Financial Planning
Whether you decide to transfer your UK pension benefits to New Zealand or not, it can be an expensive mistake to simply ignore
On average women accumulate 25% less in their retirement savings than men. Although the gender pay gap is a factor, the main reason women leave the workforce to have children
On average women accumulate 25% less in their retirement savings than men. Although the gender pay gap is a factor, the main reason women leave the workforce to have children
Saturn financial advisers Jean Strock and Joyce Yu explore how to live a long and healthy life with behavioural change coach, Dee Hunter. Jean also talks about the cost of age care in New Zealand and why it is important to have a retirement plan that could last 30+ years.
It has been a grim year in investment markets where overcooked asset prices have rapidly deflated. No asset class has been spared. We expect equities to be volatile but bonds, which theoretically cushion us through equity sell offs, have added to the pain. Property prices are also correcting.
Many clients use their portfolios to provide a regular monthly income throughout retirement. Others prefer to take lump sum withdrawals from time to time and yes we do hope to see cruise ships berthed at Princes Wharf again soon!
Biotechnology was the red hot investment sector of 2020 as new mRNA technology was harnessed to develop Covid 19 vaccines in record time. Since peaking in February 2021 the healthcare sector and biotechnology in particular, has been ‘a dumpster fire’ according to one commentator, significantly underperforming the S&P 500 index.
It has been rough start to 2022 for financial markets following a year where many share markets such as the US reached record highs.
Up until now New Zealand Superannuation has been universally available to anyone over 65 ordinarily resident in New Zealand on the date of application, who is a NZ citizen or has residency.
By Lance Dawber-Ashley, Financial Adviser – 24 June 2021 Covid-19 has affected all of us in one way or another. Naturally, we’ve focused on how it has affected the livelihoods, health and wellbeing of ourselves and the people around us, but it has also impacted…
One of the advantages of an investment portfolio with Saturn is the ease of setting up a regular payment or withdrawing a lump sum from your portfolio.
As we emerge from the Covid winter of discontent, spring is a great time to review your financial situation with this quick six point checklist. 1) What are your financial goals? What, when, how? Do you want to be mortgage free 5 years earlier, retire,…
The new Trusts Act 2019 comes into effect on 30 January 2021 and there are important implications for most trusts including family trusts. The Act governing upward of 500,000 trusts in New Zealand replaces the Trustee Act 1956 which has been in place for more…
By Glenn Weston, AFA – 2 July 2020 How are you thinking and feeling about your financial affairs in these uncertain times? Financial resilience is your ability to adapt and survive financial hard times. Many of us will face money troubles at some point in…
The subject of fees can be a distraction when it comes to deciding whether or not to seek financial advice. No question, fees are an important consideration, but like most things in life its more about getting value for money.
By Peter Dine 23rd June 2020 Responsible investing has historically been the domain of groups or individuals with very strong ethical views governing what they will (or more likely will not) invest in. Socially Responsible Investing and Ethical Investing are sometimes terms used to describe…
Its always a good time to invest for your future. However, this needs to be qualified because the answer is a personal one.
By Steve Baker, Authorised Financial Adviser, 22 April 2020 It is a perfectly normal human emotion to feel concerned or even stressed during times of extreme share market volatility, as we have been experiencing during the last couple of months because of Covid-19. After…
An Adviser’s perspective – Glenn Weston, AFA 18 February 2020 Tap-dancers need not apply…they may look and sound the part but seldom contribute to the bottom line! When meeting new clients for the first time, I ask: “Is this a new experience for you?” because…
By Alister Pirie, AFA Based on my experience as a Financial Adviser over the past 31 years, financial advice firms usually receive strong inflows of funds leading into a market correction or crash. Many potential investors sit on the side-line watching equity markets rise during…
By Jean Strock AFA We are experiencing a classic Black Swan event in the markets, defined as an event that is unexpected, has a major impact and is difficult to predict. Certainly we never foresaw New Zealand being in a state of emergency and…
POSTED ON 9/1/2020. ARTICLE BY PETER DINE When it comes to financial advice, one of the most common questions we get asked by prospective clients is “how much will it cost”. It’s a very valid question. After all, as an impartial and fee based…
The Westpac Massey University Fin Ed Centre has released its 2019 New Zealand Retirement Expenditure Guidelines showing a continuing shortfall between NZ Superannuation and actual household expenditure. A two person household in provincial New Zealand had the smallest income gap while households in Metropolitan areas…
By Jean Strock, AFA KiwiSaver schemes have been successful in getting Kiwi’s engaged with and actively saving for their retirement. The FMA KiwiSaver Annual Report 2019 identified 2.9m people invested in KiwiSaver schemes as at March 2019 with total funds under management of $57bn,…
Most of us would like to think we make rational investment decisions, right? Well here’s a chart courtesy of Russell Investments suggesting the opposite happens in practice. The area circled on the right hand side shows a big dip in the US share market in…
We all want to live as long as possible, right? Yet many of us worry that we will outlive our nest egg, potentially scrimping and saving throughout the extra years that medical science and healthy living have made possible. Longevity risk is the adverse financial…
This article is last of a series aimed to address some of the common questions regarding investing in New Zealand residential property. I hope the information provided will be useful to readers when contemplating financial decisions. Note the information provided is not personalised financial advice…
Imagine winning lotto – something most of us do when we purchase that luckiest of tickets allowing us to drift into a pipe dream and consider what we would do if we actually did win! The extended overseas trip, no wait for the new car,…
Through our financial advice and portfolio management we help our clients to make money, but on its own money is just a ledger entry or a pile of notes and coins. It is how money enables us to live the life we want that counts….
KiwiSaver started on 1 July 2007 yet already there is a significant gap between the balances of men relative to women and this gap is growing rapidly.
by Jean Strock AFA On Friday 15 July, I attended XX The High Cost Chromosome, a forum hosted by the Retirement Policy and Research Centre at the University of Auckland Business School. The forum examined the financial and retirement issues facing women who over their…
Steve Baker, Authorised Financial Adviser, Saturn Advice The UK’s Brexit vote has wide ranging implications in a number of areas. In this article, Steve investigates what this might mean for UK Final Salary Pension Schemes. The UK Pensions Minister, Ros Altmann, has been quoted as…
Buy Low and Sell High is the holy grail of investment strategies, yet one that is notoriously difficult to get right. Few successfully predict the ‘bottom’ of the market and you risk being out of the market altogether when those early rallies occur. Rather than…
In late 2012 the US was preoccupied with an impending ‘fiscal cliff’- a combination of spending cuts and new taxes that had the potential to take $600 billion out of the US economy and push it into recession. It is possible for New Zealanders to…
By Jean Strock, AFA When we talk about retirement planning one of the issues we now face is how much longer a retirement nest egg has to last. A 65 year old man today could live on average to age 86 and a female to…