Withstanding the pain!

No, unit trusts must pay out all net income to unitholders at the end of the financial year.

If there was no distribution, it just means that there was no net income.

Platinum use hedging, short selling and other similar mechanisms in their funds, so they are a bit more complicated than a straight buy-and-hold type fund.

I haven't looked at that site, and since I'm young (< 40) I don't tend to pay much attention to theoretical risk profiles.

Here's a Question. If you are making regular withdrawals do you:

A) Put all your distributions into a cash manangement account and draw from that or

B) Have an equal($) value taken off each managed fund each month.

Also, what would the effect of being in a bull market versus a bear market have on these two directions?


Johny.

Hey it's
Tax time Again. What fun! The question is: Do I use a hole in the wall tax "agent" or pay more money for an Accountant?


Johny.

On my quest to discover how best to manage my distributions, I hit the local newsagent and bought some graph paper. Three and half hours working on my calculator, saw day turned to night. I plotted 5 graphs, tested the data and came up with a formula.

(Falling Index + distributions) - (Falling Index + distributions -withdrawals)

is greater than

(Falling Index) - (Falling Index - withdrawals)

I sat back, scratched myself, and Doh............. I've just discovered "compound interest".

The moral of this story is; that I know very little, and could sure use some help to learn more!

Cheers, Johny.

Depends on how complex your circumstances are.

If you don't have a lot of investments and don't have capital gains and such to work out, you can probably do it yourself or get a tax agent to do it for you.

Otherwise I suggest an accountant is worth the investment - they are someone you can talk to about planning your finances and structures and such too.

How does short selling work and what is "naked" short selling?

If a fund is Long/short, what does that mean?

What are the risks of a L/s fund over an ordinary one?

Can anybody short sell, or is it only brokers?



Thanks, Johny.

Naked short selling - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Short Selling: Introduction

After much thought, a lot of reading and help from my FP, I have changed my plan. Previously, I was drawing from my shares to live on. I have now switched a proportion to cash. While I am still withdrawing 0.5% a month, this cash reserve will last about 2 years. Hopefully the GFC will have stuck its head back into its shell, by then. The hardest thing to come to terms was; realising my capital was down, and the risk needed just to get it back to its original value. That was a hard leason to learn.



Johny.

Is there any chance you can increase your income by taking on some work from home opportunities?

I don't joining some scammy MLM scheme, I mean something like starting up your own blog or something along those lines. It might work, it might not work - but the 'startup' costs are virtually non-existant.