My dearest nieces Kell and Cat

To; Wiseberry Enmore

Dear sirs and madams,

I wept when I read your letter about the landlord’s plight with increased “holding costs”, my mouth went dry and I could barely swallow my baked beans. Now re-reading the missive is difficult as my tears have blurred the page but it appears to indicate a rent rise to $260 per ‘W1’ which I take to mean per week. I’m no expert on Real Estate jargon so correct me if I’m wrong but it looks like your texting skills have come to roost in your company mail where its egg has benefited your life’s work load by two key strokes.

Of course I shall be more than happy to pay an extra $20.00 per week ($1040.00) per year. I know how much holding can cost, especially with increased Arthritis in the joints. Why that’s probably not even enough to pay for the recently replaced hot water service which many lords would have left to burst, flooding both mine and the downstairs apartments and getting the whole lot replaced on insurance. I’ll just cut back on baked beans ( about five hundred and eighty cans of them) or take out a personal loan.

I won’t worry about a new Tenancy Agreement right now though at only $15.00 it’s very tempting. It would only cover six months as the last one did and its expirary would only alert you to another opportunity to plunder. No you just keep refining those text to cooperate letter skills and I bet in six months you can save mmm…maybe five strokes as you announce a mmm…maybe $35.00 rent raise towards increases in landlords mmm…maybe footing, seating, cellaring, the lord knows, goaling, golding, oops…gilding costs.

Kind Regards

This is the letter I wrote, not sent, to the real estate agent this week. As I say sometimes, well often I suppose, the writing is enough. For those among you about to ask the question, I have replaced Portuguese Tarts with baked beans in this argument to add pathos and in doing so am in good company with Wayne Swan and Malcolm Turnbull.

Trading as Maxwell J Ward, an established fixture on Enmore Road just down from The Sly Fox for eighty years, in the six months since I rented this agency has transformed into Wiseberry with new brand, colours and cooperate front. I guess they must do something to appear as more than just puff and as defenceless tenants are the best (only) game in town now the bubble has burst, well… Unless some of those Greens take notice it won’t be long till tenants are extinct and science is left holding nothing but a small strand of DNA to try cloning from.

The estate agents letter arrived at the end of a week of playing cat and mouse by email with my ISP provider TPG, who were offering three hundred dollars of mobile phone calls for twenty dollars a month. Sounded good and got better when it turned out it only cost ten dollars if broadband service, which I already had with them, was included. After a number of calls to Mumbai we decided it was best to do business by email, which though in black and white print and re readable, as opposed to colourful language lost in ether, still suffers from ‘lost in translation’ moments. It’s still a work in progress but seems to be coming along fine.

The other financial matter preying on my mind as well as yours and many others was the state of my superannuation. My new Attorney and Financial adviser Jack, passed to me via his lovely wife and assistant Alice, the suggestion that during these troubled times I should instruct my superannuation trust to put my funds into a year long fixed interest account. That wouldn’t be hard for one already dealing masterfully with ISP providers in Mumbai and the cooperate giants of Enmore, I thought and set off to view the details of my account with REST Superannuation. At their website with my own membership and pin number at hand I felt that sense of privilege that only members and masters of the universe feel. Yes that’s my name and address mmm…phone number and email address right, I’ll know where to come if I ever forget that stuff, now lets check the finances, what’s this, a single number, the bottom line only, no columns no graphs that cant be right. A search of paper files revealed that since the commencement of my account with Rest, over two years ago, and my subsequent transfer of funds from the previous account and my inheritance, I had received no report of the score let alone the state of play. Oh what have I done I cried. The previous trust sent countless indecipherable reports; here they are carefully filed if never read. After rending clothes and pulling hair for the rest of the week, on Friday, by some dare I say divine intervention, I received by mail one of those comfortably fat envelopes with the Rest logo emblazoned. Hallelujah!



It’s hard to put into words my feelings; disappointment, disgust, upon opening this letter to find not a report on Superannuation but a bogus explanation of increased fees for an un-solicited insurance regime they had placed me into without asking. Talk about betrayal of trust. I’d noticed mention of these policies in brochures from when the account was set up and thought that’s nice, but never any documentation to indicate I was paying for it or how much. Yes I know that only a fool would think an insurance policy would be free but I am a fool and their supposed to be a trust. I’ve never bought insurance in my life. Yes that’s an exaggeration but I like to talk in absolutes. I’ve had car and health but never death, total and permanent disability or income protection for which they’ve been charging me $3.50 a week and now would like $7.15. I don’t believe in the marketing of fear. I like a more positive return on an investment.

Now I notice that unlike my previous trust Rest don’t even have a record of who should inherit my super or indeed the insurance. Are they the beneficiaries? Is the insurance designed to protect the contributions to their managed funds? Am I getting paranoid?

I guess I shall just have to get on the ‘long phone call’ as I call it. I won’t be surprised to find myself on the line to Mumbai. I’ll try to remain even but am bound to loose my temper at least once. I’ll certainly send emails but I’m pretty sure they are read by machines these days that have not been programmed for irony.

In summation I stand to save: $10.19 per week on mobile phones $3.50 per week on insurance and loose: $ 20.00 per week on rent leaving me only$6.31 out of pocket. If I can just locate a dealer I have an ‘inexhaustible’ amount of this stuff (see photo below) that I’d never realised there was a market for. All told I’d have to say things are looking up.

Love from old cranky aunty