# ASF members and visitors: A financial overview



## waimate01 (7 June 2013)

Hi all,

I'd like to see what thoughts there are about running an anonymous survey of ASF users (and unregistered visitors) to find out a bit about who we are and what our strategies/demographics are.

The notion is to put something up on surveymonkey, with completely anonymous inputs. We'd ask questions related to net worth, debt, housing, credit cards, asset allocation, employment, location and age.

I'm hoping that the anonymous aspect would not only encourage people to participate, but also remove any incentive to exaggerate or dissemble.

The goal is twofold
- find out a bit about what sort of people are reading ASF
- see what sort of interesting or surprising correlations we can uncover and learn from

For example, you'd expect that older people would have less debt, but to what extent is that actually true for our community? How does debt correlate against net worth, or employment status? How does age affect asset allocation (we've probably all got ideas about how it should, but what are people actually doing?)

We'd collect anonymous responses, and the results would be posted here for all to share.

What does everybody think?


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## prawn_86 (7 June 2013)

waimate01 said:


> What does everybody think?




I think that the results would be statistically insignificant, even if just using this forums members as the population. You are only going to get certain people reply, as there is very little benefit in doing so.

I'm not against the idea, I just don't see the point or why members would give that information out


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## pixel (7 June 2013)

prawn_86 said:


> I think that the results would be statistically insignificant, even if just using this forums members as the population. You are only going to get certain people reply, as there is very little benefit in doing so.
> 
> I'm not against the idea, I just don't see the point or why members would give that information out




+1
I would be interested in the results, but doubt you'd get a statistically meaningful input across the spectrum.
As prawn says: What incentive does a reader have to participate?


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## CanOz (7 June 2013)

Why not just a run series of surveys on a variety of subjects using the survey function. That way there could be some discussion which would encourage others to vote as well. 

We should be doing more surveys here, they're good for discussion and learning about what the ASF population is composed of.

CanOz


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## Julia (7 June 2013)

prawn_86 said:


> I think that the results would be statistically insignificant, even if just using this forums members as the population. You are only going to get certain people reply, as there is very little benefit in doing so.
> 
> I'm not against the idea, I just don't see the point or why members would give that information out



Agree.  I like the whole concept of surveying, but only when it's properly designed.
Also, however much assurance might be offered about anonymity, I'd be very wary about giving out personal financial details.


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## Joe Blow (7 June 2013)

Hi everyone, waimate01 approached me about this idea a couple of days ago and I gave him the go ahead to start a thread about it, as I thought it sounded interesting. Although, ASF is probably not a perfect cross section of Australian society, as we are all here because we are perhaps a little more investment minded than the average person, I couldn't help but be curious about what sort of results might come out of such an exercise.

Like any other survey or polling, it would only work if enough people participated. 

My first thought was also the privacy question, but as I understand it no personal or identifying information would be volunteered by those participating, so there would be no way of connecting data volunteered to any specific individual. The Survey Monkey system is designed to be completely anonymous.

I still feel it's an interesting idea, but there would probably need to be more interest to get it off the ground.


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## WilkensOne (8 June 2013)

Anonymous and secure, why not it could be a bit of fun and may even bring around some good discussion


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## Julia (8 June 2013)

Waimate, could you perhaps post an example of your proposed survey?  Might help us understand more just what you have in mind.  I like the idea in many ways.


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## waimate01 (9 June 2013)

Julia said:


> Waimate, could you perhaps post an example of your proposed survey?  Might help us understand more just what you have in mind.  I like the idea in many ways.




My thought was to collect the data that people think is worthwhile collecting, but initial ideas included:


What is the net value of your investment portfolio (including your investments of all types, but excluding your family home, and after subtracting any debt used to finance those investment assets) - banded answers

Thinking about your investment assets (and not including your family home), how much debt do you carry as a percentage of your asset value (eg, if you have shares worth $1000, but have a debt of $300 against them, your debt is 30%)

What percentage of your investments are in the following sectors (excluding family home) - 
Direct australian shares	
Direct international shares	
LICs	
ETFs	
CFDs	
Options	
Warrants	
Unlisted managed funds	
Residential property	
Commercial property	
All-call cash accounts	
Term deposits	
Bonds	
Collectables	
Metals	
Other

Housing: do you:
Rent
Own outright
Own with mortgage
Live with parents
Live in managed accommodation

 How much credit card debt do you carry?  (banded)

Occupation: do you primarily
Work as a full time employee
Work full time in my own business
Study
Seeking work
Work as a part-time employee
Work part-time in my own business
Fully retired

Age group

In which state/territory do you live:

In which urban environment do you live?
City/suburban
Regional
Remote
Other (please specify)

For a free surveymonkey account, we are limited to ten questions.

My thought was to find out a bit about the people who use this website, but also see if there are any interesting or surprising correlations that we might learn from. It's not representative of a larger population, but with a reasonable participation rate, it would be representative of people who have an active interest in investing and use ASF.


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## Julia (9 June 2013)

Waimate, the questions seem reasonable and are very similar to those which appear in surveys from the professional data collecting companies.

I think the problem would be that of how truly representative the total answers would be for this site, in that many people are just not disposed to offer personal information, especially with respect to security of that personal information, and some also just wouldn't be interested.

This is probably the reason why most of the professional survey companies always offer all responses to go into a draw for an Iphone or similar, ie they provide an incentive

In other words, it usually comes back to the age old question:  "what's in it for me?" which is apparently what drives most of our behaviour.

Personally I'm not interested in so called rewards and would be happy to participate if the above concerns were somehow overcome, most of all that complete anonymity.  Just not sure how you could do this.


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## sptrawler (9 June 2013)

Julia said:


> Waimate, the questions seem reasonable and are very similar to those which appear in surveys from the professional data collecting companies.
> 
> I think the problem would be that of how truly representative the total answers would be for this site, in that many people are just not disposed to offer personal information, especially with respect to security of that personal information, and some also just wouldn't be interested.
> 
> ...




+1 everyone has a specific IP address, there isn't such a thing as anonomity, on the internet.


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## banco (10 June 2013)

sptrawler said:


> +1 everyone has a specific IP address, there isn't such a thing as anonomity, on the internet.


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## waimate01 (11 June 2013)

sptrawler said:


> +1 everyone has a specific IP address, there isn't such a thing as anonymity, on the internet.




Sure, sure. But we're not talking about child pr0n or downloading plans for terrorist weapons - things that would make people come looking for you and bother to track an IP to an actual physical address.

We're also not talking about names, addresses, credit card, tax file numbers or bank account numbers - informational crown jewels. 

And we're also nestled safely among a million other surveys on surveymonkey.  

The benefit is that we all might learn something, and the risk is about equal to that of your computer falling on you while you're using it. Vague data, associated only with a (usually dynamic) IP, not associated with any other data (eg, not your ASF id). I'm totally ok entering my data on that basis.

If anyone's concerned that I might be up to something nefarious, then perhaps the solution is that we share the surveymonkey login credentials among some long-term ASF users so we can all see what's under the hood. I was going to say publish the credentials on ASF, but there's too much risk of vandalism.

Joe, if this was worth proceeding with, would you be willing to promote it somewhere on ASF?


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## Julia (11 June 2013)

If a survey were to go ahead (and I still think there's no way it would be representative of ASF due to limited willingness to participate) a question I'd like to see a response to is how many people generate their living from their own capital as opposed to working for an employer.

There are various claims of great profitability but often these turn out to be in the hundreds of dollars p.a.
while the investor/trader's actual living expenses are fully funded from a job.

That's fine, but allows a much more loose approach to the security of invested capital.

I'd also be interested in knowing how many respondents believe they will be self funded in retirement.
Present figures in this regard show not many.

Waimate, no concern that you personally would be up to anything nefarious.  Rather just an acceptance of the general reluctance to part with personal information.


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## Joe Blow (11 June 2013)

waimate01 said:


> Joe, if this was worth proceeding with, would you be willing to promote it somewhere on ASF?




Of course. There is an option to send a PM to every registered member that I've never used that I could use to notify everyone.


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## Zedd (11 June 2013)

Julia said:


> ...a question I'd like to see a response to is how many people generate their living from their own capital as opposed to working for an employer.
> 
> ...
> 
> ...




Quite like these suggestions. 

I realise portfolio size, leverage and credit card debt are all of interest and put other answers in perspective, but I also think these are the most personal details that would be objected too.

Personally I'd be more interested in the following:
- Demographics (Age, city/regional/rural, education level)
- Employment status including industry; I'd like "active at home investor/trader" to be a specific option rather than self-employed or retired being selected for this option.
- Forward projections, in terms of expected returns over next 1, 5, 10, 20yrs, and whether self-funded retirement is expected

I doubt there'd be space in the survey for much more, but I'm a big fan of a survey I get a couple of times a year looking at investor expectations w.r.t. leverage intentions, sectors, expected return for the current financial year, sentiment etc. Quite interesting to see the results.

Maybe some of the more private information could be done via surveymonkey, but ASF could have a running monthly survey for some of the expectations info I find interesting...

And yes, I would take part. I'm more concerned about my credit card being registered with some online retailers than giving information regarding financial situation, although that could be a reflection of my age and current financial status, so perhaps another interesting question in itself ...


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## stevier95 (11 June 2013)

Another option is to use google docs to create a survey. This will allow you to have an unlimited number of questions whilst still maintaining privacy concerns.


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## waimate01 (13 June 2013)

While it's not the overwhelming chorus of support I was hoping for, it sounds like there's at least some level of interest, and I suppose the only way to know what sort of participation rate we obtain is to start.

GoogleDocs is a really good suggestion, but Surveymonkey probably has more confident branding for something like this and also takes care of multiple responses. I've tried to include all the other suggestions while still keeping this a "who are we" survey rather than an investment sentiment survey.

Here's a link to the resultant survey. Let's hope we get a hundred or more responses so some sort of picture starts to emerge.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GTG5RXJ

(Please note that once responses start to flow, Surveymonkey prevents any changes to the structure of the survey)


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## Julia (13 June 2013)

The questions seem relevant and succinct, Waimate.
Do you think perhaps that potential respondents could indicate their willingness to participate before actually responding to the survey, in order to see the likely take up rate?
If you are only thinking it's necessary to have 100 respondents ( a small proportion of ASF's total membership, isn't it?), what is that really going to tell you about the ASF demographic?


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## waimate01 (14 June 2013)

Not so sure about surveying people's intentions to take a survey. I think at this point we should just start and see what happens. I'm not suggesting 100 responses is a good level. Clearly more is better.


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## waimate01 (15 June 2013)

Joe Blow said:


> Of course. There is an option to send a PM to every registered member that I've never used that I could use to notify everyone.




That's great, Joe. The survey is online and we already have a handful of responses, presumably the participants in this thread. Some broader promotion would be great - thanks.


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## Julia (15 June 2013)

Can you supply a link to our assurance re anonymity and confidentiality?
Your previous Survey Monkey link just goes directly to the survey which - for all anyone knows - could track back to our personal details here.


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## waimate01 (15 June 2013)

Julia said:


> Can you supply a link to our assurance re anonymity and confidentiality?
> Your previous Survey Monkey link just goes directly to the survey which - for all anyone knows - could track back to our personal details here.




Grab your mouse and select this text:
www.surveymonkey.com/s/GTG5RXJ
then copy and paste it into the url input area of your web browser, or if you really want to, type it in character by character.

Because its the same url for everybody, and because Surveymonkey is an independent entity, there's really no way to track the same url back to different people.


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## CanOz (16 June 2013)

I completed it, how long will it run for and when will we see the results?

CanOz


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## Sharkman (16 June 2013)

filled in my responses.

as someone who, at 33, is already completely sick and tired of the rat race and the corporate world, i'm also curious as to how many people rely purely on investing/trading income to live. will it be possible to run filter type queries over the data - for eg. out of the respondents who said that all their income is derived from their own investing/trading and none from traditional employment, how many have 1-2 mil in capital, how many have 2-3, etc.? and what age ranges do they fall in?

or do we only see "this many people have 1-2 mil capital", "this many people derive 25-50% of their overall income from investing/trading activities" etc, without being able to combine multiple fields into a database query criteria?


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## waimate01 (16 June 2013)

How long to let it run for? I reckon until new entries start to tail off. Week or two, I would think.

Cross-tabs and filtering? Most certainly - that'll be the interesting bit, I'm hoping. We can look at the overall data, then take slices in different ways.


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## CanOz (16 June 2013)

waimate01 said:


> How long to let it run for? I reckon until new entries start to tail off. Week or two, I would think.
> 
> Cross-tabs and filtering? Most certainly - that'll be the interesting bit, I'm hoping. We can look at the overall data, then take slices in different ways.




Can you put the link in your signature?


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## waimate01 (17 June 2013)

CanOz said:


> Can you put the link in your signature?




Good idea


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## Joe Blow (19 June 2013)

Many thanks to all that have responded to me personally by PM to let me know they have completed the survey!

Your participation is very much appreciated. 

I thought it would be simpler to respond to you all at once here, rather than send the exact same PM to everyone.


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## mr. jeff (19 June 2013)

where the survey says "how much income do you derive  from your investments?"
It has no option to put negatives! a fail on all fronts...


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## waimate01 (20 June 2013)

mr. jeff said:


> where the survey says "how much income do you derive  from your investments?"
> It has no option to put negatives! a fail on all fronts...




If it's consistently costing you money, then you don't have an investment portfolio - you have a hobby.


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## waimate01 (22 June 2013)

For those wondering what's happening, we currently have 113 responses with more coming in at a reasonably steady pace. I would expect that after the weekend, the flow might decline. But as long as we're getting more data, we may as well let it continue.


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## boofhead (25 June 2013)

I completed it. Any preliminary results you can share?


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## waimate01 (26 June 2013)

boofhead said:


> I completed it. Any preliminary results you can share?




Thanks for your participation, boofhead. We currently have 135 responses. New entries have certainly tailed off, but let's give it another few days. I'm reluctant to do much preliminary analysis, mostly because it may influence subsequent responses and partly because it increases the work on my part.

Speaking of which, I should have read the fine-print before suggesting Surveymonkey - you can do free surveys, but only up to 100 responses. D'oh!  So I've had to reach into the dark recesses of my own pocket and upgrade to a paid account for 30 days. C'est la vie.


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## Gringotts Bank (26 June 2013)

waimate01 said:


> Thanks for your participation, boofhead. We currently have 135 responses. New entries have certainly tailed off, but let's give it another few days. I'm reluctant to do much preliminary analysis, mostly because it may influence subsequent responses and partly because it increases the work on my part.
> 
> Speaking of which, I should have read the fine-print before suggesting Surveymonkey - you can do free surveys, but only up to 100 responses. D'oh!  So I've had to reach into the dark recesses of my own pocket and upgrade to a paid account for 30 days. C'est la vie.




Why do you want to know how much money/assets other people have?

I see your example, but I don't see any possibility to gain from this exercise.


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## Sharkman (26 June 2013)

Gringotts Bank said:


> Why do you want to know how much money/assets other people have?
> 
> I see your example, but I don't see any possibility to gain from this exercise.




don't we all? it is only human nature to want to compare oneself to others - some will say you'll do better if you convince yourself to forget about how others are doing and focus on yourself - and they're probably right - but it is only human nature to want to know.

i for one am certainly curious as to how much assets *people who rely completely on investing/trading income to live* (and live comfortably) have - because as i said at just 33 i'm already sick of working and would like to become one of those people sooner rather than later. i do have a rough target in mind but this survey may provide some information that would help me get a better idea of how realistic it might be.


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## Julia (26 June 2013)

> i for one am certainly curious as to how much assets people who rely completely on investing/trading income to live (and live comfortably) have



That would be to assume such people are participating in the survey.

ASF currently has just under 49,000 members.  The responses thus far constitute around 0.3% of the membership.  I'm not sure what any resulting conclusions will be.


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## Craton (27 June 2013)

Interesting survey IMHO but bugga! I must be a real dumbo as I tried to complete the survey. Kept getting an error in Question 3, percentage of investments question.  Error reads: "The choices need to add up to [enter sum here]." Am assuming that 100 is the 'sum' required.

Perhaps percentage needs to be in whole numbers not fractions?

Do not have time now to play with it... maybe later.


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## CanOz (27 June 2013)

Craton said:


> Interesting survey IMHO but bugga! I must be a real dumbo as I tried to complete the survey. Kept getting an error in Question 3, percentage of investments question.  Error reads: "The choices need to add up to [enter sum here]." Am assuming that 100 is the 'sum' required.
> 
> Perhaps percentage needs to be in whole numbers not fractions?
> 
> Do not have time now to play with it... maybe later.




its just whole numbers, not fractions or % after the number...


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## Craton (27 June 2013)

TY CanOz, done.


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## waimate01 (19 July 2013)

We have 175 responses - still trickling in at the rate of one or two per day, but here's what we have:

First, looking at all responses.


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## waimate01 (19 July 2013)




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## waimate01 (19 July 2013)

A couple of mea culpas

- Q3 was poorly expressed, as the "Other" category was surprisingly popular and I wonder if many respondents  considered super to be under "other", whereas super is a tax structure, not an asset allocation. I should have been clearer about that, and perhaps added another question about tax structures.

- Q7 was poorly expressed, as I wasn't clear about realised versus unrealised capital gains, versus non-capital income

That aside, a few preliminary observations:


- As a group, our average age is 42, ranging from 18 to 70. (Due to some surveymonkey quirk, or maybe the way I constructed the question, we don't get a chart for this. If anyone is interested, I'll export the data and get a chart from Excel)

- Of the people with more than 100% gearing on their investments, average portfolio is 50k, most have a mortgage, and interestingly they carry little credit card debt. Perplexingly, they say investment income contributes between 10 and 50% of their income.

- Those with between 50 and 100% gearing are pretty much representative of the whole (nothing distinctive about them)

- Those with no investment debt are also pretty much representative of the whole, except that they have a strong preponderance to carry zero credit card debt, and the group is very much inclusive of our high net worth respondents

(more coming)


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## waimate01 (19 July 2013)

Of those who said their investment income was responsible for 75% ore more of their total income (again, I should have been clearer about unrealised capital gains), the following held:






Average age of this group was 50, but there were a handful in the 18-15 range. They would probably explain the very low numbers in the net assets.

Also, I should probably have been clearer about how to consider pension income, as I suspect some people counted it as income and some did not.


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## waimate01 (19 July 2013)

*Living situation*

We had no respondents living in managed accommodation (in hindsight this is probably because anyone living in managed accommodation isn't responding to surveys), but we do have 13% living with parents. Their average age is 26 with plenty below that number, a few in their 30's, and one outlier in his 60's. Half of them work full time and a further 13% work part time. They mostly carry no debt and their portfolio is less than $250k


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## waimate01 (19 July 2013)

*The multi-millionaires*

Those with an investment portfolio valued between $2m and $10m had the following characteristics


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## waimate01 (19 July 2013)

*VHNWI*

We have a couple of outliers in the VHNWI range ($20-50m), and they had the following characteristics


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## waimate01 (20 July 2013)

*Age of Respondants*


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