SMSF Investment StrategiesSharing Simple Strategies for Self Managed Super Funds
Changes to this blog in 2012
Happy New Year! As school recommences for 2012, I bet many parents (me included) are relieved that the holidays are finally over and we can resume our normal lives. The start of a new year is always a good time to reflect on the previous year and to make plans for the year ahead. Hence I would like to take this opportunity to share some of my reflections of 2011 and what are some of my plans are for 2012.
Looking back, last year was a transition year for me. Just as my youngest child who started secondary school was becoming more independent, I thought I would finally have more time to pursue my own interests. I tried starting a new career in financial planning but that did not quite work out. In hindsight, I am glad that door is closed as I really don’t think I could be happy working as a financial planner with sales targets. With aging parents who are becoming more dependent and needing more care and support, I also appreciate the flexibility of not being tied down to a job. When my mum had a medical emergency in March, none of my siblings with jobs could take the time off work to help look after her. In the past 12 months, I made 3 trips and spent over 3 months with them. Supporting my parents interrupted some of my own plans but I gained a lot of new insights on planning for retirement which I believe will help us plan better for our own retirement.
In the second half of last year I decided to build my own business around the things I am passionate about which are investing and building financial security. During my own journey to becoming a self-directed investor, I spent a lot of money on expensive courses which I felt over promised and under delivered. A lot of these courses were imported from the US and were not tailored to fit the local market. I wanted to provide cost effective training courses to teach practical investment skills which can work in the Australian market. Last year I developed a training course to teach the low risk income strategies that we have been using for our SMSF since 2008. The results from the pilot program have been very encouraging and this year I will be focusing on improving the course and providing more support for students. One of the things that I will be doing to support students is to start another blog which will solely focus on trading these strategies. Personally, I believe these strategies will do very well in the next few years but I realise that not everyone is equally interested and excited about these options based income strategies as I am! This “SMSF Investment Strategies” blog will focus on general SMSF strategies to support new SMSF trustees and those looking to start their own SMSF whereas the new “Low Risk Income” blog will go into a lot more detail on our income strategies to support those who are interested in generating additional income from their stock portfolios.
Kingsley and I will be reviewing our SMSF’s investment strategy over this weekend. It has been quite a while since our last review which was in September 2010. We normally do a review once a year but last year just flew by with little real economic change! I will share our thoughts in my next post. When did you last review your investment strategy? Does your investment strategy need an update for 2012?
Christina McDonald
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