Below is an overview of my portfolio. I share this information so you can see what the assets are that I talk about. I have a good idea of the different portfolios I want to be part of my plan.
I plan to make a few updates per year. This should be enough so you can see where/how it is evolving.
In order to give you an idea of the portfolio, I will first show you the overall picture
| Cash | 4,59% |
| Active Funds | 34,57% |
| Other | 15,65% |
| Insurance | 33,34% |
| Index funds | 11,85% |
- Cash
This is money standing on the sideline, waiting to be invested.
- Other
It is composed out of individual stocks I own as well as some specific products to invest. The biggest part however are the personal pension funds that we can have in Belgium.
The stocks I use to discover options are also part of this.
- Active funds
A post on the why and what is under construction
| Amundi First Eagle | 10,67% |
| BGF- Global Allocation A2 | 9,99% |
| Carmignac Patrimoine A kap | 9,87% |
| DNCA evolutif B | 4,07% |
| DNCA Invest Eurose Class A | 8,24% |
| DWS CONCEPT KALDEMORGEN LC | 8,73% |
| Ethna Aktiv EA | 9,09% |
| Flossbach von Storch – Multiple Opp IIRT | 3,33% |
| Flosschbach – Multiple opportunities | 4,01% |
| Franklin global fundamental strategies | 8,56% |
| Invesco Balanced Risk allocation | 8,11% |
| M&G optimal Income | 8,03% |
| Rouvier Patrimoine | 7,29% |
This part of the portfolio is under construction. It is here that I invest each month.
having PHAU (gold) in the portfolio is an historical anomaly. I think it will stay there quite some time.
| CESL | 17,26% |
| IWDA | 71,01% |
| PHAU | 11,72% |
These are capital guaranteed and provide the basic stability of my portfolio.
The portfolio is split over 5 different companies. The reason for this is to avoid that all my money is with one provider that does a lousy job in managing my money. The downside of this diversification is that a winner only has limited impact. As I don’t know the winner upfront, I prefer to manage the worst case scenario.
By the end of 2015, the provider2 insurance will drop to a 0pct yield. Obviously, I will need to find an alternative for that. It is very likely that I reduce my insurance portfolio.
| provider | pct of assets |
| 1 | 15,2% |
| 2 | 11,1% |
| 3 | 32,62% |
| 4 | 16,51% |
| 5 | 24,58% |
amber tree leaves 
Nice summary!
Three things occurred to me:
+ What is the break up between tax efficient funds and tax inefficient funds? For example, having REIT income in a taxable investment account (post tax) is counted as Ordinary income and hence taxed at the highest level in the US. The same REIT invested in a tax-advantaged account (like an IRA or 401K or other retirement accounts) is very good because the gains are not treated as ordinary income.
+ I am not sure if Personal Capital is available for Euro funds, but if it is, please do try that out. Personal Capital goes into each mutual fund I have and breaks it up into components like us/international, large cap/small cap, alternatives, etc. This will give you an overall picture on how the money is distributed.
+ When I started designing my passive income portfolio for my taxable account, I used a method that I wrote about here: http://humblefi.com/2014/10/19/implementation-of-passive-income-streams/. You may already be doing it…if so, please disregard.
Hope that helps!
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Humblefi,
As another Belgian blogger I’ve received these type of questions numerous times myself. Sadly the things you mention (tax-advantaged or -deffered accounts, IRA, 401k, etc.) don’t apply to us.
In Belgium everyone receives a state pension, an optional pension through an employer and a personal pension fund with an investment limit of about €950 every year. That’s it!
In my book ATL would do best to get rid of the mutual funds, unless they’re specifically aimed at capital preservation (like Carmignac Patrimoine), and invest the money into index funds and fixed-income insurance products.
I’ll definitely take a look at your implementation scheme for passive income streams!
Cheers,
NMW
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Great answer NMW! Indeed, Belgium does not have something like tax shielded accounts where can put your money.
At best we can contribute 940EUR to a pension fund. That’s it.
TO answer the point on the mutual funds: They indeed act as some capital preservation fund. They have no other goal than that.
My next thoughts on the investing is to build up in parallel my index portfolio and a DGI portfolio.
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Hi,
I am also getting into index investing from the Netherlands. I notice you have IWDA in your portfolio and I am thinking about the tax consequences. IWDA is almost 57% US which means that there is considerable dividend tax leakage and currency risk, because IWDA is not euro-hedged and based in Ireland.
Why not just buy VT or something similar for the US market and accept the currency risk yourself and then for the rest of the world get an ETF exUS?
With the current tax treaties that would eliminate a part of the dividend tax leakage and one would benefit from the lower TER of VT, while still being exposed to the same stocks with the same (currency) risks.
Please correct me if I am wrong.
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Hey AVI, thx for stopping by. Most of the answer why IWDA can be found here: https://ambertreeleaves.wordpress.com/2015/05/24/how-to-create-a-simple-asset-allocation-with-trackers/
VT did not make it through the selection because of the quarterly dividend. In Belgium, this is taxed at 27pct, where as capital gains are (for now) not taxed. Also, IWDA is based in Ierland and has some dividend tax advantages as well. To me, This seems to be the best: accumulate rather than have my dividends taxed.
IWDA is the EUR unhedged variant, and this is what I want. Hedging comes at a cost. I do not want to pay that cost and I am in the investing for the long term. CCY will over time fluctuate all directions.
What would work best for you, being in the Netherlands?
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Hi,
It seems we have confused some concepts here:
– I prefer dividends instead accumulating funds, but this is personal and probably emotional. Dividends are also taxed at 25% in the Netherlands.
– What i was referring to is the dividend leakage, I believe this is the same for a dividend paying and accumulating funds in Ireland. the IRS in the US withholds 15% dividend tax when this is transferred to either ireland or the netherlands due to the tax treaty, otherwise it is 30%. The difference is, for me at least, if the ETF is based in the netherlands the ETF can get back the tax from the IRS. In ireland the ETF cannot get back the tax. Hereafter, in the netherlands, one would still have to pay the 25% tax.
– When an individual in the netherlands holds an american ETF this is same 15% tax is withheld, but one can get this back when filing taxes, so you don’t get taxed double.
– Of course, if the american-based ETF has holdings in other countries than america there is also some dividend tax leakage, due to the non-american withholding taxes.
A better explanation can be found at trackerbelegger.nl
I think for now I am going to buy irish ETFs for euro-based companies, UK-based ETFs for british companies and american based ETFs for american companies. For EM I am not sure yet. I will have to pay attention to the allocation and rebalance myself, but this does not seem like much work.
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Thx for pointing me to the website you mention. I will have to dig deeper in that.
One big difference with NL is that in Belgium we can not file those dividend taxes to get them back.
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It’s interesting to know what your limitations are in Belgium, in terms of tax advantaged funds. We just posted our allocations, and have a high percentage of our portfolio in funds we can’t touch without penalty until age 60, so in some ways we *wish* we weren’t so freely able to sock money away in tax advantaged funds! Then we’d be in a better position to retire sooner, if we’d saved that money without restriction. But, then we might be in worse shape when we’re older, and we know we’ll be happy to have a good cushion at age 60. Thanks for helping to educate us about the finance systems in different countries!
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The clear advantage of not having a lot of money in a tax sheltered account is indeed the freedom we have to use it whenever we want, no restrictions apply! But, we have to pay taxes to have that freedom.
In my portfolio, there are actually 3 Parts with restrictions: The personal pension plan (@ 950/year) a tax sheltered long term savings plan (mac 2280/year) and my employer plan. If I sum them up, it will be a nice sum that I can use as from 63/65 years old. I have not yet found a way to roll them into some sort of ladder like you can.
There is however one backdoor: The employer plan can be used to buy/renovate a house. I have one day to look into that in detail. Could be interesting.
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Can you explain the “insurance” portion? Is it like a retirement? or is it “life/term” insurance? It’s sure is a huge chunk of your assets.
5% cash is pretty good. This is separate from your emergency fund?
I like the diversification on your asset. You don’t put all of your eggs in in the same basket.
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The details are here: https://ambertreeleaves.wordpress.com/2015/05/12/my-insurance-products-make-me-sleep-at-night/
In short, it is a capital guaranteed product that pays a yearly interest that is compounded within the product. It is called an insurance product because you can activate an optional life insurance on top of it. I did not do and just use it as a proxy for bonds.
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Hi,
have you check if your active funds have outperformed the indices?
Thanks for your blog, keep up the good work!
kind regards,
valuetradeblog
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It is a fact that these funds underperfom the index. The main reason to have hem is their performance in 2008. The drawdown was way less. I consider these my second layer of foundation, after the insurance products. This combinations eliminates for me the need to have bonds. All new money now goes into our index/DGI portfolio.
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