All tagged US 500
My latest bright idea was for our whānau of three to spend the month of July earning more money while spending less of it. Call it a Financial Reset. Why? When the general societal vibe is that we are all in a rough state economically, it is easy for an individual to feel powerless. Although optimistic by nature, I’m not immune to this feeling of gloom. But instead of accepting that we are in a financial crisis, I’d prefer to take the bull by the horns and own our situation.
This week I’m answering a question that Paul has sent to me, and it is a question that I’ve been dwelling on myself. I’m going to do my best not to get too deep in the weeds with my answer. It might sound like a niche question (Which is better: TWF - Total World Fund or USF - US 500?), but the answer I give is, in my opinion, widely applicable to investors.
Over the last 22 weeks, Jonny and I have been doing a bit of life admin that relates to the Christchurch earthquakes. Remember them? We have been working our way through a top-up of our original insurance claim. Recently, this claim paid us out $68,082.50. It’s a significant sum of money which we were grateful to receive. Today I just wanted to share with you why we came to receive this money and what we will do with it.
Do you like my dramatic title? Does it make you nervous? Don’t be. This week I was given the ultimate compliment. Someone said, “I like hearing what you have to say, Ruth. You have common sense”. It seems to me that every investment provider is telling me not to panic at the moment. Common sense tells me there is no need to; volatile times come and go, but hearing it so often repeated gives my common-sense approach a run for its money and makes me wonder if I should be concerned?
Ok, so the question is, does investing in index funds or ETFs actually work? Given that last week, I wrote about the fact it has been five years since I started blogging, I thought I’d give you an update on how two of our investments have been tracking during that time. The blog, after all, was created so that I could teach myself about investing by actually putting some money in and then sharing what I have learnt with others. I figured it would save everyone else having to constantly reinvent the wheel!
The title of this blog post will have invoked a response in you or either: What an entitled brat! OR How did she afford that? Stick around for the breakdown though and you might just learn something that you can use in your own parenting journey. Or not, you decide. But I’m pretty sure your teenager won’t want you to read this post!
This week I read a question on the Kiwi Mustachian Facebook page from a woman by the name of Kimberly who was asking a particularly good question. I thought that such a question required more than a social media soundbite and that it might also be useful to other Happy Savers. This is an important question and it needs a detailed answer because in my view Kimberly is on the brink of making one of the most important investment decisions of her life and she needs to feel comfortable with what she is doing.
This week I received an email from someone who has stumbled upon the big wide world of investing and at the age of 40 has suddenly had their mind blown with the possibilities. He specifically asked about index funds and I also knew I had met a kindred spirit when he said: “compound interest is a new favourite term”.
A while back I asked you to send me in any questions that you are looking for an answer to and I received well over 100 responses. So, I’ve hand-picked just four to answer today and I'll come back to the others in the future. On with the questions!
