The personal finance author and former high school teacher Andrew Hallam is heading back to the UAE later this month as part of his mission to help expatriates invest more effectively.
During the trip he will also be talking about his latest tome, Millionaire Expat: How to Build Wealth Living Overseas, published this month, the second edition of his 2014 book The Global Expatriate’s Guide to Investing.
A former Singapore resident, the Canadian has become famous for building up a million-dollar portfolio of low-cost stock and bond market index funds on a teacher’s salary. He now blogs about his experiences and delivers talks to expat investors across the globe.
Last year saw him deliver 60 talks in the Middle East alone as well as attend The National’s Money Roundtable in February, which examined whether expensive fixed-term investment plans are still effective in today’s market. The event was prompted by numerous letters from The National’s readers concerned about being tied to the products, which are sold by financial salespeople and administered by insurance companies.
The millionaire and his wife Pele, are currently travelling by camper van in Mexico. They started their journey in Victoria, British Columbia, on October 5 and are heading to Argentina. However, the writer is breaking the trip to head to the UAE on January 26 to deliver a series of talks in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. His speaking engagements will also take him to Hong Kong and Switzerland. Millionaire Expat: How to Build Wealth Living Overseas is available from Amazon.com for US$15.15.
Why did you write a second edition?
I approached my publisher at the end of 2016, asking if they could produce a cheaper paperback edition. Many of my readers are in the UAE and I know how expensive it is to ship books there, so I wanted to make the book more affordable to order. The publisher said, ‘Why not create a second edition?’ Second editions rarely have significant alterations and I didn’t want anyone to feel that way, so I poured everything I had into updating my examples, while adding fresh content that answered questions the first edition didn’t. The result is a book that’s about a 40 per cent upgrade. It took me about 10 months to write.
What is new?
In my book’s first edition, I answered 16 commonly asked questions. In this addition, I included 30 commonly asked questions. I also spent more time discussing retirement withdrawal strategies. For example, I answer the question of what would happen if you retired right before a market crash. With academically supported evidence, I outlined how much you could afford to sell each year during your retirement, to ensure the highest odds that the money will last at least 30 to 40 years. In case you’re curious, it might be more than 5 per cent per year … but only if you’re invested in low-cost products.
Studies show that when people buy index funds, they don’t tend to speculate as much as those who buy actively managed funds. Index fund investors accept the market’s return. As such, they don’t tend to buy high and sell low because they have higher conviction that nobody can consistently predict the direction of the market. The book provides evidence suggesting two advantages:
1. Index funds have lower costs, so they outperform most actively managed funds.
2. Because index fund investors speculate less, they earn a rate of return that exceeds the difference in cost between index funds and actively managed funds. Passive index investors don’t tend to buy high and sell low to the same degree that investors in actively managed funds do.
