Q&As: KiwiSaver providers that are offering ethical investment funds; More on ethical KiwiSaver funds; Will the KiwiSaver kick-start be around for a while?; Could the government take KiwiSaver money to repay student loans?; Oops! Too much haste; Sack adviser who recently recommended Bridgecorp.
Q&As: Unclaimed money may be yours!; Options for couple retiring with $200,000 and no house; More on the index/active share fund debate — the theory and how it works in NZ.
Q&As: Are index funds, which I recommend, inferior share fund investments, as Herald columnist Brian Gaynor claims?; A small New Zealand town has it all, a resident claims!
Q&As: Options for a newly retired couple with $200,000 and no home include part-time work, buying a home with a flat attached, an interest-only mortgage and equity release; Two Q&As on which investments are affected by the new tax law on international shares, and how it will work for investors.
Look beyond the dividends: In share fund investing, keep your eye on the prize — the over-all return, not just the fees and dividends.
An exceptionally unlucky reader. International index funds, a favourite long-term investment of mine, don’t look good to one reader. “I bought about $2000 worth of WiNZ in 2000,” he writes. “They are now 27 per cent lower (have been for quite a while). Fortunately for me it was not a huge amount. “Twenty years is a long time to wait for the fund to claw its way back up. Hopefully all the investors in index funds can wait that long!”
Q&As: A reader finds a flaw in my “avoid the rear-view mirror” argument. Or does he?; Would NZ’s tax revenue actually increase if we all invested offshore?; Inland Revenue says it can’t fix everything at once.
Why some advisers don’t recommend index funds. A while back I wrote that I still think index funds are the best way for most people to invest in shares, even though they are scheduled to lose their tax advantage next year. That has prompted an intriguing question from a reader: “If index funds outperform all other forms of sharemarket investing over a long period of time (10 years?), then why do advisers recommend other forms? Is it simply due to their commission?”
Q&As: Is there an 18-year cycle for industrial and resource shares?; Why index fund of Aussie shares has done much worse than its index; Limited submissions on tax changes not good enough; NZ shares, already favoured, shouldn’t get still more favourable tax treatment.
Q&As: Why I won’t do research on an Aussie resource index fund; Too little time to study the new tax plans for international share investments.