Today it’s time to pop it all on the table and share with you our current investing strategy. I use the word ‘current’ because we review our plan every 6 months so it could change in the future.
How much do we invest?
We have a recurrent auto transfer of $1000 a week from our regular bank account to our online investment broker Pearler (this transfer was set up within Pearler). Our weekly investment equates to 52k per year.
Every spare cent saved over our weekly $1000 of investing (and our regular expenses) goes towards living our best lives now before we retire early (e.g. Holiday’s, Fun and Renovating).
How often do we invest?
We have the auto investment function set up in Pearler which automatically invests our funds in our selected Exchange Traded Funds (ETF’s) once we have $4000 in our account (every 4 weeks).
With the auto investing feature from Pearler we have taken a very hands off approach to investing, and it’s been a great way for us to overcome ‘analysis paralysis’ (or overthinking investing)
How much do we pay for brokerage?
We pay $6.50 per investment (every 4 weeks).
What do we invest in?
We like to keep our portfolio very simple. We want to invest in a diverse range of assets to spread our risk, but I don’t want to have to rebalance our portfolio regularly. As a result we we selected our ETF’s with this in mind.
We invest in a pre diversified ETF with a variety of different assets underneath them (including Australian Shares, International Shares, US Shares, Bonds, and Emerging Markets to name a few).
How do we keep track of our investments?
We use Sharesight to keep track of our investments, and it’s linked to our Pearler account for easy tracking (new ETF purchases are automatically added to my Sharesight account). Sharesight also has an app on your phone which makes it really easy to track your portfolio.
As we have less than 11 holdings we are eligible for a free account. If you would like to read more information about Sharesight use the link here.
What do we do with our dividends?
We have decided that for us the best option is to be enrolled in our Dividend Reinvestment Plan offered within our ETF’s. This means all of our dividends are automatically reinvested and used to purchase more ETF’s.
If you would like to learn more about Dividend Reinvestment Plans use the link here.
If you would like to know how to turn on / or off your Dividend Reinvestment Plan read more here.
Other Questions?
If you have any other questions feel free to contact me either here by commenting or via social media.
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Disclaimer: This blog is for education and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for professional financial, tax or legal advice. Any information is general in nature and is relevant to my situation. It does not take into account your objectives, financial situation or needs. Because of that, you should consider if the information is appropriate to you and your needs, before acting on any of the information. While I do my best to provide accurate information, I accept no responsibility for any inaccuracies that may be communicated.
Frank on FIRE 
Thanks so much for the open look at your strategy! I’m curious as to how you landed on $1k per week, was that bottom up based on how much you could comfortably save or top down based on what you need to reach FI? Do you ever feel tempted to put in more than you have allocated to investments?
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Good question.
Initially we threw everything at investing (eg last year). But at the start of this year we realised we would hit fire earlier than desired (and perhaps miss out on enjoying life a bit more than we were – eg with holidays, boat, etc).
We don’t want to hit fire until 8.5 years from now so we backwards engineered it to fit the timeframe. Ultimately it meant that we will cruise into financial independence without sacrificing the things we valued.
And to answer the second part I am tempted every time we have spare money to buy more shares, however at the moment we are busy with renovating (so that’s keeping me sticking to the plan at the moment).
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