Personal Financial Planning Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Personal Financial Planning - Assignment Example Ruth receives index-linked occupational pension of 16,000 per year. She has 50,000 in ISAs which earns 7,000 yearly. They own a house with a net value of 350,000. They also want to leave something to Edward and William, hence, they will need to invest in a National Savings Certificate which can be encashed by the mother if both boys are still below seven years old. Since they will need a pre-income tax level of 3,000 pounds monthly, the couple needs to invest their money in a better set of investment instruments that will let them achieve this income level. At the moment, they only earn a total of 2,450 monthly from the current wealth portfolio they hold. Except for the National Savings Certificate income, the other investment returns are subject to a 20% tax rate. Ned Larken's 300,000 in a FTSE Short Index 100 share Exchange Transfer Fund (ETF) and 200,000 in a S&P 500 Exchange Transfer Fund (ETF) nets a yearly return of 11%. An ETF is a basket of securities that trades throughout the day on a particular exchange in the same way that a company share does. The ETFs are priced continually, and the price fluctuates throughout the day. The ETF pays a dividend if the dividends of the portfolio shares exceed the fund's expense. The advantages of an ETF investment consist of passive management, low expenses, trading flexibility and transparency. The aim of the ETFs is to replicate the return of their benchmark indexes. The ETFs usually hold the same securities as their indexes in an effort to match their returns. The ETFs charges a low annual expense for management and other fund expenses. It also possesses a certain trading flexibility. The ETF is transparent as the securities held in an ETF are always well-known. As shares trade throughout the day, the fund's holdings must be disclosed in order for the shares to be correctly priced. Institutional investors can take advantage of the arbitrage opportunity as well, which exists when there is the potential to profit from the differences between the ETF price and the price of the given basket of securities. This tends to help keep the fund's price close to its Net Asset Value.The first disadvantage of the FTSE 100 and S&P 500 is that it is less diversified, ow ning a large number of shares in one or two industries. Thus, the ETFs are likely to be more heavily affected by movements in the prices of these securities than funds that are diversified across a greater number of shares. Their performance will depend more on how this kind of security performs. They are less diversified than the broad stock market ETFs. For example, the five biggest companies in the FTSE 100 constitute approximately one-third of the market value of the overall index, and two of them are global oil companies. This lack of broad diversification makes the performance of the FTSE 100 and related ETFs very sensitive to the changes in the oil industry. The second disadvantage of the FTSE 100 and the S & P 500 is that the performance of sector ETFs is dependent on the timing of their purchase and sale. For instance, the price of these funds can rise rapidly when demand increases for the product or service provided by the companies. Similarly, the price can also drop sharply when there is an