All in Sharesies
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.
Whatever it is that you are embarking on that’s always the best place to start in my opinion. The beginning. Then just follow the path, in my case, the path to financial independence and eventually not being tied to a job to earn my income. It’s a long journey but it’s one worth starting. I’m often writing emails that cover the same points over and over again, so I thought that today I’d put that information into a blog post for all of the people wondering where to start and how to string all the bits of information you have learned about money into a cohesive order.
With our house prices continuing to climb, more and more pressure is going on first home buyers to save up the large deposit they need to buy a house. This is hardly news to you I know and this blog post is not really aimed at those of you who are poised and on the cusp of buying your first home, instead, it’s aimed at your far younger children, siblings, nieces, nephews and friends who might also want to both buy a home one day AND retire.
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.
Before I started The Happy Saver I thought the only way to learn about money was to seek out a financial advisor, the supposed experts in the field, so I did go to a couple of financial advisors. As a result of these attempts I completely gave up on letting anyone else tell me what to do with my own money and decided that no one cared more about it than I did myself so I decided to take matters into my own hands and educate myself. I did it by actively taking an interest in my/our money and reading, listening, asking and deep-diving into all things personal finance related.
I’ve long said that there are alternatives to buying rental property and today I wanted to actually give you some decent detail on this. So today I’m going to give you an idea of what investing into KiwiSaver and index funds/ETFs actually looks like a few years down the track. I find with this blog of mine that it’s helpful to share some real numbers instead of just talking hypothetically all the time.
