Category: Travel

Pre-Travel Check List – June 2026 End of Month Update

skyteamaviation

One of the pleasures of retirement is the joy of travel and Slack Investor is about to head off to Brittany and the UK. He is fortunate that Ms Slack Investor has many skills in the travel booking department – and he doesn’t have to worry about accommodation, flights, or train and ferry tickets. However, there are some responsibilities that have landed on Slack Investor’s desk. Any products mentioned are not sponsored – but just things that he likes to use.

Insurance

Fortunately, Slack Investor has a Commonwealth Bank Ultimate Rewards credit card that offers free overseas travel insurance. This Cover-More policy requires a card spend of $500 on travel and has an excess of $500. Important Note: If you think you would like a credit card for retirement – get yourself sorted out while you are still working. Getting the card that you want is increasingly difficult when you are retired – and only relying on superannuation income.

Travel Money

The Commonwealth Bank Ultimate Rewards credit card has no international transaction fees and uses the Mastercard default rate in working out foreign exchange rates. So, he will use this card for most swipe transactions. His money cards are also loaded into his phone wallet.

For cash, he avoids the horrendous cash advance fees on credit cards by using his Macquarie Bank Debit Card. This exceptional card offers no international transaction fees and uses the Mastercard FX swap rate. Some overseas ATM’s will have a usage fee. However, by using only major banks in overseas countries, Slack Investor has mostly avoided these.

Slack Investor has much praise for his Macquarie Bank Transaction account. This account is the best that Slack investor has ever had. Features include:

  • No Macquarie fees when using overseas.
  • No Fees and 2.75% interest on your domestic transaction account.
  • Great app and transaction control.
  • Linked Savings account offers 5.0% interest.

Phones and Sims

One day there will be a time when you can just have just one sim in your phone and you can roam the world using that sim at a reasonable cost. It is not this day as yet. Currently, the best option is to get another sim for overseas travel. This can cause some complications with two factor authentication if finance institutions wanting to SMS your Australian sim. In most cases, you can work around this by communicating through the finance app. As a last resort, just swap back the Australian sim temporarily for any vital sms communication.

For older phones that can only use a physical sim, it is cheapest to pick up a local sim at the airport, or a convenience store, when you arrive. If you don’t want this hassle and have time for the Australian company TravelKon to post you a sim from Perth – they have 30 day 20GB physical Europe sims for $28.

If your phone can handle an e-sim, this is the best way to go. Slack Investor found the best deals for multiple country Europe/UK were through E-tel Mobile and TravelKon.

The cheapest e-sim options were for a data only plan – and any required phone calls can be made through a VOIP application like WhatsApp. Slack Investor would use Wi-Fi at his accommodation for any big data requirements. For maps and searches during the day, 10GB for 30 days would be plenty. E-tel has a 30 day 10GB Europe plan for $27.90 AUD. TravelKon have a sale on at the moment – a 30 day 10GB Europe plan for $20.30 AUD. These e-sims can be set up before leaving Australia – and will automatically activate on arrival in Europe.

Finding my phone

Slack Investor should be more vigilant … and will try to be better. However, he has a Samsung Android phone and is prone to leaving it on tables etc. He often finds his phone using his google account. Just put ‘find my phone’ in any browser to locate the google find hub. You can ring your phone or find it on a map or lock it from this site once you have signed in to this site.

It occurred to me that this would not be as easy in a far off land. For an extra layer of security, both Ms Slack Investor and myself have shared locations with the Samsung Find app. If either of us leaves our phones somewhere, we should be able to locate it.

For those in iPhone world, I am sure there are similar Apps. A company that Slack Investor recently bought, Life360, has a family location app with a free tier.

Other Travel Considerations

Slack Investor likes to travel light and tries to do a lot of walking on his breaks. His Osprey Farpoint 40-litre Travel Pack combined with packing cubes for internal organization has proved to be a reliable companion. The pack is sized for cabin baggage and can be found for $284.29 AUD. Ms Slack Investor uses the similar 38-litre Kathmandu Litehaul (on special at the moment for $179.98). Depending on the airline cabin bag policy, the weight varies between 7 and 10Kg.

A special mention to my compact travel power adapter available e-bay Australia for $20.98 AUD and my portable clothesline (available under $10). For the lightweight traveller, hand washing is crucial and a clothes line is essential. So is 4m of extra cord to help tie up the line in tricky layouts. For emergencies, a hotel hair dryer is a handy sock drying tool.

June 2026 – End of Month Update

The end of another Financial Year. Slack investor will summarize the year in the next post. The S&P 500 (-0.3%) and the FTSE 100 (+0.1%) took a well-earned ‘breather’. The ASX 200 returned a solid 1.5% for the month.

Slack Investor remains IN for all markets.

All Index pages and charts  have been updated to reflect the monthly changes – (ASX Index, UK Index, US Index).

The quarterly updates showing the current holdings and cash position of the Slack Portfolio have also been completed.

Exercise and Wine … What could go wrong?

Dr Spock with the Vulcan Salute which usually comes with the salutation “Live long and Prosper” – Image may be subject to copyright – Star Trek

Most of Slack Investor’s blog is about becoming financially sound, but there is also a need to be happy and healthy and to flourish in other areas. Spock and his fellow Vulcans are all over this idea – Live Long and Prosper – What is the use of becoming financially prosperous if you can’t be around to enjoy the choices that this state can offer.

One of my favourite UK blogs The Escape Artist also flogs the theme of trying to be fit and healthy of body … as well as looking after your financial state. There can be a parallel in approaches to athletic and financial matters.

Set Goals

36 years ago, my brother and I were sitting in a Greek Restaurant with a bottle or two of Retsina and we were full of youthful optimism and set ourselves a list of things we would like to get done in life. They were exciting things like “have a girlfriend”, jump out of a plane, learn how to scuba dive, go on a TV talent show, etc. I am pleased to say that most goals were achieved within 5-years of that goal setting night – but the elusive one was to “Run a marathon”. We found this task even harder than finding a girlfriend! 42 kilometres is a long way and the training required to do this thing properly had this feat rolling around in the “too hard basket” for decades.

That was … until 2018.

Work Hard through efficient research

Slack Investor believes that there can be many solutions to a problem, and as my body aged and I became even slacker, it was apparent that the conventional route of working up to this great distance over time and training 6-days a week was not going to cut it. One look at the Runners World suggested marathon training program over at least 6 months and starting at 24 km per week building up to 64 km – gave me the “vapours”. The “Fair Dinkum” marathon runners train hard and aim for below 4-hr times and these folks have my greatest respect. Most marathons have qualifying times for participants and they usually sweep the slower runners off the course if they can’t complete in 6 hours. My challenge was to find a marathon in the world that had a generous cut off time – that would accommodate slack athletes.

While not a complete fitness numpty, Slack Investor has trouble running 5km comfortably at a shuffling pace – and the thought of running further than that is mildly appalling! You can see the dilemma here.

Festivals of “Convivialité ” to the rescue

Luckily we have the French to remind us of the joy of life and each year they have 20 Conviviality challenges that are run by regional communites that involve some sort of running combined with tastings of wines and other regional delicacies. To add to the festival theme, the runs are usually done in fancy dress.

The most famous of these Convivialite’s is the Marathon du Medoc where, one day in September, 8500 participants run around the beautiful Medoc area, near Bordeaux. Registrations must be done by the previous March and I found the combined accommodation/run packages the easiest way in. There are refreshment stops along the way where 20 of the wineries around the Pauillac area will offer water, wine, music and food. It is tempting to linger at each Chateau but there is the ever present sweeping crew that will put you out of the marathon if you are slower than the required 6.5 – 7 hr pace.

In the same way as investing, Slack Investor likes to break things down into achievable chunks. I was working on a theoretical finishing time of 6 hrs and 45 min (405 minutes).

First 30 km Plan – I thought that using my ungainly shuffling jog I could do 5 sets of 5km runs at a 7 min per km pace (175 min). I could walk a kilometer between each 5km runs (to gather breath!), 4 lots of walking at a 10 min per km pace (40 min) . This plan will use up a total of 215 minutes to do 30 km.

Last 12km Plan – I knew that I would be knackered here … but still hoping I could comfortable walk a kilometre in 10 min. If I walked the last 12 km, that would use up 120 min.

The planned running/walking would use up 335 min (215 +120), leaving 70 min (405 – 335) for wine tastings, toilet stops, recoveries! Even allowing for time shrinkage – this was a good plan!

Image may contain: David Nahrung, smiling, standing and outdoor
Slack Investor in a fetching outfit prior to the the run with fellow Aussie “Steve Irwin”
Image may contain: 1 person, smiling, outdoor
Slack Investor about to cross the finish line – Goal achieved!

Well, I signed up for the Medoc 2018 Marathon … and happily, the plan was executed (in a fashion). There was more time shrinkage than anticipated – and it was hot! I did not have a wine at every stop (Although my colleague “Steve Irwin” did! I was scared the wheels would fall off my plan if I imbibed too early …. so I had a wine-free first 20 km … but after that, I found each of the Chateau offerings delightful.

Would I do this again? It was a lot of fun and a worthy bucket list destination – but it was hard! The day after there was a 10km walk through four Chateaus over 3 hours. Much more my style, I will seek out these more leisurely, but still challenging, events in future. I have now retired from marathon running and look forward to new adventures.

Choose your battles … then Go Hard. Live Long and Prosper … in wine is truth!

2017 April – End of Month Update

Slack Investor remains IN for US, UK, and Australian index shares.

April 2017 has seen rises, in the US and Australian markets and a dip in the UK Index. So far, the Slack Investment Cycle returns for the US, UK and Australian markets are 141.0%, 7.6% and 12.0%, respectively.

Bull markets are a funny thing – and there is no doubt that all markets that Slack Investor follows are in various stages of a bull run – they are comforting as the Slack Investor can congratulate himself on what a stock market genius he is (Ironic comment!) – And yet, I can’t help but feel a sense of unease that things have been “too good for too long”.

Looking at the index chart pages, I get the feeling that it has been a long time since my stop losses have been adjusted upwards in the UK and ASX markets – and this will have the potential to erode any gains should the markets fall suddenly. However, I am comforted that the Slack Investor monthly-decision based method is tried and true and has brought rewards in the past … so I’m staying the course … the objective Slack method is designed to keep you in the markets as long as possible and only withdraw from the fray during a major downturn.

I am also comforted by the fact that we frail humans have behavioural biases, we lack patience and we want to tinker with things! Although Slack Investor is unable to track down the original source, an often quoted study by Fidelity (e.g., Business Insider) investigating the Fidelity trading accounts between 2003 and 2013, found that its best performing accounts were the inactive ones – Either owned by people who had forgotten that they had an account, or by dead people!

The Slack Investor does not recommend complete inaction though – but trading less has its merits.

While it is fresh in my mind I will drop in another example of the fine New Zealand experience below…

Day 3 Milford Track NZ – Slack Investor’s corpulence is almost eclipsed by the magnificence of Sutherland Falls. Reminder … must exercise more often!

 

 

 

For more information on parameters such as progressive gains, look on the Slack investor ASX Index, US Index and UK Index pages for updated details – and a look at the charts. Next end of month update on the index charts will be early in June.

2017 March – End of Month Update

Slack Investor remains IN for US, UK, and Australian index shares.

The Slack Investor has been true to his ethos and not published any general interest posts for a month … this will happen from time to time … but I will commit to prompt monthly updates for those who follow the US, UK and Australian indexes and who may value the Slack input to their buy/sell decisions – these will be published in the first couple of days of each month.

I have been off to New Zealand. The great advantage of the Slack approach to investing is that I can be away from the markets – even out of internet range for up to a month at a time – the lack of required decisions on a daily, or weekly, basis suits my style.

New Zealand is a remarkable country to which Australia is the older, louder, uglier, more arrogant brother! I had a great time and the the Kiwis would often impress with their manners, integrity and general genuineness(?).

Day 3 Milford Track NZ – Thanks sister-in-law for the photo

We were mostly in the South Island and the scenery was jaw-droppingly beautiful. … I want to go back! Slack Investor and travelling companions are shown casting appropriately shadowy figures on Day 3 of the Milford Track – Nice photography skills from my sister-in law … Enough of the travelogue.

March 2017 has seen rises, in the UK and Australian markets and a refreshing pause with the US Index. It is also dividend season down under and Slack Investor always enjoys this time when each company (hopefully) shows their appreciation for supporting them with a little trickle into the bank accounts.

For more information on parameters such as progressive gains, look on the Slack investor ASX Index, US Index and UK Index pages for updated details – and a look at the charts. I have also updated my Portfolio page – this portfolio page will only be updated occasionally and is not presented as an investment guide – it just shows the type of companies that Slack investor is interested in – mostly growth companies with established dividend records. Next end of month update on the index charts will be early in May.