Aussie FIRE | Financial Independence Retire Early

Is the Aussie share market still worth it? Should a new investor wait for the next crash? And how much tech exposure is too much?

Dave and Hayden open the listener mailbag and tackle three questions that all circle the same problem: it's very easy to make long-term decisions based on what has worked lately.

In this episode we'll discuss:

💸 Whether broad Australian shares still make sense for long-term income, especially after a weaker dividend period had one listener questioning their strategy

💸 Why a high-yield Australian share ETF has beaten the broader Aussie market over the past five and ten years — and why that doesn't mean it will keep doing so

💸 Recency bias in action: the temptation to look at the last decade's winner and assume you've found the best investment for the next decade too

💸 Why comparing cash with shares over a single year doesn't tell you much, especially when shares have both an income and a growth component

💸 The hidden risks inside REITs: leverage, management decisions and concentration in areas like offices or retail can make a high yield less simple than it first appears

💸 Why "normal" share market returns can suddenly look disappointing after a decade of extraordinary US tech performance

💸 A question from an 18-year-old worried about an approaching market crash — and Dave's argument that a bad market early in your investing journey can actually help long-term accumulators

💸 Why nobody knows when the next crash is coming, and why spending years waiting for one can sometimes hurt more than the crash itself

💸 Hayden's way of thinking about US market risk: look past the headlines and consider what the biggest companies actually own, earn and do

💸 Why starting slowly can make sense if you're nervous, rather than waiting on the sidelines for the "perfect" entry point

💸 A listener planning to invest $1,000 a fortnight for 40 years, with 70% in a US index and 30% in a concentrated mega-cap tech ETF

💸 The concentration problem hiding inside that portfolio: many of those same giant tech companies already make up a large part of the broader US index

💸 Why doubling down on a theme can work brilliantly — but also leaves you more exposed if that part of the market goes through a long stretch of poor returns

💸 The trade-off at the heart of diversification: you might miss some spectacular winners, but you also reduce the chance of landing near the worst possible outcome

The thread through all of it: nobody knows which market, sector or strategy will lead over the next decade. Recent winners can keep winning, or the whole picture can change. Diversification won't make your portfolio the most exciting one in the room, but it can make long-term investing much easier to stick with.

Questions, disagreements or your own scenario: hello@aussiefirepod.com or reach out on socials at Strong Money Australia and Pearler.

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Pearler
Strong Money Australia
Original Aussie FIRE e-book

Dave's books on Amazon and Spotify

Disclaimer:
Any advice is general and does not consider your financial situation needs, or objectives, so consider whether it's appropriate for you. You should also consider seeking professional advice before making any financial decision.
Pearler is an Authorised Representative #1281540 of Sanlam Private Wealth Pty Ltd AFSL #337927. Read the FSG available from https://pearler.com/financial-services-guide
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There are plenty of ways to chase higher investment returns. The problem is that most of them also come with more risk, more work, or both.

Dave and Hayden sort the sensible tweaks from the bigger bets, looking at ways investors might improve their long-term results without putting their whole FIRE plan on the line.

In this episode we'll discuss:

💸 Why quitting stock picking could actually improve your returns, and Hayden's two near-misses with Boeing and Qantas

💸 The brutal maths of individual stocks: a small number of huge winners drive much of the market's long-term return, which makes consistently picking them incredibly hard

💸 Why fees matter more as your portfolio grows, from expensive funds and advisers to the recurring costs hiding in your everyday budget

💸 The simple super tweak that could have an enormous impact over 40 years: matching your investment option to your time horizon and risk tolerance

💸 Debt recycling as an optimisation strategy: using money you were already planning to invest while gradually turning home-loan debt into deductible investment debt

💸 Tax efficiency beyond debt recycling, including asset ownership, income versus growth, super, and why your marginal tax rate can change the return you actually keep

💸 Why Dave and Hayden are comfortable holding relatively small cash buffers, and the trade-off between emergency cash and keeping more money invested

💸 The next level of risk: borrowing to invest, geared ETFs, and the questions to ask before adding leverage to your portfolio

💸 Hayden's argument for looking for a discount rather than simply asking what will grow fastest, plus Dave's case for paying attention to mean reversion in unloved markets

💸 Why thematic investing sits somewhere between index investing and stock picking, and why a convincing story about AI, healthcare or any other theme isn't the same thing as a guaranteed return

💸 The case for looking beyond traditional investments, from commercial property and private businesses to earning a profit share or commission by taking more responsibility at work

💸 Hayden's take on outsized returns: there are usually two paths — more effort or more speculation — and owning part of a business can give you more influence over the outcome than simply parking money in an asset

The thread through all of it: there are ways to squeeze more from your long-term plan, but extra return rarely comes free. Sometimes the opportunity is cutting costs or improving tax efficiency. Other times it means taking on more risk, effort or uncertainty. The important part is knowing which one you're accepting — and making sure the potential reward is worth it for you.

Questions, disagreements or your own scenario: hello@aussiefirepod.com or reach out on socials at Strong Money Australia and Pearler.

Follow us on Instagram
Watch on Youtube
Ask a Question
FI Case Study Request Form
Pearler
Strong Money Australia
Original Aussie FIRE e-book

Dave's books on Amazon and Spotify

Disclaimer:
Any advice is general and does not consider your financial situation needs, or objectives, so consider whether it's appropriate for you. You should also consider seeking professional advice before making any financial decision.
Pearler is an Authorised Representative #1281540 of Sanlam Private Wealth Pty Ltd AFSL #337927. Read the FSG available from https://pearler.com/financial-services-guide
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A few years ago mortgages were under 2% and cash earned you nothing. Now rates sit around 6% and every option looks different: savings accounts are suddenly respectable, offsets feel like a guaranteed win, and borrowing to invest looks scarier than it maybe is.

Dave and Hayden work through how a high-rate environment reshuffles the deck, and the mental shortcuts that lead people astray in both directions.

In this episode we'll discuss:
💸 Savings accounts are back, but interest is taxed at your marginal rate, and plenty of high earners forget that 5% is really more like 3%

💸 A quick test for whether you're carrying too much debt: how nervous do you get before RBA meetings?

💸 Dave's peak-debt confession: millions owed in his twenties, and why a 2% rate rise would have broken the strategy

💸 The offset trap: why "a guaranteed 6% return" isn't permanent (it moves with rates), and why "6% tax-free equals 10% invested" is the wrong comparison. Compare after-tax returns to after-tax returns

💸 Waiting for rate cuts before investing: why asset prices reprice on the way down, and if everyone has the same plan, you need to be early for it to work

💸 Dave's counterintuitive maths on borrowing to invest: how borrowing at 8% into a low-yield growth ETF can still come out ahead after the tax deduction

💸 Why people happily suspend the maths for property ($923 a week in interest on an $800k Sydney apartment) but won't extend the same long-term logic to shares

💸 Hayden's crusade: housing's advantages are mostly structural (CGT exemptions, pension treatment, cheap secured lending), and why he wants mortgage-rate loans against boring index ETFs to exist

💸 A cracking listener tip from Jared: pay a lump sum into the loan and ask the bank to recalculate your repayments. Unlike an offset, it actually improves your monthly cash flow

💸 The cherry-picked chart problem: the friend who "proved" property beats shares using 1998 to 2018, and why you should go find the raw data

The thread through all of it: know what a decision actually costs you over the long term before you anchor to big theoretical numbers.

Questions, disagreements or your own scenario: hello@aussiefirepod.com or reach out on socials at Strong Money Australia and Pearler.

Follow us on Instagram
Watch on Youtube
Ask a Question
FI Case Study Request Form
Pearler
Strong Money Australia
Original Aussie FIRE e-book

Dave's books on Amazon and Spotify

Disclaimer:
Any advice is general and does not consider your financial situation needs, or objectives, so consider whether it's appropriate for you. You should also consider seeking professional advice before making any financial decision.
Pearler is an Authorised Representative #1281540 of Sanlam Private Wealth Pty Ltd AFSL #337927. Read the FSG available from https://pearler.com/financial-services-guide
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Most people sit firmly on one side of the property versus shares fence. Dave Gow spent 15-plus years on both, building a property portfolio, hitting the borrowing ceiling, then selling down to fund the ETF portfolio he now lives off.

In this episode Hayden puts him through a barrage of listener-style questions on how the transition actually works, and why most property investors have never honestly audited their returns.

In this episode we'll discuss:

💸 Why the property-only plan stalled: maxed-out borrowing capacity, and cash flow forecasts that looked grim even with the properties paid off

💸 The mechanics of the switch: sell a property, park the lump sum in an offset, live off part of it, and dollar cost average the rest into ETFs over a couple of years

💸 Why holding maximum debt while living off your portfolio rarely works, even when the maths of leverage looks appealing

💸 Surviving the brutal years: Perth rents falling while expenses rose, negative cash flow on a falling asset, and why Dave banked on mean reversion

💸 The self-delusion audit: anchoring to purchase price and forgetting stamp duty, holding costs, selling fees and CGT. "I bought for 600 and sold for a million" rarely means what people think

💸 Why leverage only works when returns clearly beat the cost of servicing it, and why interest rates and timing matter more than the property you pick

💸 How much you need to retire via property: roughly 30 to 35 times annual expenses instead of 25, to cover selling costs and tax on the way through

💸 Which property to sell first: most equity, strongest market, worst cash flow, and the psychology trap of always keeping the recent winner

💸 Dave's contrarian take on Melbourne: why the unloved market (with some land, away from apartment oversupply) might be the interesting one

Questions, disagreements or your own scenario: hello@aussiefirepod.com or reach out on socials at Strong Money Australia and Pearler.

Follow us on Instagram
Watch on Youtube
Ask a Question
FI Case Study Request Form
Pearler
Strong Money Australia
Original Aussie FIRE e-book

Dave's books on Amazon and Spotify

Disclaimer:
Any advice is general and does not consider your financial situation needs, or objectives, so consider whether it's appropriate for you. You should also consider seeking professional advice before making any financial decision.
Pearler is an Authorised Representative #1281540 of Sanlam Private Wealth Pty Ltd AFSL #337927. Read the FSG available from https://pearler.com/financial-services-guide
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Last episode Dave and Hayden covered the general idea of geographic arbitrage: take your Aussie wealth, live somewhere cheaper, retire sooner. This episode is the technical follow-up, and it's a sobering one. Brett Evans from Atlas Wealth has spent nearly three decades advising Australian expats across 65 countries, and he joins the boys to walk through everything that changes the moment you step on that plane. Fair warning: Hayden reckons it's the most information-dense episode they've published.

In this episode we'll discuss:

💸 The main residence trap: why selling the family home while you're a non-resident can mean capital gains tax all the way back to the purchase date, and the six and seven figure bills Brett has seen because of it

💸 Deemed disposal on shares, ETFs and crypto: the one-time election at departure that stops you accruing CGT overseas, why plenty of accountants don't know about it, and the client sitting on a seven-figure bill who found out too late

💸 How Australian tax residency actually works: the resides test, the domicile test, the 183-day test, and why "resident of nowhere" defaults you straight back to being an Australian tax resident

💸 The proposed new residency rules: a hard 183-day line, a 45-day count, and a four-factor test where holding an Aussie passport already counts as one strike against you

💸 What non-residents lose: no tax-free threshold, 30% from the first dollar of rental income, no 50% CGT discount since 2012, and why positive cash flow property becomes a problem

💸 Withholding tax on dividends at 15% or 30% depending on where you land, and how franking credits can offset it

💸 Why SMSFs are brutal for expats, including a case study where a client ignored the advice, got audited, and lost 45% of his balance

💸 The brokerage headache nobody warns you about: platforms freezing accounts, CHESS holdings converted to issuer-sponsored, and share registry mail going to a country with no postal delivery

💸 Getting your money home: the deemed acquisition rules, why to start planning 12 months out, and the $10,000 transfer myth that makes you look like a money launderer

💸 Why Brett tells clients to stop asking ChatGPT, and why good advice for expats is simple and flexible rather than clever and structured

Around 70 to 80% of expats eventually come home, so the decisions you make before you leave matter more than most people realise. Nothing here is personal advice, and Brett's own point is that if your situation is simple you probably don't need someone like him. But if you're carrying property, a share portfolio, an SMSF or a trust, this is an hour and a bit well spent before you book the flight.

Atlas Wealth

Questions, disagreements or your own scenario: hello@aussiefirepod.com or reach out on socials at Strong Money Australia and Pearler.

Follow us on Instagram
Watch on Youtube
Ask a Question
FI Case Study Request Form
Pearler
Strong Money Australia
Original Aussie FIRE e-book

Dave's books on Amazon and Spotify

Disclaimer:
Any advice is general and does not consider your financial situation needs, or objectives, so consider whether it's appropriate for you. You should also consider seeking professional advice before making any financial decision.
Pearler is an Authorised Representative #1281540 of Sanlam Private Wealth Pty Ltd AFSL #337927. Read the FSG available from https://pearler.com/financial-services-guide
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.