On the back of World Consumer Rights Day last week, I was confronted by lots of questions about everything from returning dodgy goods to getting airline refunds.
Q I have a small, diversified portfolio and I’m a follower of Warren Buffett’s value investing strategy. I read reports recently that the cash pile at Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway rose to a record in the third quarter as he sold stocks and shifted into Treasury bills, among other assets. Should I emulate this strategy?
When UK cinemagoers began flocking to the big screen in September to watch Dumb Money, which chronicles the 2021 short squeeze on GameStop, they were met with an ad from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) that ran just before the film’s opening credits and warned against falling for the hype of speculative online investments.
The young Irish investors signing up in their droves to DIY investing apps in a bid to build wealth are buying up exchange-traded funds (ETFs), their interest piqued by the way these funds are touted as a popular and inexpensive way of tracking global investment markets.
Q My wife and I live in north Mayo, and have three children in their teens. We struggled to help our eldest child, who is 19, find accommodation when she started college in Galway last month. She was commuting for the first couple of weeks before she eventually found digs. I’m worried our other children will face the same problems when they go to college. Should we buy an apartment for them in Galway and then rent it out when they graduate? We’ve paid off our mortgage and maxed out our pension contributions. We keep hearing landlords are leaving the rental market so are worried that buying might be a poor investment. What do you think?