Now that interest rates are rising, there are many people who are wondering if they should fix or not. However, they are faced with a very difficult decision as fixed interest rates are higher than the variable rates. What we are seeing now is that rising interest rates are making many people realise that buying a house is not without risk. House prices now are indeed going down. Furthermore, many people are under significant stress due to rising interest rates.
Meanwhile, those who live off dividends seem to be doing fine. Assuming that you own enough dividend stocks or ETFs and do not have any debt, living off dividends is a stress-free alternative to leveraging into real estate. It is true that dividends can be cut (e.g. during COVID), but you should structure your lifestyle such that you are able to reduce your spending when dividend payments decrease.
The way human psychology works is that risk is not perceived until a disaster happens. For example, if you drive a car without wearing a seat belt and have never crashed, you are unlikely to truly appreciate how risky it is to drive without a seat belt on. However, if you crash your car and slam your head into the windshield and almost die, you are likely to always wear a seat belt from then on. In psychology this is called recency bias: “Recency bias is a cognitive bias that [favours] recent events over historic ones; a memory bias. Recency bias gives ‘greater importance to the most recent event.'”
As I mentioned earlier, the current economic conditions highlight just how risky real estate can be. All that is necessary to create a perfect storm that results in rising interest rates and declining house prices is inflation, and although inflation may have been rare in the last few decades, it is certainly a phenomenon that I think will be more pronounced as the world deals with emerging challenges such as overpopulation and dwindling natural resources.
The benefit of owning an ETF is that you have a more diversified portfolio. For example, if we look at the dividend payments from owning one unit of the high-dividend IHD ETF, you’ll notice that dividend payments are still high and have been slightly trending upward over time (in the chart below, the more recent dividend payments are at the left of the chart, not the right). Even though companies are struggling with inflation and rising interest rates, the benefit of a diversified ETF is that you have exposure to multiple sectors, so while during the recent downturn you would have sustain losses from sectors such as tech, you gain from other sectors such as energy. When you buy real estate, you are leveraged into one asset, which significantly increases risk.
Dividend payments from the IHD ETF have been trending upwards over time.
Of course, just as it is unfair to compare leveraged property to unleveraged ETFs during good times, it is also unfair to compare leveraged property to unleveraged ETFs during bad times. If you are able to buy a home to live in without any debt (i.e. paying cash) then this can give you safety during the recent economic crisis by shielding you not only from rising interest rates but also rising rents. Furthermore, having an investment property (as opposed to a home you live in) insulates you more from rising interest rates because the rising interest costs are offset by rental income. Another consideration is that Australian equities are naturally low in tech stocks and high in energy stocks relative to other countries e.g. in the US there is a much higher percentage of tech stocks.
Rentvesting (a mix of renting and investing) involves renting a place to live while investing. When many people talk about rentvesting, they refer to renting and investing in property at the same time. However, another way to rentvest is to rent while investing in the stock market via ETFs.
When rentvesting into the stock market, it is better to leverage into the stock market i.e. borrow money to buy ETFs. An EY study into rentvesting into the stock market found that renting while leveraging into the ASX 200 index using a margin loan with 50% LVR was approximately equivalent to buying a place to live in. However, this study found that without leverage, it is better to buy a home. More leverage provides higher returns (and higher losses as well should the market go down).
Rather that using a margin loan, I recommend using NAB Equity Builder (NAB EB) instead because the interest rate on a NAB EB loan is much lower. As at the time of writing this, the NAB EB interest rate is 3.9 percent vs the CommSec margin loan interest rate of 5.5 percent. Many people criticise margin loans because of the dreaded “margin call” but if margin loan interest rates were equal to NAB EB interest rates, I would prefer a margin loan because it provides more flexibility on when to make repayments vs NAB EB which requires monthly repayments. A margin call is not as bad as many claim it is because it provides you with more flexibility on when you make repayments whereas regular monthly repayments do not provide as much flexibility because you are forced to pay monthly. However, this added flexibility has a cost i.e. a higher interest rate.
Another major disadvantage with NAB EB is that it is not an interest only loan and you are required to make principal repayments which are quite high considering the loan term is only 10 years. Property loans are typically for 30 years, which spreads out the principal repayments. Some property loans are also interest only. Margin loans provide the most flexibility by requiring no interest or principal repayments so long as the LVR is below a certain level. The consequence of these higher NAB EB principal payments is that the level of leverage achieved via NAB EB is lower compared to what could be achieved via a property loan or a margin loan.
An example
I have created a spreadsheet that details a typical example of someone who saves $130k deposit to buy a home and compared it to someone who instead puts that $130k into the VDHG ETF using NAB EB. After ten years, the person who uses that $130k deposit to buy a home has a net worth of $760k whereas the person who uses that $130k to leverage into VDHG has a net worth of $790k. What this shows is that by renting you are not throwing money down the drain. In fact, both option yield fairly similar net worth.
Renting and investing in VDHG via NAB Equity Builder is a good alternative to buying and living in a home
Let’s imagine you’re thinking of buying a $500k apartment, which means that you’d typically need a 20% deposit of $100k. Add in the stamp duty and it is about $130k deposit you would need in order to buy this property.
The alternative option is to put this $130k into NAB EB as a 35% deposit and buy $371k worth of VDHG. You might be wondering why the deposit amount is 35% and why VDHG is purchased. Basically you cannot achieve as much leverage with NAB EB as you can buying a property. When you buy a property, you have lower interest rates (2.69% compared to 3.90%) and you can borrow for 30 years vs NAB EB which only allows you to borrow for 10 years. The 35% deposit for NAB EB results in lower leverage (65% LVR vs 80% LVR for the property owner) but has similar cashflow. In other words, the property owner is paying $32k per year made up of $26k in mortage repayments, $5k in maintenance and $500 in council rates whereas the person renting also pays $32k per year made up of $38k in monthly debt repayments, $15k rent, -$15k in VDHG dividends (after PAYG tax), and -$5k in interest deductions.
What these numbers show is that the NAB EB disadvantage of high principal repayment is offset by the advantages that rentvesting provides i.e. you recieve dividend income and the ability to deduct interest expenses. The dividend income of $15k is after PAYG tax, which is assumed to be 37%. This dividend income covers the rent.
After ten years, the property owner sees his or her property worth $500k grow in price to about $1.06 million and has debt of $300k (calculated using a CBA mortgage calculator), which results in net worth of $760k. The renter sees his $371k of VDHG grow to $813k and has zero debt (as NAB EB loans are for 10 years). The renter has a higher net worth of $813k vs $760k for the property owner, but we need to consider the capital gains tax exemption that the property owner has, which means that the ETF owner pays $22k in CGT. The $22k in CGT takes into account the 50% CGT discount. The calculations also assume that the renter realises capital gains when he or she retires and therefore faces a lower marginal tax rate and draws down $40k per year in retirement. Because ETFs are more divisible than property, $40k per year can be sold, which reduces capital gains tax by spreading it across multiple years. After capital gains tax is considered, the renter has a net worth after 10 years of $790k vs the property owner’s $760k.
It is important to note that although renting comes out on top by a small margin, this analysis does not include measures that government often implement to entice first home buyers into the market e.g. recently there was an announcement by the Victorian government to reduce stamp duty by 50% for a limited time. These various incentives are not included in the analysis because they differ from state to state and typically do not last long. If these government incentives are included, the advantage for renters is likely to narrow or even disappear, but the main point of this analysis is that renting is not “dead money” and that you are not considerably disadvantaged by renting.
VDHG vs one property is not comparing apples to apples
One criticism of this anaysis is that the renter invests in VDHG, which is a broad and diversified high growth ETF provided by Vanguard that invests mostly in global equities whereas the property buyer buys one house. The property is not diversified and the price is estimated based on the price history of one Melbourne property on the BrickX platform (BRW01) that provided the highest returns (7.8% per year). In my opinion, this is more realistic as the property owner is buying one house to live in, and so the price history of one house should be used to estimate future returns.
However, comparing diversified stocks (VDHG) to undiversified property (BRW01) is arguably flawed. If we are to use undiversified property (BRW01) for our analysis, we have higher risk and therefore higher returns whereas the high diversification of VDHG reduces the risk and returns thereby putting the rentvester at a disadvantage. To compare apples to apples, we’d need to compare undiversified property (BRW01) to undiversified stocks, but then the question is which stock? If we choose Tesla stock then this returns 62% annualised. A renter who invests in Tesla stock undiversified would have achieved much higher returns compared to the home owner simply because his capital exposed to a very high growth asset. However, even though the renter is able to select good stocks, he or she may choose a bad stock that performs poorly. It makes sense then that we use VDHG, which diversifies across almost all stocks globally. However, we need to apply the same approach to property to compare apples to apples. If we remove the advantage of stock picking for the renter then we need to remove the advantage of property picking for the home owner. A home owner may pick a great property through research of public transport, schools, etc but the home owner may pick a bad property as well. In order to compare apples to apples, we need to diversify across all property across multiple countries. However, by doing this, the returns of property start to look very bad.
PWL Capital has considered this issue and looked at global diversified property vs global diversified shares: “To estimate this cost, we need to determine expected returns for both real estate and stocks. A good place to start is the historical data. The Credit Suisse Global Investment Returns Yearbook 2018 offers us data going back to 1900. From 1900–2017 the global real return for real estate (net of inflation) was 1.3%, while stocks returned 5.2% after inflation. If we assume 1.7% inflation, then we would be thinking about a 3% nominal return for real estate, and a 6.9% nominal return for global stocks.”
In other words, global property returns only 1.3% after inflation whereas global shares return 5.3% after inflation. This shows that the returns of property are very poor compared to shares. A property owner may argue that he is able to select good property in certain suburbs or cities, but the renter who invests in stocks could also make that argument that he is able to select stocks like Tesla, Amazon, or Afterpay.
Arguably, if you pick stocks e.g. Tesla or Afterpay (or even crypto such as bitcoin or ether), you are speculating whereas if you buy a diversified index fund such as VDHG or DHHF then you are investing. However, the same logic applies to property. If you select specific properties, which you must if you are looking for a place to live in, then you are speculating and not investing.
If you buy VDHG rather than select stocks, you reduce risk. You could have purchased APT but you also may have purchased a dud like Flight Centre (FLT). By investing in VDHG, you diversify and reduce risk. With the property you live in, there is no ability to mitigate risk. There is no VDHG equivalent for the property you live in because you are only buying one property in one location (unless you’re a billionaire who has multiple properties across multiple countries). As such, you don’t know if you will select a property in a suburb that does poorly due to e.g. zoning or if the property you buy may have existing cladding, termite or mould problems.
Once we compare apples to apples and compare diversified property to diversified shares, the renter is much better off than the buyer.
If you have higher income, consider more leverage with NAB EB
NAB allows LVR on VDHG of 75%, so leveraging with 65% LVR is well below the 75% limit. However, if a renter has high income, he or she is able to increase LVR. The table below shows ETFs where approved LVR is 80% which is the highest level of leverage. The highest LVR of 80% is allowed on global ethical ETFs (ETHI and HETH) and “old-style” Australian LICs (AFI and ARG). NAB EB also allows 80% LVR on a bond ETF (RGB) which in my opinion seems pointless.
NAB Equity Builder approved ETFs and associated LVR as of 21 November 2020 (Source: NAB website)
The age pension
One argument for owning a property you live in is that it is not considered as part of your assets in the asset test for eligibility for the Australian age pension.
However, if you own a liquid asset like ETFs then it is easy to simply sell that and buy a property in your own age if it is advantageous to do so. However, capital in the property you live in has an opportunity cost that may be greater than the pension you receive. Imagine you have a $1 million house and you get $24k pension per year from the government (which is the age pension payment for a single person as of January 2021).
Now let’s imagine instead that you put that $1 million in a high dividend ETF such as IHD and get $60k per year (IHD has a dividend yield as of January 2021 of about 6%). You’d pay income tax on this but that is offset with franking credits. You’d be able to rent that house for about $30k (rental yield is about 3% in Melbourne) and have 30k per year in spending money.
In both these cases, the home owner and renter are living in a $1 million house but the home owner gets $24k per year in age pension to live on whereas the renter is getting $30k in dividend income (after rent) to live on. The renter is slightly better off in this case.
Psychological considerations
The misconception that “rent money is dead money”comes from not perceiving opportunity cost. When you rent, there is a clear cost you are paying in the form of the rental payment made to the landlord. However, when you buy a home, there is an opportunity cost that is incurred because the capital locked up in the home could have earned a higher return. This capital could have earned an income if you don’t live in the property and instead rent it out and collect rental income, but the capital could also earn dividend income if invested in stocks. Furthermore, because there is no ability to diversify the property you live in, another cost is higher risk. Opportunity cost and risk are harder to perceive compared to cold hard rental payments.
There are also many psychological arguments home owners make in favour of home ownership which I think are valid. For example, a renter needs to move if the landlord forces him or her to do so whereas a home owner does not need to move because he or she owns the property. Furthermore, a home owner can do whatever they want to the property whereas the renter may need to ask permission before they e.g. put up solar panels. That being said, renters express control by selecting the property they want. If they want a property with solar panels, they can look for a property with solar panels and rent it. Furthermore, the renter, in selecting a property to rent, controls both the property and the neighbourhood surrounding the property. For example, if a renter lives in a neighbourhood they think has low crime, over time this neighbourhood may start to have high crime. A renter is able to move out to a better neighbourhood whereas a home owner will face $30k in real estate commissions to sell the property and another $30k in stamp duty to buy another property in a better neighbourhood. Chances are they will just stay in the neighbourhood and put up with the higher crime. This lack of control that owner occupiers have over the neighbourhood in which they live is the reason why we have the NIMBY phenomenon. The flexibility provided to renters to simply move if anything goes wrong arguably provides more control over both the property they live in and the neighbourhood in which they live, which is a psychological argument in favour of renting.
Further research
Ben Felix (PWL Capital) compares renting to buying. Note this video is geared towards Canadians rather than Australians.
Note: As of 21 November 2020, new applications for NAB Equity Builder are not being accepted due to high demand. You are able to fill in an expression of interest on their website if you’d like to be notified when applications are open.
According to Wikipedia, financial independence is defined as “the status of having enough income to pay for one’s reasonable living expenses for the rest of one’s life without having to rely on formal employment.”
Financial independence does not mean you have e.g. a late-model luxury car, an expensive house, a nice watch, or even a paid-off house. If you have to work, you’re not financially independent because you are dependent on your job.
So how do you live off your investments forever? There are two main ways to achieve this: (1) live off dividends and (2) sell assets according to the “four percent rule.”
[It] is better in my opinion to simply live off your investment income (dividends, rent, interest, etc) as there is no calculation involved and no work. Everything is on autopilot. That being said when living off dividends there is a trade off between income and growth (see The Problem with HVST) and this is where I think the four percent rule can be used as a guide. If your dividend income is more than 4% of your net worth, invest more in growth assets whereas if your dividend income is less than 4% of your net worth, invest in income-producing assets.
Living off dividends is indeed simple. Suppose you have $1 million. You invest it in a high dividend ETF (e.g. IHD, SYI or VHY) and that is it. The dividends will be paid to your bank account, which you live off.
However, there are many problems with relying on dividends. Typically Australian investors have relied on blue chip Australian stocks for dividends because of favourable tax treatment (due to franking credits). The problem is that these stocks tend to be concentrated among a handful of companies and historically Australian high dividend payers have performed poorly. It makes sense that high dividend paying stocks underperform because each dollar paid out in dividends is a dollar not reinvested in the company. Because the company pays out the profit as dividends, it is not able to use that money to further grow the company. The chart below demonstrates the underperformance of high dividend paying stocks by comparing an Australian high dividend ETF (black) with the broader Australian equity market (orange). For the sake of comparison, the Nasdaq 100 is represented in blue, which is the NDQ ETF tracking an index that consists mostly of technology companies that historically pay low dividends but instead reinvest profits for growth. Major companies in NDQ are Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, etc.
High dividend ETF IHD (in black) underperforms the broader Australian stock market (represented by STW in orange) and significantly underperforms the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 index (represented by NDQ in blue). Source: Bloomberg
In contrast to the simplicity of dividends, implementing the four percent rule is more difficult, but there is considerable evidence that this approach is better, not only due to it being more tax efficient but also because the assets you invest in tend to earn more (as demonstrated in the above chart comparing the Nasdaq 100 ETF vs an Australian high dividend index ETF). Suppose you have $1 million. Rather than invest this in high dividend stocks or ETFs, you invest it in high growth stocks or ETFs that focus more on capital gains rather than dividends. You can choose NDQ, a Nasdaq 100 ETF, but if you want more diversification across countries and sectors, a good high growth ETF is VDHG, which invests in 90% global equities and 10% bonds. (Another ETF similar to VDHG but with slightly lower fees is DHHF.)
How to implement the 4% rule
When you retire, rather than rely on dividends, you simply sell off 4% of the value of the investments each year, so if you have $1 million you sell off $40k and then live off that for the first year. The expectation is that after you sell $40k then you will have $960k, but if we assume 7% annual growth then the next year your net worth will grow to $1.027 million and then you withdraw 4% of this, which is $41,088. This higher withdrawal in the next year accounts for inflation. (Note there is some uncertainty about whether, in this example of retiring with $1 million, you simply withdraw $40k each year or if you withdraw 4% of the new balance each year. I believe the latter option is safer because it explicitly accounts for inflation.)
The “four percent rule” is controversial with many arguing that it is only designed to last you thirty years. However, a simple fix to this problem is to withdraw 3% of your portfolio each year rather than 4% and, in my opinion, anything below 3% is far too conservative. Based on FireCalc.com, although the 4% rule fails with 95% probability after 30 years, the 3% rule is highly likely to last you forever. Basically if you are retiring in your 60s or 70s, you should be able to get away with the 4% rule, but if you retire any earlier, you should use the 3% rule instead.
The chart below made using FireCalc.com provides a simulation of historic stock market returns using the 4% rule and shows that over 70 years there is a good change you will not run out of money after 70 years but there is approximately a 10% probaility that you will (represented by lines going down below the horizontal red line).
Simulation showing the 4% withdrawal rate has an approximately 10% probability of failure over 70 years. Source: FireCalc.com
However, using the 3% rule, there are no probability where you lose your money (based on historic stock market performance), even under the assumption that you retire in your 30s and live for 70 years.
Simulation showing a 3% withdrawl rate being highly likely to last you forever. Source: FireCalc.com
The reason why selling off assets is more tax efficient is because capital gains are not realised until you sell the assets, which means you can sell them when you retire. By selling off assets when you retire, you do so when your income is low, which exposes more of your capital gains to low (or zero) income tax brackets. However, dividends are taxed once they are paid, which means that while you are working and accumulating assets, you’ll pay taxes on dividend income while your income is relatively high.
Capital gains are subject to Australian income tax rates once the capital gains are realised.
What will I do?
Early in my journey towards financial independence, I focused mainly on accumulating high dividend ETFs e.g. IHD and even HVST (see The Problem with HVST). When investing in purely Australian equities, I discovered that not only did my investments underperform but I also needed to pay taxes every year. To address this problem, I used a margin loan to borrow against my ETFs and diversify into international and emerging market equities more (e.g. I made some good bets on technology ETFs). Having a margin loan has its pros and cons, but one of the pros is that the interest on the margin loan is tax deductible, which helps to offset the tax paid on the dividends from Australian equities. Today Australian equities make up approximately half of my equities with the other half in international equities and a small amount of emerging market equities. Although I have a margin loan, I have started dabbling in NAB Equity Builder. NAB EB allows you to borrow at a lower rate compared to a margin loan.
While I am moving towards growth rather than dividends, I am still holding onto my high dividend ETFs. My plan is, rather than choose between dividends or growth, I will simply aim for both. There are many benefits of dividend investing e.g. franking credits. Furhermore, even though Australian high dividend stocks have underperformed in the last decade, there may be hope in the future as these companies enter the post-COVID future. If I sell Australian dividend stocks and use the proceeds to purchase global tech stocks, there is a very real risk that I will sell low and buy high, so rather than sell, I prefer to simply leave my Australian dividend stocks and ETFs. It should also be noted that there are other ETFs on the ASX that pay high dividends but do not invest in Australian equities e.g. UMAX uses options against the S&P500 to generate income; EBND invests in emerging market bonds and pays approximately 5% monthly; and TECH focuses on global tech stocks that have strong moats, and surprisingly this ETF has a dividend yield of approximately 9% paid yearly. I will discuss these non-Australian high-yield ETFs in a separate future blog post.
Property vs shares
Although it is clear that I have a bias towards shares over property, the strategy of selling down high growth ETFs exposes yet another benefit of shares vs property, which is the ability of ETFs to be sold in small chunks. If you have a $1 million property, you cannot sell half of it because no one will want half a property. You must sell it all in one go. Suppose you make $500k capital gains. Then $18200 of that will be exempt from tax while the rest of it is subject to tax, so you’ve managed to avoid tax on $18200. Now suppose you have $1 million in ETFs, which we will assume is $1 million all in VDHG. Rather then being forced to sell all of it in one go, you sell half of it in one year and the other half the next year. By doing this you realise $250k in each year. This exposes $36400 to the tax free threshold. By being able to sell smaller portions, you make the most of the tax free threshold.
Thanks to ETFs being highly divisible, I can sell off small amounts of ETFs each year thereby spreading capital gains across multiple years and exposing more capital gains to low tax brackets. Furthermore, any capital gains on assets held over one year receive a 50% CGT discount.
Another benefit of investing in ETFs rather than property is that you can sell ETFs cheaply e.g. selling one property will cost you about $20k to $30k in real estate agent commissions, but with ETFs you will pay about $20 or $30 to sell (or even $9.50 for discount online broker SelfWealth).
Other benefits of ETFs vs property is you avoid stamp duty and land tax. You also have access to franking credits.
Of course, in all fairness, there are some downsides of ETFs vs property e.g. the interest rate on NAB EB and margin loans are higher than those on mortgages, and although you can achieve leverage of about 70% using NAB EB or margin loans, you are able to achieve leverage of 80% up to 95% with property. In my opinion, even if you are able to achieve more leverage against property, it doesn’t necessarily mean you should. Leverage can magnify gains but also magnifies losses should the market go through a downturn. When leveraging into ETFs, you are able to diversify within the portfolio defensive assets such as bond ETFs (e.g. VDCO), hybrid ETFs (e.g. HBRD) or even gold mining ETFs (e.g. GDX), which reduces volatility. When you leverage into a property, you are all in one property in one place, exposed to an universified asset in one location. Many believe that property is safe compared to the volatility of the stock market, but if you invest in a highly diversified ETF, it is safer than investing in one property. The lack of volatility in property is actually the result of poor price discovery mechanisms rather than because property is inherently safer than shares. Once property is listed and exposed to the same price discovery mechanism of shares, property is highly volatile as evidenced by the price charts of residential REITs.
Disclosure: I own IHD, SYI, HVST, NDQ, UMAX, EBND, TECH, HBRD, and GDX.
This post will go over some of my thoughts that have been on my mind over the Christmas holiday. In true minimalist style, I have not purchased a Christmas tree nor have I purchased any gifts for anyone, and I will not be attending any Christmas parties. I have caught up with some friends and family over the holiday period but little else. Although it is cliche to say this, Christmas is highly commercialised these days, and personally I don’t celebrate Christmas too heavily, but many other people do, and I think my lack of engagement in Christmas activities puts a distance between me and others.
Ultimately the main issue is that often the cost of human connection and intimacy is conformity, but conformity is often costly.
Socialising and conformity
As I have discussed, an idea that has been on my mind recently is the cost of socialising. Many of us like to think that we are independent, that we do what we want regardless of what others think, but going against the grain and being very different is harder than you may think. It is natural and normal to conform. In fact, I would argue that we are hard-wired to conform. It is something that we evolved to do. There is a famous psychology experiment (the Asch conformity experiments) that shows just how powerful conformity is and how susceptible we all are.
Even though I like to think of myself as independent, I do conform to a degree, and conformity is sometimes important because it allows you to fit in to a certain culture with which others are familiar. Taking the example of Christmas, if you do not give gifts or engage in any Christmas activities, this will clearly put a barrier between you and others.
There have been moments in my life when I have been too independent, too much of a freethinker, and this has isolated me from society, which leads to misanthropic feelings, and this can have very negative mental health outcomes and can lead to depression. It is important to find the right balance between independence and conformity. As a man who enjoys independence and freedom as well as systematically minimising all forms of obligations (debt, social norms, customs, tradition, etc) this has been one of the realisations I have come to this year, that there is some value in conforming, but it needs to be controlled and I need to practice conformity in a way that still allows me to be myself and to be authentic. Most importantly, conformity needs to be practiced from a position of independence and freedom. This reminds me of the concept of exit, voice and loyalty. You can be loyal i.e. you can conform to something or someone’s values, but you need to have the freedom to be able to voice your own views or values, and if your values or views conflict too much with those with whom you are loyal, then you need the ability to exit. This is where having huge passive income and minimal obligations helps. For example, if you have a huge mortgage and three children to support, and you work a job you hate, you are trapped in this job. You are forced to conform or be loyal in this arrangement without the freedom to voice or exit. However, if you suddenly hate your job but you live off passive income, have no debt, no children, no mortgage, and no obligation or commitments, then there is nothing stopping you from voicing your displeasure or exiting entirely.
Although I do believe there is some value in conformity, I should say that everyone is different and that I do believe there are many who value nonconformity. We are typically more comfortable when we are in environments that are familiar, that fit in with our own culture. When someone is noncomformist, e.g. to take an extreme example, if someone comes to work wearing clothes that are inappropriate (e.g. wearing underwear), then this creates discomfort. Something just doesn’t seem right. However, conformity can go too far. Too much conformity creates a fakeness that many find unappealing. Although familiarity can put people at ease and build human connection, you can go too far to the point where you are fake and this also creates unease. There is value therefore in conforming in moderation but it is also important to have the courage to be yourself, to reveal your true thoughts, and to be authentic. Usually the ability to be your true self and to be authentic comes when you are financially secure and when you have few obligations.
I should also add that conformity is not just about whether you give gifts or wear certain clothes to work. Most of us conform but aren’t really aware that we conform simply because we feel that what we do is what we are supposed to do. For example, most people drive cars, get married and have children without even thinking about it because this is seen as normal. If you ride a bike, if you’re single, and if you’re childfree, this is seen as unusual, but I think society nowadays tolerates individual freedom, so even if you are a single childfree cyclist, you will be considered different but you will not necessarily be socially ostricised. In my opinion, it is very important to be aware of how much culture affects you because when individuals conform to most cultures, they usually impose upon themselves large obligations. Among most cultures there is an expectation that a person’s youth is a period of freedom. However, the expectation is that once someone has enjoyed his or her youthful freedom, they need to become adults, they need to accept adult responsibilities, and they need to “settle down.” I argue that you don’t need to ever settle down, that you don’t need to accept large obligations. You can be free forever.
The recent market turmoil
I will change topics now and talk about the markets. The markets have done very poorly over the last few months. In my opinion, we have gone through an eight-year-old bull market without a major correction, which is the longest in history, so we are due for a crash soon. This recent turmoil in stocks may be the start of the next financial crisis but there are many credible institutions (e.g. JP Morgan) predicting the next financial crisis will occur in 2020.
Donald Trump’s policies do not help, especially the tariffs between the US and China. Importers will need to pay the tariff and pass it on to customers, which creates inflation as the cost of living rises. Furthermore, corporate tax cuts and higher government spending increases money supply in the economy. All these factors increase inflation, which necessitates the central bank increasing interest rates. Higher interest rates means corporate profits fall as companies need to pay higher interest to service their debt. Furthermore, tariffs don’t just mean importing products into America become more expensive. Once tariffs are applied to Chinese goods coming into America, the Chinese will apply retailiatory tariffs, which block American exports going to China, which in turn hurt sales. Because Chinese companies cannot export to the US as much, this impacts on Australia as we export a significant amount of raw material to Chinese companies who then transform these raw materials into consumer goods to be exported to the US. History has shown that protectionism benefits no one. Both parties lose out.
In my opinion, throughout a market collapse it is important to stick with your investment plan rather than sell in a panic. In an earlier post I spoke about “age in bonds” or owning your age in government bonds e.g. if you are 30, own 30% bonds. This rule is a guide and can be modified to fit your risk appetite e.g. if you can tolerate more risk then consider putting 50% of your age in bonds (e.g. if you are 30, you own 15% bonds).
The problem most people have is they cannot predict their risk appetite. When markets are going up, they think they can tolerate high levels of risk, but once markets actually collapse and they are confronted with large and sudden declines in wealth, they realise that they cannot stomach volatility, and they panic sell and crystallise their losses. Therefore, in my opinion, if the recent bull market has lulled you into complacency and now you are feeling nervous, it is a good idea to reflect on what your true risk appetite is, and in the future you can buy more (or less) defensive safe-haven assets (such as bonds, gold or cash) in order to align the asset allocation in your investment portfolio to your actual risk appetite. Over time, as you live through more market crashes, you start to get a feel for what your actual risk appetite is. It is not something that is easy to predict. It is something you need to adjust as you experience it in real life. One of the biggest mistakes in financial planning is when the financial planner hands you a form and you fill how much risk you are willing to take. In my opinion, no one really knows how much volatility they are able to withstand until they actually expereince it in person. Until someone feels $100k of their wealth being wiped out in one day can they truly appreciate how much volatility they can stomach.
It is also important to keep in mind why you are investing. For me, investing in stocks is mostly about generating dividends, passive income, and thereby providing freedom. Therefore capital gains do not matter much because my intention is to hold these stocks or ETFs forever. The recent market correction therefore can be seen as an opportunity to load up on more high-dividend ETFs. For example, with the market collapse, the iShares S&P/ASX Dividend Opportunities ETF (ASX: IHD) currently has a dividend yield of 13% according to Bloomberg. Of course, even if you are a dividend investor, there are benefits in diversifying into bond or hybrid ETFs. Although high-dividend ETFs such as IHD currently have a yield of 13% whereas government bond ETFs such as BOND have yield of 2.3% and HBRD, a bank hybrid ETF, has yield of 3.7% it is important to remember that although dividend yields are higher than bond yields, dividends can be cut.
If the market correction we are currently experiencing gets really bad, I will not be surprised if companies start announcing dividend cuts. It happened after the GFC, and it can happen again. This is where bonds can be useful because bonds are more likely to be paid to investors. If a company faces distress, bondholders by law are paid before stockholders. Bonds or hybrids then can be useful for income investors seeking passive income because they provide not only stability in price but also stability in income. Even though yields are lower for bonds or hybrids, this reflects the lower risk, the fact that these payments are less likely to be cut in the event of economic distress.
I Live Off Dividends 