Who is stealing our money? Watch out !

During the past weekend End of January we have been focused on reading some new tax regulations that were kicked off by the Belgian government since the 1^st January 2017.

The first important change was the cancellation of the most stupid speculation tax on shares. You could read my key learnings from this experience in 2016 here.

So we will focus this blog post on who is stealing our money.

1. The Government

In August 2016, I wrote a blog post of the Challenge of being a Dividend investor.

As a dividend investor in Belgium, reaching financial independence is a real challenge. The main problem is that the politicians leading this country and inventing new taxes, have little or no financial knowledge.

Since 1^st January, the Belgian government is stealing another 5 % of my dividend gains. Since 2011 the dividend taxes have doubled. This discourages unfortunately a lot of people but my journey to financial independence will be a little longer “thanks” to Belgian taxation. In the US and many other countries this tax is 15 % or 20%. Belgium wants to lead here again in the TOP TAXATION COUNTRIES. Horrific how this tax doubled in 5 years time.

In addition the government increased the stock market transaction tax for each buy/sell within the stock market. This tax went from 0,15 to 0,27%.

As this regulation is not clear, I will consult a fiscal advisor in February 2017. We will keep you posted on our key learnings.

Thieving Banks

During past weekend, my mom also came with her bank notes and we noticed that several fees were subtracted
from her account. After consulting the bank, they charged for the mutual managed funds and the closure of the investment account. Incredible…well, my mom closed the account as all investments were transferred to a zero cost bank account.

Banks are the king of inventing fees. Another article in a newspaper showed that the cost difference between the highest cost bank account from a large commercial bank and a smaller bank was 150 Euro per year.

Today there are a ton of online banks killing fees and giving you easy access to your money. We get paid by the bank that we use…you don’t believe me? For every transaction that we do, we get 0,05 Eurocent. Send us an email at [email protected] and we send you the name.

Interest Rates is another way where banks screw people. Savings Account – 0.05% in the USA, 0,11 % in Belgium my GOD! They borrow money at negative interest rates at the ECB. You can double your money in about 1,440 years while the bank loans it out for 100X that amount (at least). Please get rid of your brick and mortar savings/emergency accounts and move them to an online bank with a rate of 1% or more.

We wrote recently another blog post about Savings accounts.

Key Learnings

• Don’t get discouraged by higher taxes but continue to execute consistently. We will consult fiscal advisor to know more details about all new tax regulations. Stay tuned !
• Technology is disrupting the old banks fee structure, but people are not adapting fast enough and continue to get fooled. Don’t be one of them.
• Watch out who wants to steal your money and keep an eye on little fees or hidden costs.