All in Index Funds
Now, we Kiwi’s don’t like to self congratulate, it’s frowned upon. But stuff it, I’m going to… This week marks one year since I started this blog! Cripes, I can’t believe it has gone by so quick AND that I have managed to dream up something to discuss each week.
All your working life you are trying to increase your net worth so that when you finally stop working you start to slowly spend it to live on. If upon retirement each year you take 4% out of your pot of savings it will take about 30 years to boil the pot dry. So what can you live on a year? Do you need to invest $100K, $200 or $500K?
Is it just me or are people confusing saving for a house with saving for retirement? I keep hearing about first home buyers all the time and how difficult it is to get into the market. But the question I keep asking myself is “why do people use their KiwiSaver as their primary mode of saving for a deposit?”
I’ve been having a good run with good returns but it is high time I diversified and headed offshore a bit more than what my KiwiSaver is offering. Diversification spreads risk so that when one investment is underperforming another is hopefully performing strongly.
Investing is like shopping for toothpaste. There is a range of companies offering a very similar product. There are differences, most of which are minor and you just have to cut through all the jargon and choose an option. If you get too bogged down in the detail it just all becomes too difficult and you will end up doing nothing.
On the 13th of April I received an email telling me I had just received some moolah. Yippee, great timing! At the time I was just packing the car up to head away for five days over Easter, a bit of spending money would be great.
I have been chipping away at buying into the SmartShare fund NZ Top 50 (FNZ) for 14 months now. Statistics out recently tell me that this is the most popular of their funds so I’m moving with the crowd and many small time investors like myself are getting involved it seems. Today I am trying to find the answer. Is it worth it?
Back in July 2016 I helped Mr Happy Saver hook up with some SmartShares. He only bought a very small amount because it was always my intention to use it as an experiment to blog about. Today is sale day!
It is time for another quick look at Smartshares. What happens next? YES index funds ARE that interesting! So here is the next instalment...
