All in Investment
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.
Recently, a question came in via email asking, “how do you calculate your savings rate, please, Ruth?”. I thought it was a question worth elaborating on with a blog post. First up, why even take the time to work out how much you are saving? Put simply, the higher your savings rate, the faster you will have saved up enough money to retire or make going to work entirely optional.
I’ve been having many conversations with readers about money, which is not unusual, but what is standing out a little more is that I’ve noticed that for those who keep their money apart from their spouse, once you start to pile on all the other stressors of life, cracks begin to appear. I suspect that across Aotearoa, there are relationships being tested at the moment. This blog encourages you to face it head-on; start a conversation.
I received an email recently that brought tears to my eyes if I’m frank. It was from someone who is in despair about not being in a position to own a house in New Zealand. I wanted to create a blog post about it because the struggle that the writer is experiencing is not unique; in the same week, I received several other messages along the same lines.
Because I like to make life difficult for myself, I thought I would write a blog post on the tax implications of using a FIF. A Foreign Investment Fund. Due to the proliferation of online investment providers like Hatch, Sharesies, InvestNow, Smartshares, Kernel, Betashares, Stake etc. I’m getting more and more emails from people who are concerned about the national and international tax implications of using these platforms.
To my surprise, I’ve chalked up five years of writing this blog! And I can’t quite believe it. I thought I’d blog today about what I’ve learnt, observed and what it’s like to write a blog because there is not a single day that has gone by that I’ve not emailed or spoken with someone about what I tend to refer to with my whanau and friends as ‘blog stuff’.
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!
Well well well, the time has finally come for this long term investor to divest herself of some shares. Say what?! I claim to be a ‘buy and hold’ investor, so what gives? Have I fallen on hard times you ask, or maybe Jonny and I have retired at last? Ah, thankfully, no and unfortunately, no not yet.
This is a blog post about all the investing “What if’s”. Have you ever wondered what would have happened if you bought shares in a company when you first heard about it, but you didn’t do it? And you find yourself years later saying “oh, I NEARLY bought that stock, but I didn’t…” Now you are wondering what even happened to the company share price and what WOULD have happened to your own net worth IF you had actually purchased some?
