Financial planners and index funds

No tax difference. The other issue that you will learn with managed funds is that the managers are typically not tax aware. A lot of the return is non discounted capital gain that you will need to be paying each year.

 

Before this revelation my portfolio was 14.5% positive per year... after much number crunching and digging through tax statements for franking credits / foreign income tax offsets etc, that number has now been revised to 12.1%.

All funds were set to DRP but now I'll set some overweight ones to pay out in order to cover the tax hit on cashflow.

 

I second this post.

 

You mentioned that you're looking at a 20+ year timeframe, so I wonder if Investment Bonds might be of interest to you. Non-biased information available here: https://www.moneysmart.gov.au/investing/complex-investments/investment-and-insurance-bonds

They have some tax advantages if your Marginal Tax rate is > Company Tax rate.

There are some Investment Bond products that will allow you to purchase Vanguard ETFs. Examples:

• Austock Austock Life or
• Lifeplan Lifeplan

 

Thanks @Kat
sorry for late reply, just got back from holiday
I will look into those bonds ,
I eventually want a diversified portfolio of over 3 or 4 funds,
but so far im looking into the vanguard index fund tracking the asx 300 and
an emerging markets fund of some kind.

Iv been told the rule for bonds is the older you are the more you want, so for me, thats not much, theres certainly alot of products out there!

 

I see from the news Vanguard recently celebrated its 40th birthday, holding on behalf of its investor/clients over $3 trillion in mostly passively managed, index-style investments

 

Yes it does, assuming you own the shares it is counted as personal income regardless of whether DRP is active or income is paid out. If the portfolio carries a large portion of fully franked shares the franking credits will pay for most of the tax due.