The goal for most investors is to accumulate enough
wealth so your investment assets generate sufficient passive income to meet
living expenses.
If this happens, it is no longer necessary for you
to work for an income and you then have complete discretion over what you do
with your time.
Wouldn’t that be wonderful!
However, an error which many investors make is that
they invest for income when they begin their investment journey.
This is a slow and very inefficient way to achieve financial
freedom.
Using a golfing analogy, it’s akin to teeing off
with a putter – you will probably get to the green eventually however it will
take you too many shots.
Instead, a more efficient way to build wealth is to
do it in two steps.
Firstly,
you need to build your asset base.
Then, when you have a strong asset base, you can tilt your asset
allocation towards income.
It’s easy to develop a retirement strategy for someone with a net worth
of $4 million (invest it in cash at 3% p.a. will generate $120k p.a.).
It’s a lot harder to do it for someone with $400k.
The
make-up of the total return is important
The problem with investing for income initially is you lose a lot of
your return each year in tax.
If an investment pays me $10,000 in income, I’ll probably pay $4,000 in
tax and have $6,000 leftover to reinvest.
Whereas, with capital growth, you don’t pay tax until the investment is
sold so you get to reinvest the full $10,000.
The chart below demonstrates the impact of tax on two investments that
provide the same total return of 10% p.a. – option 1 has more income and option
2 has less income.
Comparison…
more growth versus less income
Your
options
Many people that consider investing in either shares or property are
unsure how to compare the two.
Assuming you adopt the right strategy, I think it’s reasonable to expect
comparable overall returns from either shares or property.
However, the difference is the amount of income.
Property will typically provide 30% of its overall return in income
(e.g. 3% income and 7% capital growth) whereas with shares, it’s likely to be
50/50.
For example, this ASX200 index fund has delivered a total
return of 8.78% p.a. over the past 5 years.
The current income yield is 4.44% p.a. meaning just over 50% of the
total return has income.
I’m not
pro-property and anti-shares
Quite the reverse.
I believe that we must diversify amongst various asset classes because
no one can predict which asset class will perform the best in the short run.
Therefore, if you spread your wealth across various asset classes, some
will win, some will lose but in the long run you’ll smooth your return and do
very well.
In
that regard, shares play an important role:
- It’s great to have shares/equities exposure inside super to
minimise the tax on the income return (or even eliminate it with
imputation credits); and
- You should consider investing in shares after you have acquired the necessary amount of property investments. It is important to do this in the right order for tax and wealth efficiency.
Shares and bonds play an important role in most investment strategies
but its nearly always important to begin with property.
If you
need to build your asset base
If you don’t have a strong enough asset base to comfortably achieve your
financial and lifestyle goals, then you need to invest in assets that provide
most of their overall return in capital growth.
These assets need to be of investment-grade quality.
Borrowing to purchase such assets is a very effective strategy as it
forces you to invest more money sooner and it's tax effective (of course do it
safely).
There are many things to consider when developing an investment strategy
and the income/capital split is only one of them so please seek personalised
advice before making any decisions.
Article Source - https://propertyupdate.com.au/
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Jason Gwerder
Tuesday, 1 June 2021
