All in Sharesight
I originally wrote this blog post back in December 2018 and I’ve decided it was time to make a few updates to it so that all those people reading the book for the first time and those who are following along with the Barefoot Investor principles have a good New Zealand resource to come to. If you have read my original post, while it’s still relevant, this one is quite different because it takes into account different providers of services, so I encourage you to read this one too!
With so many new investment platforms coming on stream in the last couple of years, it has never been easier to buy a stake in a company via either an index fund or by buying individual shares. It is awesome how accessible investing has become. But in this effort to uncomplicate becoming an investor a lot of these newer investment platforms have inadvertently put investing through the complicator when it comes to tax time, because many of you are unsure about how to handle investments in regards to tax. So this blog post is going to focus on how I go about things at tax time.
We all discover some tips, tricks and shortcuts in life that are real time savers, or they just help us understand our place in the world a bit better, but it takes someone to tell us about them in the first place. I consider the Rule of 72 and Sharesight as two useful personal finance hacks, which of course I’m happy to share.
From time to time I get emails along the lines of: Oh crikey, I think I should sell! Due to the ease with which we can now invest there are many people who are investing for the first time in their lives. They are learning how to buy, what to buy, what they like, what they don’t like. It used to be hard to invest, but that’s all changed now with the likes of SHARESIES and HATCH, the signup process is so rapid that you are signed up and have started investing before you can really comprehend what you are doing.
I had a nice surprise on the 16th of October. I logged onto PocketSmith and saw that my bank account had an additional $684 in there. When people talk about “passive income” this is what it actually looks like. Money, deposited in my account, without me having to actually do anything except investing in a company and trusting that they will work hard on my behalf.
Sharesies has lowered the barriers to entry for those wanting to enter the share market and they set about serving a previously underserved demographic. Sharesies has helped people see that becoming a share investor is another viable way to grow your wealth in New Zealand. They are now giving you the chance to buy shares in individual companies and spend as little or as much as you like.
Since January 2016 I’ve been drip feeding money into the SmartShares NZ Top 50 fund (FNZ) on a monthly basis. I thought it might be interesting for you to actually see what someone else’s ACTUAL investment looks like because chances are that no one else is going to show you their account balance ;-)
The Barefoot Investor by Australian Scott Pape is an excellent book and it has been instrumental in changing the financial direction of not just Australians but also of Kiwis. Many people have asked me to work out what the Kiwi equivalents are of the providers he recommends. I’m not saying this is a conclusive list, but I’ve given it my best shot.
One of my subscribers sent me an email telling me that I really should look into Sharesight because it is an excellent tool for gauging how my SmartShares are tracking. What? Is my excel spreadsheet not good enough?
