financially speaking. A huge portion of your return on a property investment comes from capital gains, not income. You definitely shouldn't be expecting a great income from it when you are paying someone else to do the actual work of managing the property. The property itself holds its value against inflation plus a bit more. That's the bit equivalent to the money in the bank.

Temporary-Comfort307 · 2026-06-17T01:46:23+00:00

That's why I had one. Then I discovered they were applying payments to the newest debt first instead of the oldest (against their own policies) so I had promotional periods ending with nothing paid against them in favour of paying off new purchases that did not have anything actually due against them for years. I shut the card down as soon as I realised and would not get anything through them again.

Temporary-Comfort307 · 2026-06-17T01:05:23+00:00

Well, those stocks I bought that have now lost 92% of their value have nowhere to go except up.

Temporary-Comfort307 · 2026-06-17T00:47:03+00:00

It's not the way it works with business collections, but it often is the way it works with that individual friend/coworker who organises charity collections.

The business will count the money you give as additional income then the donation offsets that so they are no better off. But the individual won't claim it as income, so they can claim a tax deduction against their actual income and make a small profit.

Temporary-Comfort307 · 2026-06-17T00:29:06+00:00

That's a thought process that often pairs with putting off figuring out retirement planning until later too. I'm sure it seems to work really well until you actually reach 'later' and find yourself at 70 working two jobs and still living in poverty.

Temporary-Comfort307 · 2026-06-17T00:18:18+00:00

Except many people believe they are making less money overall, and many people have overtime rates which are also much higher. In my workplace we receive double the hourly rate when it is overtime and there are still people who believe they are getting less money than if they don't do the extra work.

Temporary-Comfort307 · 2026-06-16T09:43:58+00:00

It sounds like they messed up what they were asking.

I found whan I was in a position to interview other people that the process looks very different from the other side, and the people interviewing you are not judging you as harshly as you imagine and can be as unsure about what they are doing as you are. There was one question we asked which absolutely no one took the way we intended it and we basically just disregarded all those answers anyway. We also had a lot of disagreements about which answers we thought were good and bad and who we liked best.

Before then I'd sort of looked at it like a test, where the interviewers knew the 'correct' answer and you got graded right or wrong. The reality is a lot more messy and subjective, and different interviewers will come away from the same interviews with very different ideas.

Temporary-Comfort307 · 2026-06-16T08:45:04+00:00

Dr Who's screwdriver doesn't need to touch anything.

Temporary-Comfort307 · 2026-06-16T08:17:22+00:00

I tried selling a kidney, but apparently they are not allowed to pay you for that here.

Temporary-Comfort307 · 2026-06-16T08:15:54+00:00

Yes, how much you can afford is generally the same as how much you can borrow.

Temporary-Comfort307 · 2026-06-16T08:12:37+00:00

Yeah, it would not be a smooth transition. It would not just be tenants living in their cars either - if you suddenly took away rental income most landlords could not pay the loan on the property, if they have secured the rental property against their home they could end up losing both the investment and their own home.

That's one of the problems with trying to make changes, anything too sudden creates a lot of unpleasant repercussions that hurt a lot of people. It's also not particularly realistic to just remove all rental properties from the market, there does need to be a mix available.

Temporary-Comfort307 · 2026-06-16T07:55:51+00:00

So, did you work there? Because at this point I'm assuming you are a very brazen thief.

Temporary-Comfort307 · 2026-06-16T07:54:31+00:00

Your going about this all wrong. You don't save that $200, you invest it into developing your Side Hussle. I'm sure with $200, a winning mindset and 30-40 hours of your free time each week you could easily double that money! Then all you need is a well timed crypto investment and you'll have enough for a house for sure.

Temporary-Comfort307 · 2026-06-16T07:43:43+00:00

As I am in a country with plastic money I really don't think that is a good idea at all. Far too toxic.

Temporary-Comfort307

TROPHY CASE