How do you tie it all in...Why is it not easy....Fear of the unknown leads to doing nothing....

Hi All.

You know when you have read so many post, watched so many Youtube experts. Formulated a plan late at night in your bed, only to get up in the morning to find another forum article, youtube clip that puts that little doubt in your mind, or completely blow it up like a hidden bomb you didnt want to tread on.

This forum has been great, and have gleaned ideas, and come to realize that everything although many of you are suitable qualified and accredited has just confused me so much I have not clear path to follow.

What path am I looking to tread is a good start, I need guidance on finance, tax and investing and ensuring that like everyone it is stable, safe (from fraud), and effective to grow wealth. I was hoping for a one shop fits all. Someone who would say you need to do this, and then set it up like that to achieve the best tax benifit, and this will lead to long term wealth and happiness and Utopia .

I was thinking a Financial Planner would help in this. Only to read they normally steer you to insurances, or steer you to investments that they earn some how a payment from. Then I read sort out the tax stuff first so you can then find the correct path to enlightenment. Again not sure that reading here this has been the best path to insight.

So for me we have a small nest egg cash, nest egg of ETF's, and not looking to purchase a property to hold for 15yrs to sell in retirement. I think the light went on when I thought how much are we looking to have in retirement, and work backwards. Lol...

Can anyone help unraviel the mystery of who to achieve Uptopia, and why this is not taught at school.

 

Wait... Did someone mention Utopia? Is there a bus that can take us there?

 

That's called analysis paralysis. Sometimes you just need to settle at 'good enough' and take the plunge or realise that you're already there.

 

Good enough for 30, 40, 50 years is better than waiting for the best investment

 

That's your problem. You're wanting to achieve something that doesn't exist rather than create wealth.

You want an easy, one stop shop path to success. Doesn't exist.

You want a clear path to victory. Doesn't exist.

You want to ensure all the people you come in contact with to help you will be risk free. Doesn't exist.


You need to stop chasing what doesn't exist and start moving towards what can help you build some wealth.


Your # 1 issue is your mindset.

 

In a way, we were lucky. We started investing in the 1980s long before the internet or u-tube was a “thing”. No online advice, you had to actually go to a real estate office and look at pictures in the windows to see what was available. We had never heard of “strategy”.

On the other hand, we were denied the wealth of knowledge available today.

So we paid off our PPOR, the best advice back then, saved the 20% deposit necessary to buy a IP, then put the no longer needed mortgage payments into buying our first IP.

 

On Monday, Timmy went to the Supermarket A and some items were on special.
Timmy procrastinated, wondering whether they might be slightly cheaper at the other supermarket he planned to visit later in the week.
Timmy was disappointed to learn that the specials were not available at Supermarket B , when he visited later that week.
Timmy was even more disappointed when he went back to Supermarket A and found the specials had ended.

There is NEVER a perfect time, or a perfect price. Nothing is risk free. The biggest risk is procrastination.

Decide how much you want for retirement. Buy assets that will get you there , or close to there. Do not look back in regret at what you coulda, woulda or shoulda done. You need time for things to work for you. The longer you take to decide on an action, the less time you have for your actions to produce outcomes.

I would suggest the following as a first step. If you have a mortgage on your home - work towards getting rid of it as fast as you can. An owner occupier mortgage is generally your single greatest expense and the thing that requires you to work longer than you may want to, or in a job you may not enjoy . Removal of that debt will make more difference than anything else to the choices you have. I would further suggest that you make this THE cornerstone of all decisions you take. Will buying this asset help me pay my home off faster ? Yes? Buy it. No? Do not.
For this reason, I would focus on superior yields, as they will allow you to focus entirely on debt reduction. Later, when the O/Occ debt is gone - or at least significantly reduced... you can switch to assets that cost money to hold, but will grow your asset base. I see no reason to bleed holding costs on speculative assets while you have a big O/Occ mortgage, though

if you do NOT have an O/Occ mortgage, you can take a different approach because you do not need to prioritise paying down debt.

Whatever your circumstances , while you procrastinate, others act. Except for those who inherit a favourable position, action is what differentiates those who end up with , from those who end up without.

 

He who deliberates fully before taking a step will spend his entire life on one leg.

This should be avoided, rarely are they looking out for your best interest.
You just need a good Mortgage Broker, Accountant/tax adviser.
Once you know what you can afford to buy you can research areas within your budget, there is no "perfect" way/place to invest in property.
If you don't currently own property why don't you start by buying your Owner Occupied residence?

Confused by this statement though, you don't want to buy property?

 

Instead of Utopia I suggest that you aim for good health and multiple passive income streams. The first step is to define your goals. What do you want to do in the next year, 5-10 years and for longer times? Then think about priorities - low, medium and high. Arrange these in a table, nine cells of text plus times in a row at the top and the rows with priority. This will force you to define matters.

Then think about the way you want to do this. Please note that not everyone is suited to investing or parts of investing. A brilliant property investor may be rubbish as share investing, or vice versa. My very brief foray into share trading made money - for other people. I used the capital loss to offset capital gains.

Once you have decided on the way you want to do this you need to acquire the tools. learn about investing, the terms, the concepts, not hard.

Once you have the terms and concepts acquired you may wish to get a financial advisor. The problem is that most are linked to fund managers, banks and the like. Many do not know about direct property investing.

The finance world is full of people who purport to know the answers and loudly promote that, sometimes to their financial advantage. As far as Australian property is concerned, Property Chat is one of the best websites if not the best.

That is more or less what I did. With no financial smarts in the 1980s I paid off the PPOR in about five years. I did not like debt. Then I invested. Around 40 years later the hard bits for decades have paid off.

 

If you study successful people who are wealthy, a lot of the time they are actually pretty dumb. I know a few people who have successful restaurants and building businesses who are literally so dumb they can't spell heaps of words. The point of what I am saying is that action is the most important thing and people who are usually dumb ignore all potential risks and go ahead anyway.

You have to look at life in this way. Option one is you sit inside your house twidiling your thumbs and staring at the ceiling. You might win tattslotto or get an inheritance but thats pretty much the only way to get rich.

The second way is to go out into the world and make moves. Yes you make takes some lossess but the AIM is to take more WINS than losses.

Fortune favours the brave. No one wrote books about a guy who stayed in his room and stared at the ceiling.

Also FYI your post looks like it was written by a bot or like a really early version of chat GPT, very hard and confusing to read.

 

For holistic and balanced advice on your overall situation a financial planner/adviser is the best person to see, but also depending on your specific objectives an adviser might not actually be well positioned to help you. Hard to know without speaking to a couple of different ones maybe.

1. There is a big focus on insurance often because it is quite regularly one of the most ignored parts of people's financial situations and we have a massive underinsurance problem in Australia. People insurance their lifestyle assets like cars/homes/contents but seem to neglect insuring their biggest asset - themselves! What's the point of having a great wealth accumulation plan if it would all get derailed because of death or disablement.

2. Financial planners definitely do have a tendency to recommend investments that require ongoing management and the reasons for it varies, but you have to keep in mind a financial planner has a duty to act in your best interest and adhere to their code of ethics so they also need to articulate why they are recommending any particular product. Make sure if you see one they can properly explain to you all their recommendations and why they are appropriate.

3. You're not going to find a lot of planners who will recommend property because it's not regulated in the same way as financial products and a lot of AFSLs don't actually permit it or it's quite strict on advising on the considerations around a property rather than advising on acquiring or disposing of property if that makes sense.

 

Smart people think too much about what bad things might happen.They are usually too afraid to make mistakes because they went through years of school where they tried not to make mistakes and there was a right answer to everything.

time to grow up.

 

Achieving great success in anything is reliant on 3 major pillars.

1. The knowledge
2. The psychology
3. The execution

To the extent of how much you have progressed in these three pillars will ultimately dictate the level of success you achieve.

 

Hi all,

Thank you appreciate all of your insightfulness.
Well I am hoping that I am starting to hop on one leg albeit with hopefully engaging a good mortgage broker from this site , as well as just reached out to a tax accountant from here .

So will see what I can do from here to make the leap. Next plan will have to be a FA, to at least guide. In regards to insurance I am hoping that the TPD, Life Insurance and protection income that I have recently increased in my super may be enough to start with, so that we can focus on growing wealth...

I think the biggest fear is of scammers and getting the wrong advice, as at 50 dont have long left . And for the first time in all those years actually in a position to make head way for the future. Watch this space .

 

No I am certainly real, and probably thinking quicker than I can type with all this stuff going around my head.

 

My experience over many years is that long complicated tasks that seem daunting should be broken down into smaller goals. A whole house to renovate! Shock, horror! Find smaller parts:
sparky
plumber
painting
floor coverings
minor reno items

Break these down into smaller parts. Painting:
measure the rooms
calculate how much paint is needed and buy the paint
identify and fix all the parts that need filling, sanding or similar
clean the rooms
paint the ceilings, two coats
paint the walls, two coats
The last two steps can be considered one room coat at a time. At every step I say, "Great, I've achieved a goal, time for some tea and cake." This way I can reach a goal in a few hours.

Finance is similar in that there are small goals along the way. What is the goal for today, tomorrow and next week? It may be reading and summarising a book. It may be working out cashflow or making general plans for the long term.

Setting goals is important. I have never said that I want $X in Y time from Z investments. My general long-term goal was to have passive income that exceeds expenditure, and from a variety of sources. I also wanted to own the PPOR and have no debt. If I had specified a time I would have been sad - the GFC and pandemic knocked holes in my investments and income. Clearly stating goals is an essential first step.

 

In your first post you said “ not looking to buy a property”
I assume you meant “now looking to buy a property”

it seems you have a plan in your mind already, small ETF portfolio and IP plus super and cash.

that sounds like a pretty typical med-long term investment strategy you hear every day on this forum.

where else are you confused/undecided??

 

Waiting for all lights to be green to the horizon before taking off the handbrake.