I suppose you would have to also take out like another million in mortgage for the decorating.
Property taxes and interest are both extremely low in Taiwan. It’s probably why properties are so overvalued. Everyone is parking their wealth into real estate.
There’s like a mandatory 30 percent down payment. Count on paying around 2x rent for similar property in mortgage.
Well. I wouldn’t recommend downtown Taipei, but directly outside of Taipei things are a bit more manageable with just as attractive areas.
And instead of having let’s say $500000 US to invest with, you’d have $900000 US.
Good call. As a rule of thumb do not take investment advice from the funds custodian… conflicts of interest.
I’m not a fan of mutual funds because there’s really no reason to have something that’s actively managed with expensive fees. For me, I always reduce fees and match the market. Good years you can take out more and worse years take out less.
Invest in a way where you aren’t worrying about your investments and expending time/energy trying to beat the market. If professionals can’t consistently do it, we definitely can’t unless it’s pure luck.
Plenty of professionals and amateurs beat the market, and not just due to luck. That most professionals don’t (usually really referring to big money managers) is almost not relevant to whether you can, as they’re playing a different game than you are.
As a beginner they are doing what I need, but I’m sure there are better investment choices.
When I say professionals, I’m including more local financial advisors as well. Also talking about net after fees as well over a long period.
A bit off topic, but do you have data to show the success rate of individuals beating the market after fees (net), over a 10-30 year period?
Land. Unless you have serious plans to work hard and expand a business.
Those guys 1) aren’t necessarily even trying to beat the market - they’re largely talking basic asset allocation, often starting relatively broad market then getting more conservative as you get older, so I would guess almost by definition have lower than average returns due to changing the risk posture of investments for clients, and 2) have a ridiculously low bar for entry.
Nope… but does it matter? We know most people don’t put the work in to research and learn, so if it’s only 30%, do you just say, eh, no hope? Yea, if you wanna do little, get an broad market index fund or 3 and be done with it (although that’s not going to answer the mail for what he wants, so…). But an individual investor has a special opportunity by deploying small dollars vs someone that needs to invest billions and try to make that perform to the market (it’s basically Peter Lynch’ thoughts).
ETF
would look at VGT & SPYI
There is no mandatory 30 percent deposit. Some foreigners just posted they got loans with 20 percent deposit. Seeing you have never had a loan you can stop posting about loans. Of course you will post I don’t know again
Giving up a LOT of gains for the dividend there.
There’s 1256 tax benefits if it applies to you though.
Are you speaking American to us? If so, please say so. Many of us here—including the original poster—are not Americans.
Guy
I don’t necessarily disagree with you as long as the person learns about value investing, understands how to value individual companies, sets realistic growth targets when doing their analysts, stays in their circle of competence, and builds in a comfortable margin of safety.
If someone is coming on here and asking what to do with their money to make passive income with an inheritance, I would suggest against buying into individual companies unless they really want to dive into it and be really active to find deals, which is very difficult to do. As your alluding to, it takes time, patience, and lots of research to put yourself in a position where you can consistently outperform the market consistently for a long period of time and be ok with takings L’s a significant portion of the time.
As Buffett has discussed, it’s only takes a few buys to really make your portfolio grow, but you need to be ok with making lots of wrong choices and not selling when the stocks of great businesses drop significantly as long as the business fundamentals haven’t changed.
I don’t know what people’s tax situation is, hence:
It’s almost like I’m the only one who’s asked his goals and risk tolerance, whereas most everyone else started offering suggestions, often at odds with the answers. 
This part is helpful.
Guy
I agree with you that more info is needed, but his statement of “I want the money to be safe and earning passive money” doesn’t align with stock picking. Keep it simple, reduce risk, and keep it cheap is my motto for pretty much anyone who is in this position.
I would invest all of them: 10% aggressive investment, 90% safe investment
If you don’t have a business or zero investing experience, I wouldn’t look for something special because you may end up losing a big % of the capital if you make any mistake.
Therefore, 10% in BTC (the aggressive) and the rest in a world-exposed ETF (the safe), maybe VT:
https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/etfs/profile/vt#performance-fees
Depends on risk tolerance (and the stocks picked). 
For many (most?), blue chip dividend stocks are going to feel pretty safe. For many, even a broad market fund doesn’t feel that safe, especially at retirement age (hence reallocating to bonds,.etc for many). For some crazy folks, some high risk stocks feel safe. The “correct” answer here depends on feelings as much as investments, and frankly, there’s not really good answers to his desires (safe, good income, and good capital appreciation) - everyone would like that.