Simple Money
Costs Matter – How much does your fund cost?
If you’re paying Milford Funds or Fisher Funds 1.4% per year, that’s $1,400 for every $100,000 invested. Every year. For the rest of your life. That adds up quick. That’s one reason I started Simple Money. When fund fees are shown to the average consumer, suddenly it makes sense to pay $1,000, or $2,000 or … Read more
Five Types of Wealth for Kiwis
Sahil Bloom’s new book The Five Types of Wealth explores the idea that besides the commonly thought of idea of financial wealth, there are 4 other categories of wealth we should be thinking about. You could be very financially wealthy and yet be impoverished in one or more of the other categories. You see this … Read more
Compare All 398 Kiwisaver Funds
Here is an easy spreadsheet that allows you to compare all 398 Kiwisaver Funds by trailing 3 year return (after taxes and fees) and by expense ratios. Most Kiwisaver Funds are very expensive compared to the low-cost index funds I advocate for! Some of them are 50-100x as expensive, which removes hundred of thousands of … Read more
Financial Advisor for NZ DIY Investors
Do-it-yourself investors, or DIY, are a relatively new class of investor in New Zealand. While traditionally Kiwis invested in managed funds or through their financial advisors, new technology allows Kiwis to manage their money by themselves. DIY investing keeps costs low, interests aligned, and the average Kiwi DIY investor can capture more of the returns … Read more
Mary Holm’s Financial Adviser Test
Mary Holm, one of New Zealand’s best selling personal finance author and columnist, offers the following advice when selecting a financial adviser: I strongly recommend using an adviser who charges you a fee — just as a lawyer or accountant would. If, instead, the adviser is paid by commission from a provider of financial products, … Read more
Financial Advisers: No Commissions, Fee-Only, Advice-Only
Independent, fee-only, advice-only advisers are hard to find in New Zealand. Most financial advisers in New Zealand rely on commissions from products they sell. Spencer Reese Nick Carr Sonnie Bailey
LADS: Low-Cost, Automatic, Diversified, and Simple
At Simple Money, we invest like LADS. LADS is an acronym for: There are over 137,000 mutual funds globally. That is an astonishing number! How are you meant to sort through all those funds and select the best ones? The good news is, you don’t have to. We can discard 99.999% of the fund options … Read more