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44th Birthday coming up, so suddenly hit me that i have been lounging around for 4 years! I don't think I have accomplished one project that I had planned before retiring - you know, with all this extra time 

Oh well - think my tennis is slightly better.

Good fun   

BTW lately have been topping up on SA property to a point where I can live fine on just the SA prop - from here on will take the scrip divi on oversea prop if given the option. Messed up a bit in my one year old capital gains portfolio and went way over the top with small caps - so have been trimming that back and slowly recycling funds into larger caps.

Maybe this thread should be used as a board for those who have retired reflecting on how they have grown their wealth since retiring and what they may have done differently before retiring and then after retiring to improve their wealth, but, more on a lessons learnt along the road so that other who are contemplating retirement and who have recently retired could learn from those who have been on retirement for some time. I have been on retirement for 12 years now and live comfortably on my pension and have never had to dip into my investment portfolio 

Maybe this thread should be used as a board for those who have retired reflecting on how they have grown their wealth since retiring and what they may have done differently before retiring and then after retiring to improve their wealth, but, more on a lessons learnt along the road so that other who are contemplating retirement and who have recently retired could learn from those who have been on retirement for some time. I have been on retirement for 12 years now and live comfortably on my pension and have never had to dip into my investment portfolio

For me, probably should have looked at the pro's of CGT on the taxation side.  Although very happy just using dividends - should really use it in combination with capital gains.  Also think a smart way to put a portfolio together would be 75-80% ETF's with maybe 4-5 shares to to try out perform.

I'm so jealous. I've been on leave for the last three weeks, and I'm really not looking forward to my first day back on Monday morning!

I'm also curious how your portfolio has done. Has it gone down/stayed the same/or grown over the period?

I took early retirement 30/9/2005 and took a package which paid out R 615,000 after tax, which funds I invested as an FD until I could decide how I would make this work for me. At that stage my wealth (excluding the market values of my house and car) was determine at R 1.0 mil. I then said I wanted to have by year 2020 R 5.0 mil and then plotted financial  milestones to achieve that over the period. I created an excel spreadsheet with 6 monthly performance checks
Some activities that I performed over the 12 years:-
1) Bought installment shares initially and on due date either bought or sold - this was a relatively cheap way to buy better quality shares without making all the funds available at once
2) Bought shares in some risky companies and in most made reasonable sums of monies but took a bath on shares like ACC Ross (Hartebeespoort Lifestyle property development - last and only property development company I ever invested in); Tiger Wheels (bought at 67 cents and sold out at R 16 when they had ramped up to R 34 - but then their wheel manufacture and German wheel ventures collapsed); Venter Trailers cost me lots of money, as did Aveng, Cape Empowerment, Clover, Colliers, Nando's, Wearne and Pinnacle. There were others which did very well some of which I still hold - particularly AVI, Cashbuild, Bidcorp/vest, Clicks, Satrix Indi, Vodacom and Discovery
Some lessons learnt:-
There were many companies who came to market from 2005 with glowing prospectuses - my advice don't buy on the prospectus let them go to market and list and about a year after listing buy if their performance is reasonable.
Be wary of companies that are on every radio/TV show punting their companies - rather read as to where they fall in a market, how crowded is that market and who the current leaders are, and also look at management, and whether they are on other companies boards and how well are those companies performing. I also like to find out the history of the board members and which previous companies they served on - there are sites which list background of people. To me I don't look too much at financial data as I think these numbers are often fudged, I prefer to look at management (and turnover) and how well they are doing against their competitors.
Over the last 5 years I have reduced my holdings in U/T and placed the funds directly into shares which I intend holding for 5 - 10 years, similarly I have diverted some of my FD funds to shares to avoid overshooting the tax limit - I dislike paying funds over to the tax man where he benefits but makes no contribution so I look at ways of minimizing tax (legitimately) wherever possible.
All dividends earned are retained in my broker account for the purposes of buying shares and not necessarily shares in the company that declared the dividends - again the tax man bites you with taxes for doing nothing on their part.
I read financial articles daily covering all aspects of the market and make up my mind around what is noise and what are mere ramblings of mortals.
I used to watch the NYSE opening and the LSE opening/closing but don't anymore as once the trend in movements is seen over many months they then stop being a concern to our market, sure they do have an influence but not significant until you get a disaster such as 2007/8 in the USA
I tend to question all charges levied by companies regarding account handling and contest what I consider to be ridiculous charges
When I sell shares I seldom if ever remove the funds to meet other financial commitments, as my view is once you dig into you capital it becomes very difficult to recoup that capital out of monthly income
Also once I was satisfied with my overall level of wealth I cancelled all my life policies and diverted the funds into buying more shares albeit that the amounts are small
My suggestion to would be market operators is read a lot (its your wealth you are dealing with so take it seriously) attend courses (even trading courses - for an alternate perspective), negotiate broker and U/T cost structures and if fact question every cost - they are all negotiable

In case people are curious my hobby is woodwork and I have a fully kitted out single garage with all my equipment in it next to my house (I built and have paid for a double garage on my property for the cars) so can stop at any time during the day to check the market. All in all I probably spend about 2 hours a day watching the markets and reading financial market related articles - tend to skip the political articles are its a case of same old same old - rubbish

 

Woodwork was going to be one of my hobbies - while working bought a few bits and pieces over the years - all secondhand. Have sold a few (jointer, lathe, thicknesser, bandsaw and radial arm saw) at a small profit. In fact, made more on selling them than i have made trading CFDs. 

Time to give up the trading and become a second hand dealer? 

@Mr_Dividend I guess all your taxes are already paid because of Dividend withholding tax? Do you have property REITS or still the few that pay dividends?

@gcr Are you on your 2020 target? Thanks for sharing your story.

@Mr_Dividend I guess all your taxes are already paid because of Dividend withholding tax? Do you have property REITS or still the few that pay dividends?

@gcr Are you on your 2020 target? Thanks for sharing your story.

With no other income i am trying to max out the R76K per year from REITS. This is pretty much what I live on - house is paid, bills are split with my wife and do not have medical aid.  I try take script divi's with the rest to avoid tax where I can't, it goes into my TFSA.  my portfolio is built around my dislike of paying tax - esp to such a corrupt bunch that we have at the moment. I am sure there are way better ways to structure a portfolio - but spending taxless money does bring joy to my heart. Then they hit me with VAT. 

going to slowly turn my capital gains portfolio into an etf based one. Max 80-20%. Although have made some good calls, I also have made some pretty bad ones (taste doing the most damage, EOH and Rolfes bringing up the rear..) Also have way to much local bias and really need to get some oversea exposure. But I have proved countless times that I am terrible at timing - so going to trim a few holdings monthly and purchase the ETFs:

50/50 oveseas/local

STX world or ASH 1200 still deciding 70%
STX emerging 20%
STX 4ir 10%

Then local:
80% Coreshares EQ 50
20% Ind stocks