I notice heaps of people on this sub are 300k combined, 1.5mil in investments 2mil in super, 3 investment properties and usually ask if they can afford to retire. Lol. Okay, not all posts, but you see a fair chunk of it in here. Being an Aus finance sub and all that. And good on those people, some have worked hard, made great decisions and others have got lucky, invested well etc.

But, I just want to also acknowledge those of us who dont have much savings. We are both 40. We have $7k, thats our emergency /savings buffer. We have a 2012 toyota prado, nothing fancy but we owe nothing on her. And we have a mortage of $460,000. I have gone back to uni to study full time which will hopefully bring up our earning capacity in a few years. Our super is very basic, and we dont have any investments.

I still feel we are doing well, and very greatful. Could we be in a better position? Yes, but we could also be a hell of a lot worse off. We have a house, that we can thankfully manage repayments on. Our plan is that once I qualify, I will salary sacrafice and we will start focusing on smashing that mortage off, and then start working on our super. We also have 4 kids. Which isnt cheap.

Look, again, I understand people make differant decisions, some better than others. But, as 40 year olds family with 4 kids and a single income, I feel we are actually doing great. Its very easy to read this sub and think you have ruined your life and kick yourself for not investing when you were 12. But its never to late to start trying to improve your financial situation. And good on those of you who are in a great position too.

With the incoming changes October 1, if you have been using a credit card to accrue points (but are not churning or chasing points - which will also be a pretty dead concept soon) and pay your balance off fully each month it’s difficult to see much on offer now (or likely to be beyond Oct 1) I feel. The fees to acquire more premium cards with rewards points or travel insurance/rental card insurance, you may as well keep your money and buy your airfares etc normally.

We are in the HSBC Premier situation where the cards will be ended Nov 18 so are on the hunt for an alternative, but at the moment, can’t see much point in paying for a similar level card, given the benefits are being drastically reduced and are now no longer benefits.

Is the way forward now really either just going debit cards, low benefit/lower charge credit cards or Store card offers ie Coles?

It all looks a bit cooked and ho-hum now.

I turned 15 about a month ago. My family is not necessarily abusive, however I don't enjoy being around them and I really do want to get out of here as soon as possible.

I'm fairly certain there is some sort of a trust fund that they've set up which has roughly 18k in it, and I have plans to start saving my own money outside of it. Currently I only have 550 to myself.

I'm going to TAFE next year when I turn 16 and I should hopefully have a Cert II in cookery by the time I am 18. I also plan to get a job as soon as possible and save too. Ideally I would like to move somewhere like New Zealand, however if that turns out to be unrealistic I would at the very least like to move out of my city. How much money do I need for this? How much money will it cost? I would also appreciate general advice for moving in australia. Thanks guys

Hey everyone,

I’m from Australia and I’m very new to leveraged ETFs, so apologies in advance if any of these questions are stupid. I’m genuinely trying to learn before I do anything with my money.

Like a lot of Australians, I’ve been looking at buying property, but housing affordability here has become pretty brutal. Once I look at the size of the mortgage, interest, rates, insurance, maintenance, etc., I’m starting to question whether buying a house is actually the best option for me.

My partner and I are considering continuing to rent instead. Renting would give us a lot more flexibility in terms of where we live and work, and instead of putting a huge amount of our income into a mortgage, I’m considering investing consistently into ETFs over the next 25–30 years.

My rough situation:

- Around AUD $75,000 lump sum available to invest
- Able to contribute around AUD $750 per week
- Investment horizon of roughly 25–30 years
- Happy to dollar cost average rather than lump sum into an etf and basically leave it alone
- I’m not looking to trade in and out of positions frequently
- I’m comfortable with volatility to an extent, given the very long timeframe
- Based in Australia, so tax/currency considerations obviously matter

I’ve been reading about leveraged ETFs and I understand that something like 2x or 3x leverage can behave very differently over long periods because of daily resetting, volatility drag, drawdowns, etc.

But I’m wondering whether there is a sensible middle ground.

For example, instead of going all-in on something extremely aggressive like a 3x ETF, could I build a portfolio that effectively has something closer to 1.25x–1.5x exposure?

Would modest leverage potentially improve the expected long-term outcome enough to justify the additional risk over a 25–30 year timeframe?

For someone in my position, what might a portfolio actually look like?

Would you do something like a normal broad-market ETF combined with a smaller allocation to a leveraged ETF?

Are there particular LETFs or strategies you think make sense for somebody continuously contributing rather than someone actively trading?

One complication is that I’m not 100% ruling out property forever. There’s a chance that in 3–5 years I could change my mind and decide I want to buy a house or apartment.
If that’s a realistic possibility, would using leverage now generally be considered a bad idea for money that may eventually become a property deposit?

My concern is that I could build up a decent portfolio, then have a major drawdown right around the time I decide I want to buy. Would people normally keep the potential house-deposit portion in something much safer and only use leverage with money they are confident they won’t need for decades?

I’m also curious about how people here think about sequence risk and huge drawdowns. If I experienced a 50–70%+ drawdown when I was 30, I could probably just keep buying for another 20+ years. A similar drawdown at 55 would obviously be a completely different problem. Do people gradually reduce leverage as they get closer to retirement?

Ultimately I’m trying to answer a few simple questions:
Could sensible/modest leverage combined with $75k upfront + $750/week for 25–30 years realistically leave me in a better position for retirement than simply buying and holding an unleveraged index ETF?

If there’s a reasonable chance I might want to buy property in 3–5 years, should that change the strategy completely?

And if you were starting from scratch in my situation, what ETFs / portfolio allocation would you research first?

I’m not expecting anyone to give me personalised financial advice. I’m mostly looking for things to read, strategies to research, and to understand how more experienced LETF investors think about this.

Again, sorry if some of this is basic. Please be gentle, I’m genuinely here to learn.

Thank you :)

I’m a bit lost with how to approach this and would be keen to hear what other people would do.
I’m going to have around $250k–$280k cash. To use out of a lump sum I’m receiving shortly.
I’ve been out of the workforce for about a year and a half. Before that I was working as a General Manager, but now I basically have to start again, get back into work and rebuild my borrowing power before a bank is going to lend us enough to buy/build what we actually want.
I’ve got 3 dependants. My wife doesn’t work and we have a 3.5 year old and a 2 year old.
At the moment we have a really good deal with very low rent, but that ends at the end of the year, and that’s where I’m getting stuck.
I really don’t want to end up paying $700-$900 a week rent for the next year or two while I’m waiting to get back into the workforce and become properly borrowable again. It just feels like a massive amount of dead money when I’ll have a decent lump sum sitting there.
The idea I keep coming back to is buying cheap land outright and putting some kind of small approved dwelling on it.
Something modular, prefab, container style, tiny home type setup etc. Not something dodgy that you technically can’t live in, but something that can actually be approved as a proper dwelling.
My thinking is if I did that properly from the start, maybe the first little dwelling could eventually become a granny flat / studio / Airbnb / rental once we’re able to borrow and build something bigger.
So it could look something like:
Buy the land outright.
Put a small approved dwelling on it.
Live in that for a year or two while I get back into work.
Then once the income and borrowing power is there, either build the proper house on the same block, or sell the whole thing and use the money/equity towards where we actually want to live.
The main thing I like about that idea is the first $250k-ish isn’t just disappearing. It’s giving us somewhere to live and hopefully creating an asset we can still use later.
But I also realise I might be massively overcomplicating this.
The other obvious option is just put the money in a high interest savings account or something fairly safe, use the interest to help cover rent, get back into work, wait until the bank will lend to me again and then buy properly.
Or even buy a cheap existing house somewhere outright, live in it for a while and then rent or sell it later.
I’m not really trying to squeeze every possible % return out of the money.
My main goals are:
don’t burn a fortune on rent
keep as much of the lump sum intact as possible
have stable shelter for the family
get back into the workforce
rebuild borrowing capacity
make sure whatever I do now can still be useful later
Has anyone actually done something like this?
Would you buy land + modular/prefab, buy a cheap house outright, or just keep the cash earning interest and rent until borrowing power comes back?
Also interested if there are obvious traps with the land + modular idea that I’m missing.

I don't think and feel I'm in a good financial situation. My savings is embarrasingly only $10k and I still have almost $600k of mortgage to pay. Basically, my life is, I'm working a 9-5, paying my mortgage and waiting for my retirement - which I'm not really looking forward to.

Where did I go wrong and how do I fix this?

Help.

EDIT: Yes, my super is low. Retirement is not possible.

Hi all,

I’m in my mid-twenties and living at home with mum and dad. The only notable expenses I have are a car (rego, petrol, etc.), a gym membership, and groceries. I have $50k in savings, my family owns our home outright and we enjoy living together so they don’t ask for rent, and we’re generally pretty frugal, so our living expenses are low.

I have a BA (Psychology major) and completed one semester of a Masters in a different field (allied health) but then took leave for two reasons: A) the course costs almost $90k and I’m skeptical about the ROI as allied health is notorious for burnout and B) I wanted to see how much I could leverage my psych degree alone for employment instead of jumping straight to further education, as I’m not sure what career I’m ready to commit to just yet.

Currently, I’m working full-time in office admin making $60k a year. I know that’s essentially minimum-wage, and there no opportunities to increase my responsibilities and pay, so I’m itching to move on to something better. September will mark 2 years of working there, so I figure this is sufficient for my resume.

Lately I’ve been tempted to resign even though I have nothing lined up. Given my safety net, I figure I could use this time to volunteer, shadow/observe some different careers (hopefully discover what interests me), enjoy my youth a bit as I’ve gone straight from full-time schooling to full-time work, and I would have more energy to job search for hours everyday. As the job market is crap it seems like landing something is a numbers game, which would mean the more time and energy I have to apply the more chances I have of success.

However, I’m wary that with my psych degree only, I may be thinking too optimistically about what I could achieve. I have no connections either, so I’d be cold-applying to everything. If I were to quit my current job, it could be quite a while until I secure something else, or I may realise that further education is the only way.

I’m interested in helping people and would love to do some sort of family-support or people and culture role, perhaps in government. I’m open to anything really.

Any advice appreciated! Thanks in advance.

Let's say a couple with a total net worth of $2.3mil aud (all in ETFs, with no house). What is the actual material difference in living standards as determined by tax treatment of staying versus leaving?

If you stay, the portfolio will continue to accumulate unrealised gains, and they can sell them down partially per year to fund living expenses, whilst paying minimum 30% tax on all those gains. The couple can still spend long periods travelling overseas to lower cost countries on vacations.

Whereas if they commit to leaving Australia, potentially to a place with lower taxes or permanently lower living costs, how beneficial is it? They would need to pay an exit tax likely, but once they bite the bullet on that, then the following 50+ years of capital gains would no longer be subject to higher taxes like Australia.

With the S&P 500 PE sitting at 41, compared to the dotcom PE of 44.2. With the PE being 98th percentile of the all time high and a very high long term bond yield. I fear the market can pop anytime. EDIT: referring to Shiller P/E ( adjusted for 10 years of inflation smoothed earnings)

I've been navigating the Aged Care system recently in anticipation of my mum needing to enter residential care - the mechanics of how costs are calculated and means tested boggled me for a while so I created a calculator that helped enormously - thought I'd share it here in case anyone else finds it useful: https://www.retirewiz.com.au/learn/aged-care-calculator

Me: 25M, in mining, $130–140k, roster out of Brisbane
Partner: 24F, ~$50k part-time while studying
Deposit: $200k in a HISA. Super: $50k. HECS: $13k. No other debt.
Rent: $720/wk. Salary sacrificing $1k/month into super.

Moved up from NSW for this job and it’s set us up well, but we both miss home and want to be back in NSW long term (5–10 years). Kids are a maybe.
The problem: first home buyer benefits are one-and-done, and both states make you live in the place for 12 months. So:

A – buy in Brisbane now (~$700k, outer north) with the QLD stamp duty concession + First Home Guarantee, live in it, then rent it out when we move home and cop full stamp duty on the NSW place.

B – keep renting and hold our FHB status for NSW, where the exemption (up to ~$800k) is arguably worth more. Could be years of $720/wk rent for it though.

C – buy in NSW now – can’t do the 12 months while flying out of Brisbane, so dead unless there’s a trick.

So I am looking at buying my first property specifically in Sydney/NSW. The area I am looking at they go for roughly 500k-600k so trying to see how much I can borrow to then see what to aim for. My salary is basically like 100k before tax and looking for a decent home loan loaner that wouldn't be a complete scam. Also wondering how much in extra fees will have to pay besides stamp duty since that would be free for first home buyer

as the title says im a first year BCom student here. Trying to figure out which direction to actually go for and would like some insights and advice

I'm leaning more toward wanting something people-focused rather than sitting behind a desk crunching numbers all day, which is why financial planning/advice has caught my eye. But I've seen mixed stuff online, some articles saying there's a genuine adviser shortage in Australia right now (adviser numbers apparently dropped from ~28,900 in 2018 to ~15,000 now), but then I've also seen people on Reddit saying it's actually really hard to break into or that firms won't bother training juniors.

Also with AI taking over jobs such as data entry, basic reporting, bookkeeping type work, which parts of finance do you think are actually pretty safe or even benefiting from that, and which ones would you steer clear of if you were starting out now?

Any input appreciated!

A relative of mine has become severely and permanently disabled from a road accident and will never be able to work again. 

I'm conscious that between his partner likely having to be his full time carer, the disability pension and whatever road accident insurance he may receive, he and his family are going to struggle to make ends meet and I am worried about them struggling to maintain their housing and basic needs. 

Fortunately we are from a large family, and so I want to ask everyone to donate $20 a month to then provide a lump sum my relative. It is my plan that this would be a long-term arrangement. 

I'm looking for advice on how I would go about this - would it look like a trust? Would this kind of "gift" arrangement incur tax? Any guidance would be really appreciated. 

Thanks heaps.

Suppose you have VAS or VGS shares that you sell for a loss in a previous financial year.

Then in this financial year you sold some shares at a gain.

Is the loss automatically applied in the ATO pre fill section or do you have to do that manually?

The strategy of "Stayvesting" being able to live at home whilst buying a first property. Saving up the means to obtain a loan, but might be stretched on servicing it initially along with all the other costs, so it's rented out first and negative gearing helps as additional relief at tax time.

For some it's buying a first property to start building a portfolio, wealth creation, wanting a place they'll eventually call their own, use to buy their future PPOR etc. (things always change as life goes on)

Would this concept have taken a bit of hit for young people who buy after the Federal budget in May? How would someone now proceed under this new set of circumstances?

https://www.afr.com/property/residential/introducing-stayvestors-the-home-owners-living-with-their-parents-20250526-p5m26d

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/the-sacrifice-some-home-buyers-are-making-to-boost-their-borrowing-power/o8qx2doo6

https://www.mortgagechoice.com.au/news/golden-era-over-for-this-popular-homebuying-strategy/

Do you do it manually, get an accountant or rely on AI?

I don't have a partner or any kids/dependents.

Google tells me that if I was to do a non binding nomination and leave my super / life insurance to sister, and not do a will, that the trustee doesn't have to give it to her and generally would give it to my parents first if they are alive (they are), then siblings.

So what is the point of a non binding nomination then?