Investment strategies for newborn

[justakiwi]

It’s a bold move to assume you will live to 90. What would be your quality of life in the 10 or 15 years preceding? This is a very valid question as when people age, the cost of medical and care sky rockets. What if you ended up with a medical condition that would drain all your $? What if your children decided to use all their invested $ to go pay for an important operation that you required?

I prefer to call it “optimistic.” My mother is 84 and my father was 91 when he died. My grandparents lived to 89/90. So genetically, I think my chances are reasonably good. As to my quality of life - who knows. It will be what it will be at the time. I have confidence that our very good public health system will still exist, and will meet my needs at the time. My kids are unlikely to have the ability to fund any major medical costs not covered by public health, and I would have no expectation that they should do so!

I see no point in worrying myself into an early grave, stressing about the “what if’s” of old age. What will be will be. I am doing what I can now, to create additional financial security for myself. It may not be “meaningful” in your eyes, but your idea of meaningful, is vastly different to mine. All any of us can do is our best.

It makes logical sense not to tax your investment earnings during the year where you're earning a lot of income, and deferring those investment gains to be taxed during retirement time (60s to 80s) for where it's very unlikely the person would have wages or salary income. We don't have this approach in retirement planning here in NZ.

I totally disagree. I do not want to be paying tax on my KS or investments, at the other end of my life, when I have no income other than govt super. I would far rather get the tax out of the way now while I am earning. Yes, I do realise paying tax as I go impacts on my investment growth, but I’m ok with that. If and when I need to draw down on my KS/investments, I do not want to be having to draw down extra to pay the tax.

I think we have hijacked this thread enough. Best to get back to helping the original poster with his question.