Hey Ariff, you're most welcome and I am glad that you find the article useful! All of us had to start somewhere, took me a long time to discover ETF too 🙂

Cheers
Gracie

I think I'll browse thru your other writings then.

As I'm not a qualified financial or tax advisor, I can't go into the specifics but hopefully the general understanding below would help you to navigate thru this topic.

I think the easiest way to understand Fund Domiciliation is think about us as a Citizen/Resident. As a Malaysia Citizen, I can be based 100% in Singapore due to work purposes, and if meeting certain threshold, I will be Singapore's Tax Resident eligible to pay for Singapore Taxes, but not Malaysia Taxes even as a Malaysian Citizen.

Fund Domiciliation is of similar concept - irrespective of the assets beneath the fund's holding (in your case, US Treasury Bonds), the fund can be set up at any other country - be it US, Ireland, or others, to "hold" these assets.

In your case, your dividends will get a witholding tax rate of 30% as you're an Overseas Alien in the US terminology which is why for most of us (as Malaysians), it's always better to hold US assets via Irish-domiciled funds as Malaysia do not have Tax Treaty with the United States, unlike some other countries which will have lower withholding tax rate due to tax treaties in place.

Feel free to read more about these on the Bogleheads:
- https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Non-US_investor%27s_guide_to_navigating_US_tax_traps
- https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Domicile

Cheers
Gracie

Hello Fared!

I don't discuss individual stocks or ETFs as I am not allowed to do so based on SC regulations. However, you can track my yearly/quarterly performance incl. all the individual ETFs that I own via https://ringgitfreedom.com/portfolio or https://ringgitfreedom.com/category/updates

In any case, my view for ETFs are simple: it is a long-term "Buy-and-Hold/Forget" approach for me, so there's really no point to monitor it closely unlike individual stock picks.

Hope these helps!

Cheers
Gracie

Hey Kraig

Glad this post was useful to you!

Cheers
Gracie

There's a CFA named Ben Felix on Youtube, to me I feel he outlines this quite clearly on some of his videos, "How to Invest New Cash: Dollar Cost Averaging vs. Lump Sum Investing" on his channel expresses this point of buying it on a high price.

ETFs are essentially holding a basket of stocks, so technically speaking, yes, you could possibly "overpay" for an index.

But here's the thing that makes index attractive - for most of us, we're looking at investing over a very long horizon, probably up to 20 years plus minus. And if we just ride it through (ups and downs), suddenly it didn't matter as much whether we overpay or underpay as long as we remain consistent throughout. At least that's what I'm trying to do.