NZ Herald 28 October 2006
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.
The Investor 23 May 2006
Property backers underplay risk. Property backers seem to go in for hyperbole. Two examples from readers’ letters: “Shares are not and have never been as lucrative as property…. We now know why the richest people in the world and in NZ are property investors.”; “The average person can quietly work themselves into a residential property portfolio worth several million dollars with a decade or two of judicious acquisitions…. People putting a portion of their income aside to buy into share funds are left in the dust.”
The Investor 9 May 2006
Index distortion not what it seems. A reader’s point about the ongoing shares v houses debate sounds fair enough. “Your comparisons do not compare like with like,” he writes, “because you are using an index for shares, which only covers some companies, whereas for housing, you are using the average over all houses.”
The Investor 25 April 2006
Shares easier than reader thinks. It’s like a red rag to a bull. A paragraph in a reader’s email started, “Without getting into the share v property argument…” But why not get into it? After all, it’s at the very heart of most New Zealanders’ thinking about long-term investment. The reader, a mortgage broker, goes on to say, “I believe it is good for people to have a dabble in shares with spare cash but use property as their main retirement plan, even if they go hard out paying off just one rental property.
The Investor 28 March 2006
What we don’t know CAN hurt us. One of the first things journalists are taught is to make the first sentence of an article a “grabber”, something that will perhaps surprise readers and make them read on. So this column is officially starting now: Every New Zealander over 65 gets NZ Super, no matter how rich they are.
NZ Herald 25 March 2006
Q&As: Stick with share fund investments; Is it wise to depreciate if you’re selling your rental quite soon?; Tax treatment of the expenses of rebuilding leaky rental property.
The Investor 14 March 2006
The last word (hopefully) on taxation of rentals. Reader feedback keeps coming about the taxation of rental properties. So I’ve decided to go to the horse’s mouth, Inland Revenue. But first, a typical email on the subject…
NZ Herald 11 March 2006
Q&As: A landlord’s nightmare; Credit cards v eftpos; Optimism, pessismism and oil prices.
NZ Herald 4 March 2006
Q&As: Eftpos v credit cards. And bank fees; The investment outlook is gloomy, so save!; Wealth doesn’t make you happy.
NZ Herald 18 February 2006
Q&As: Couple reluctant to sell their shares in a takeover; Owning 19 shares is good, but it’s too soon to judge performance.