After leaving New Zealand, I decided to reduce my mental load and step back from managing my own investments. It was time to let those who were smarter than I, who actually did this as a job, take control. After all – surely they should know best. And to be fair, it worked out really well. I mean just look at the graph! One would say it worked out fantastically!
Still, something is missing. Something I crave. An integral part of this whole FIRE idea… Dividends! Sure, my money is growing and has grown exceptionally well since I started handing my hard-earned cash to others for safe keeping, but one needs a regular income to survive. And that is one thing I am not getting from all this, this “Managed Fund” approach. If it’s all about that passive income, then capital gains do not any bills pay.
Enter the entire reason for this post… Recently, I was introduced to an alien concept – Dividend ETFs. Or rather ETF’s that pay dividends. And what is an EFT? Well, it’s a group of shares, all rolled into a nice little package, with the idea being that you’re not just buying a stake in one company, but in many. The more you spread the risk, the less risk you have. I’m sure that’s how it goes, so I am sticking to it. And these sushi roll shares; well they also pay dividends! Passive income is the sweetest income.
But where would one get their hands on such things? Welcome, my friend, to MooMoo. Yes, that is its real name. MooMoo is for the day traders and stock makers, the investment bros and slow-going Joe’s. And they offer a wealth of dividend ETF’s! Any EFT you can dream of, they seem to offer it. And my criteria is pretty straightforward.
- Aussie EFT’s – because I don’t want the hassle of dealing with US, UK or even Hong Kong shares. Having to do taxes in both Australia and New Zealand is hard enough, thank you very much. I don’t want to then deal with more foreign income. The Aussie govt will have a field day, taxing me to Timbuctoo and back.
- Dividends – because that’s the whole point. And these EFT’s even offer monthly paying dividends! Now that’s sweet music to my ears. Once I have enough monthly payments coming in, I’ll start looking at the quarterly, bi-yearly and annual cycles.
- Dividend yield of over 6% – because it’s got to be higher than inflation and enough to make it worth it. And much like a stoner in a tree house – the higher, the better.
You may think one could spend years curating such a fine selection of ETFs to throw money at. You may even think one could spend an entire day if they were in a hurry, but fear not. MooMoo has grazed far and wide and delivers these up to you in one handy little list. All you have to do is to organise the list, and then hand over your dollarydoos.
The goal at the moment is to acquire about 30 of these monthly paying ETF’s – one for every day of the month. It won’t take that long, as I’m still selling my investments in New Zealand and shifting that money across. I know – it’s probably the worst time to do it, but the sooner I get started here, the better in the long run. I’ll be putting $500 into each of these EFTs initially, and then over a 3-to-6-month timeframe, see which one has a higher rate of return. If it pays more, I’ll invest more into it – simple really.
Concurrently, those I do invest into, will be setup to re-invest their dividends. As we’re not in desperate need of these just at the moment, it makes more sense to have the holdings grow as much as possible. After a few years, they should be pretty sizable. At least in theory.
While it’s no secret, or some code I have cracked, my thought process is that if I didn’t know about this, then others may not either. So please follow along as I revive this series, give you monthly updates and hopefully you can learn from my mistakes, my wins and even offer you own advice.
And now I must put this in for the legal reasons…
I am not a financial advisor. All advice is taken with this in mind. I do not benefit from you using the same platform I do, or by using a different one. I do not have any insider knowledge of any company listed. Everything I will talk about – from the tools to the news – will be as available to me as it is to you. Again: I am not a financial advisor and never will be.
