#25: Strategic money and share incentives

This week's episode is a little like The Twilight Zone. By sheer fluke, we received three questions from two Chrises and a Christo. While the questions aren't related to each other, by the end of the episode Simon and I realise that the entire episode is about one thing: having a plan. With a new year comes new financial decisions. People are changing jobs, moving house and rethinking medical aid and retirement funds. I'm in two minds about my own portfolio. In March I bought Simon's Momentum Portfolio, but I don't love the mess of individual shares. ETF methodology makes more sense to me and I know ETFs take care of themselves. My foray into individual share investing made me realise my portfolio really needs a strategy. Currently I'm all about the equities, with a light splattering of property. Come the new financial year, I want to start balancing out my portfolio. We are launching ETF baskets soon. The baskets will offer a guide for investors looking for ETF suggestions based on their investment time horizon. Because I fancy myself a young'un, I'll be going for the aggressive portfolio. I need to up my property exposure, which I'll do within my tax free account. I also need to invest some money locally. Currently my money is mostly in x-trackers. I used to like that, but Donald Trump and Deutsche Bank and hell in a handbasket. The basket I'll be looking at has 40% exposure to the CoreShares Equally-Weighted Top 40, 40% in db x-tracker World and 20% in the CoreShares Proptrax Ten. Because I'm a smart-ass, I'll probably end up doing 40% in CoreShares' new offshore property ETF since I already have most of my portfolio in DBXWD, 40% in the equally-weighted 40 and 20% into bonds, because bonds excite me. Come to think of it, perhaps I should cash the whole thing in and spend the end of days on a boat. Kris