Can I transfer my West Australian rock lobster quota units into my SMSF?
SMSFs are generally prohibited from acquiring assets from related parties (whether it is purchased by the SMSF or contributed into the fund). There are some exceptions to the above rule for acquiring related party assets, including: • Listed securities (ie shares, units or bonds listed on an approved stock exchange, such as the ASX) acquired at market value. • Business real property (ie freehold or leasehold interests in real property used exclusively in one or more businesses) acquired at market value. • An in-house asset where the acquisition would not result in the level of the fund’s in-house assets exceeding 5%. • Units in a widely held unit trust, such as a retail ,managed fund. In-house asset rules An ‘in-house asset’ is generally defined as: • An investment by an SMSF in a related company or trust (ie a fund owns shares in a related company or units in a related trust). • An asset of an SMSF that is leased to a related party. • A loan made by an SMSF to a related company or trust. An investment, lease or loan that is an in-house asset is not prohibited, but is limited to 5% of the market value of the fund’s assets. The Answer: If your pre-owned Western Australian Rock Lobster fishery quota units are not included in the exceptions then you cannot transfer them into your SMSF.
If so how to do it. Ask CIBC to open the new RRSP account, and ask CIBC to contact GWL to tell GWL to move your money from the GWL account into the CIBC account. Not to my knowledge. Often the specific location is diversified out of the fund because each major building company or real estate company attempts to diversify  risk by spreading it over multiple geographical locations. Also, buyers of these smaller portfolios will again diversify by creating a larger fund to sell to the general public. That being said, you can sometimes drill down to the specific assets held by a real estate fund. That takes a lot of work: You can also look for the issuer of the bond that the construction or real estate company issued to find out if it is region specific. Hope that helps. Yes. You incur income tax on the RSU on they date they vest. At this point you own the actual shares and you can decide to sell them or to hold them. If you hold them for the required period, and sell them later, the difference between your price at vesting and the sales price would be taxed as long term capital gains. Caution: if you decide to hold, you are still liable to pay income tax in the year they vest. You have to pay taxes on income that you haven't made yet. This is fairly dangerous: if the stock goes down, you may lose a lot of this tax payment. Technically you could recover some of this through claiming capital losses, but that this is severely restricted: the IRS makes it much easier to increase taxes through gains than reducing taxes through losses. Here are your options. While you remain an Australian citizen you cannot withdraw super just because you are residing overseas. You could renounce your citizenship - just make sure you have another one to fall back on. "How do I get my money from India to UAE account – what are the options, can I do bank transfer from my mom SB account to my international account. As you have transferred money directly to your Mothers account, getting the money back would need some paper work. Consult a CA and Bank in India, they should be able to help you. There are various limits under FEMA that would be applicable. As the amount is small a self declaration would also suffice. If yes how much do I loose in case of 20 lac due to currency conversion and commission (approximate) Not sure I understand this question, are you asking if you had converted X AED into Rs 20 lacs and now you have 20 lacs will you get back ""x"" AED or how much less? If you Buy and Sell on the same day, typically there is a spread of 3-5% depending on the currency pair. However rates would have move up or down since then and hence this cannot be answered. You would have to see what the rates are. b. can exchange with Friends in UAE and deposit the same in INR to their SB account in india. Stick to Banks or authorized remittance services [like Western Union / Money Gram / etc]. Any other method you are circumventing law. One is not authorized to convert currency outside the normal Banking Channel." "A lot of  ISA's allow both shares and funds as well as gilts, Hargreaves Lansdown  comes to mind as does the Alliance Trust. Some penalise (charging wise) securities vs UT (unit trusts)  funds but in that case just go for a low cost IT (Investment Trust)  ISA and hold individual shares as well as pooled investments in the Big IT's. I think you might have to be an ""approved investor"" to buy gilts." The $500 minimum is a policy of the ASX. As such any broker that offered a different policy would not be offering direct purchase of exchange traded shares. Note however that this policy applies only to the initial purchase. From the CMC FAQs: The ASX requires a minimum parcel of $500 to be traded if you don’t currently hold that particular security. Once you have $500 worth of an individual security, you can purchase any value of shares you like. the pots will be negligible, however this capital could be used better elsewhere if I was to withdraw them. You won't be able to withdraw the money. Notwithstanding the recent 'pension freedom' changes, money put into a pension is still inaccessible until age 55 at the very earliest, and probably later by the time you get there. You should have been Advised of this every time you enrolled into a scheme, although it may well have been buried in something you were given to read. The best you can do (and what I would recommend, although of course this post isn't Advice) is to transfer the pensions to a personal pension, for example a SIPP, wherein you will be able to control where the money is invested. Most SIPP providers will gladly help you with such transfers. Would it be beneficial to keep these smaller pots with their respected schemes The reason I suggest transferring is that leaving the funds in workplace schemes that are no longer being contributed to is a surefire way of finding yourself invested in poorly-performing neglected funds, earning money for no one beyond the scheme provider. It depends on the exact level of risk that you want, but if you want to keep your risk close to zero you're pretty much stuck with the banks (and those rates don't look to be going up any time soon). If you're willing to accept a little more risk, you can invest in some index tracking ETFs instead, with the main providers in Australia being Vanguard, Street State and Betashares.  A useful tool for for an overview of the Australian ETF market is offered by StockSpot. The index funds reduce your level of risk by investing in an index of the market, e.g. the S&P 200 tracked by STW.  If the market as a whole rises, then your investment will too, even though within that index individual companies will rise and fall. This limits your potential rate of return as well, and is still significantly more risky than leaving your cash in an Aussie bank (after all, the whole market can fall), but it might strike the right balance for you. If you're getting started, HSBC, Nabtrade, Commsec and Westpac were all offering a couple of months of free trades up to a certain value.  Once the free trades are done, you'll do better to move to another broker (you can migrate your shares to the others to take advantage of their free trades too) or to a cheaper broker like CMC Markets. "The portfolio described in that post has a blend of small slices of Vanguard sector funds, such as Vanguard Pacific Stock Index (VPACX).  And the theory is that rebalancing across them will give you a good risk-return tradeoff.  (Caveat: I haven't read the book, only the post you link to.) Similar ETFs are available from Vanguard, iShares, and State Street.  If you want to replicate the GFP exactly, pick from them.  (If you have questions about how to match specific funds in Australia, just ask another question.)  So I think you could match it fairly exactly if you wanted to. However, I think trying to exactly replicate the Gone Fishin Portfolio in Australia would not be a good move for most people, for a few reasons: Brokerage and management fees are generally higher in Australia (smaller market), so dividing your investment across ten different securities, and rebalancing, is going to be somewhat more expensive. If you have a ""middle-class-sized"" portfolio of somewhere in the tens of thousands to low millions of dollars, you're cutting it into fairly small slices to manually allocate 5% to various sectors.  To keep brokerage costs low you probably want to buy each ETF only once every one-two years or so.  You also need to keep track of the tax consequences of each of them. If you are earning and spending Australian dollars, and looking at the portfolio in Australian dollars, a lot of those assets are going to move together as the Australian dollar moves, regardless of changes in the underlying assets.  So there is effectively less diversification than you would have in the US. The post doesn't mention the GFP's approach to tax.  I expect they do consider it, but it's not going to be directly applicable to Australia. If you are more interested in implementing the general approach of GFP rather than the specific details, what I would recommend is: The Vanguard and superannuation diversified funds have a very similar internal split to the GFP with a mix of local, first-world and emerging market shares, bonds, and property trusts.  This is pretty much fire-and-forget: contribute every month and they will take care of rebalancing, spreading across asset classes, and tax calculations.  By my calculations the cost is very similar, the diversification is very similar, and it's much easier. The only thing they don't generally cover is a precious metals allocation, and if you want that, just put 5% of your money into the ASX:GOLD ETF, or something similar." In international transfers there are quite a few charges that come into picture. 1. Your Bank's charges, you mentioned its GBP 20. 2. The Fx conversion margin. So your GBP 317.90 became 500 AUD 3. The Charges of St. George's. Normally it is recovered from Beneficiary. Typically it would show up as 2 entries, one credit for AUD 500 and second a debit. Typically in the range of AUD 10 to 25.   However incaes of return, St George will deduct 2 charges from AUD 500; - The Original Charges for transfer that it would have recovered from Beneficiary. - Additional Return charges, again in the range of AUD 10 to 20. Thus the amount they would have sent back to your Bank would be less than AUD 500. Your Bank would have converted and possibly again charged you a return fee.   Since these are cross border payments there is no regulation and Bank are free to charge as they please and at time do charge excess. What you can do is disptue with the Bank on the points that; - The Beneficiary account was not closed, and its a deficiency of service. - Request for an itemized statement as to what was the amount returned by St George. I don't believe you can do that. From the IRS: Finally, certain types of property are specifically excluded from Section 1031 treatment. Section 1031 does not apply to exchanges of: I highlighted the relevant items for emphasis. You've mostly got it figured out, but there are a couple of more points to consider: You'll be permanently losing a corresponding amount of your RRSP contribution room allowance, because the re-deposit of your funds into the new RRSP would count as a new contribution, the way you're proposing to things.   For a small amount, it might not matter much, and if you're like a lot of people, you may have more accumulated RRSP room than you can reasonably use up. There may be complications if spousal contributions were made into your account during the previous three years. Your biggest concern will be what happens during the transition period. In the past when my employer made a switch there has been a lockout period where you couldn't move money between funds. Then over a weekend the money moved from investment company A to investment Company B. All the moves were mapped so that you knew which funds your money would be invested in, then staring Monday morning you could switch them if you didn't like the mapping. No money is lost because the transfer is actually done in $'s. Imagine both investment companies had the same S&P 500 fund, and that the transfer takes a week. If when the first accounts are closed the S&P500 fund has a share value of $100 your 10 hares account has a value of $1000. If the dividend/capital gains are distributed during that week; the price per share when the money arrives in the second investment company will now be $99. So that instead of 10 shares @ $100 you now will buy 10.101 shares @ $99. No money was lost. You want that lookout period to be small, and you want the number of days you are not invested in the market to be zero. The lockout limits your ability to make investment changes, if for instance the central bank raises rates. The number of days out of the market is important if during that period of time there is a big price increase, you wouldn't want to miss it. Of course the market could also go lower during that time. You have to file an application with PF Office. Normally your existing Organisation [which you just quit] helps you with the formalities. If not you would have to complete the same and submit it to the EPFO.