All in SmartShares
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?
How is my “Kernel S&P Kensho Moonshots Innovation Fund” performing? In a word. Poorly. It’s down 27% with no signs of stopping its slide. But I can’t complain; the fund manager themselves forewarned me. Now that I’ve invested in this specific fund for almost a year, I thought it an interesting exercise to see if the returns are living up to my high expectations. Hmmm, let’s just say, it’s not quite what I was hoping for.
This blog post results from a brief yet alarming conversation I had with a 15-year-old who has three years remaining at school before they planned to head off to university. In answer to my question, “how are you going to pay for it,” they quickly replied, “with student loans, because they are interest-free”. It was not my place to comment at the time (although in my head I was screaming to say something), but given I write a blog, I’ve created a space where I can give their response some thought. So, I will.
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.
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!
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!
