Investopoly

Epizode

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  Ep 428: Why interest rates may need to stay higher for longer 30.09.2026 29min

  Read Full Blog Here Back in 2023, Stuart argued that inflation and rates could stay higher for longer than most expected, drawing on 50 years of history showing that once inflation tops 8%, it typically takes a decade or more to settle. That call has aged well: after cutting through 2025, the RBA has already hiked three times in 2026, and underlying inflation has climbed back to 3.6% in a second wave the Bank's own models failed to anticipate. But revisiting the research has sharpened his thi...
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  Q&A: Upgrade or rentvest, home equity loans, and going non-resident 29.09.2026 36min

  Four listeners think several moves ahead. Silvia, who arrived in Australia in 2025 with a high income but low super, lays out a detailed plan: switch to variable with an offset, interest-only to preserve deductibility, build a buffer while catching up on super, and asks the deeper question: does stretching for a $1.6M blue-chip upgrade in her 40s make the household too single-point sensitive, or is superior asset quality worth the serviceability risk? And if they move abroad in seven years, i...
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  Ep 427: How to assess whether property and share markets are attractively priced 23.09.2026 35min

  Read Full Blog Here Stuart calls his approach value-aware: buying high-quality assets when they're attractively priced. Quality decides whether something is worth owning; price decides when to invest and how much. In this episode, he explains why both matter: your return comes from two engines: growth in an asset's underlying value and the uplift (or drag) as its valuation mean-reverts toward trend. For property, the entry price is everything because it's lumpy, illiquid, and bought at a sing...
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  Q&A - Deploying an inheritance, selling an average property, and funding a long retirement 22.09.2026 36min

  Four listeners at very different scales. "James," 45, describes himself as not being great with money but ready to fix that with a $480k inheritance, a high income, and 15 years to run. His head is spinning: pay off the mortgage, debt recycle, go all-in on ETFs, start an SMSF, and is property still viable over a 14–15 year horizon versus shares? Stuart brings order to the questions. Alex, in his early 40s, asks a question many quietly avoid: when do you sell an underperforming or average inve...
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  Ep 426: The do not invest list: why good investors say no 16.09.2026 27min

  Read Full Blog Here Most investors think good investing means finding more things to say yes to: more opportunities, more asset classes, more products in the mix. Stuart argues the opposite: the people who build the most wealth over a lifetime have the discipline to say no, repeatedly, to almost everything that crosses their desk. Even the small urge to "switch up" your monthly ETF purchase, just because buying the same thing five times feels unsophisticated, quietly erodes result...
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  Q&A - Choosing a pension account, topping up in retirement, and offset versus debt recycling 15.09.2026 32min

  This episode answers five detailed listener questions spanning retirement income, structure, and the offset-versus-invest decision. A listener retiring at 60 with $1.3m compares the Vanguard SpendSmart allocated pension against his current fund on fees, and asks whether a growth or balanced diversified option suits an account that will be his sole income stream. A couple in pension phase, about to max their transfer balance caps with a further $300k left over in accumulation, ask ...
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  Ep 425: Family trust investing: Are trusts still worth it under proposed tax changes? 09.09.2026 40min

  Read the blog online here. Two tax changes could materially alter how Australians own investments and use family trusts. The first is Division 119, which has already been legislated and will impose a minimum 30% tax on capital gains made after 1 July 2027. The second is a proposed minimum 30% tax on distributions from discretionary family trusts, including both income and capital gains, from 1 July 2028. The interaction between these measures creates a serious problem. Under the draft l...
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  Q&A - Cash-heavy at 48, bridging to early retirement, and debt-free at 31 08.09.2026 39min

  Four listeners at genuine turning points. "Steve," 48, with a wife of 54 and a large cash holding, knows he's too conservative and wants to move into ETFs ahead of retirement at 57, while supporting a special-needs adult child and navigating his wife's super unlocking first. How should that shape the inside-versus-outside-super split? An anonymous couple on the Mornington Peninsula, 39 and 40, have built a four-property-plus-SMSF portfolio but zero borrowing capacity, and want to be work-opti...
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  Ep 424: Should you hedge your international share portfolio 02.09.2026 32min

  Read Full Blog Here If you're following the case for going underweight Australian shares and leaning into global developed markets, you inherit a new question: what do you do about currency risk? Every international investment has two return drivers: the underlying market, and movements in the Australian dollar, and this episode is a clear-eyed guide to whether you should neutralise the second. Stuart explains what hedging actually does, why it never removes 100% of currency risk, and the sin...
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  Q&A - Untangling a messy structure, cutting losses, and low-income investing 01.09.2026 34min

  Three listeners wrestling with structure and second-guessing. "Marty," an Adelaide doctor who's become genuinely financially literate since engaging a planner two years ago, feels his arrangement is messier than it should be: managed funds underperforming at a 2.9% IRR, borrowed money in the trust, and a cash-flow plan he's no longer sure about. He asks whether to pause super contributions, rethink gearing inside the trust given a possible 30% distribution floor, and what broad directio...
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  Ep 423: Negative gearing deferred - heres how to manage the cash flow gap 26.08.2026 29min

  Read Full Blog Here Quarantining negative gearing doesn't just reduce a tax benefit; it can blow a hole in an investor's cash flow. Take a property with a $30,000 annual shortfall: previously, offsetting that loss might have clawed back $12,000–$14,000 in tax, bringing the real cost to around $16,000–$18,000. Now that loss must be carried forward, potentially for 10 to 20 years, leaving the investor to fund the full $30,000 upfront. For many, that makes established property simply unaffordabl...
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  Q&A - Super recontributions, property versus ETFs, and the grandfathering question 25.08.2026 36min

  Four listeners bring sharp, forward-looking questions. "Tony" wonders whether super recontribution strategies, used to cut the taxable component and reduce death benefit tax, could be the next target for a budgetary hatchet, and asks for Stuart's view without giving the government any ideas. An anonymous listener, 37, mortgage-free on a rural Victorian property with $300k in cash, feels he's at a genuine crossroads: use a buyer's agent to acquire an inner-Melbourne house and hold, or aggressi...
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  Ep 422: Blame the 20-year growth cycle, not necessarily the Victorian government 19.08.2026 30min

  Read Full Blog Here Melbourne has tested investors' patience like nowhere else. Its median house price has grown just 1.8% a year since early 2017, below inflation, meaning that, in real terms, property is cheaper today than it was almost a decade ago. Naturally, investors want someone to blame. But in this episode, Stuart argues the usual suspects are largely wrong. Victoria's land tax regime, tenancy reforms and ballooning state debt get cited endlessly, and Stuart doesn't dismiss them. Sti...
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  Q&A- Structures, debt recycling, and accessing super 18.08.2026 38min

  Six listeners grapple with how the new tax landscape reshapes their thinking. Nick, six years into regular ETF investing, asks whether to keep his current setup or start fresh for cleaner record-keeping, and whether a trust is now worth considering mid-journey. Matthew and Michael both probe the fine print: does the "property in a company" strategy become more attractive under a 30% minimum CGT rate, and does debt recycling for an IP deposit still preserve deductible interest? Michelle explor...
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  Ep 421: Liquidity: what it really buys you 12.08.2026 27min

  Read Full Blog Here It's been fascinating to watch how differently asset classes have performed lately, share markets delivering strong double-digit returns while unlisted commercial property trusts and residential property in Melbourne and Sydney have struggled. But this episode isn't about which asset class wins. It's about something quietly more important: liquidity, and the optionality it buys you. Liquidity is how quickly and cheaply you can turn an asset into cash without disruption, an...
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  Q&A: Company land tax, debt recycling, and building versus selling 11.08.2026 37min

  Six listeners bring some genuinely meaty questions. Sandy digs into the technical weeds of owning property through a company—whether a discretionary trust as sole shareholder forfeits the NSW land tax threshold, and how the 25% versus 30% company tax rate applies when a capital gain lands. Prashant asks for a candid critique of his simple, four-ETF debt recycling portfolio and its cash-flow reality. Mark poses a clever SMSF puzzle: is deliberately exceeding the concessional cap effectively an...
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  Eight Rules Revisited #8- The four risks that can derail a plan 06.08.2026 21min

  Eight Rules Revisited is a companion series to Stuart Wemyss's updated book, Wealth by Design, working through each of the original eight golden rules from his 2018 book, Investopoly, one episode at a time. In each episode, Stuart tests his 2018 thinking against eight more years of evidence and client experience, and is upfront about what has changed, what has simply sharpened, and what has held firm all along. In this final episode of the series, Stuart takes on risk management, the ru...
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  Ep 420: Can anything make property investing attractive again after the tax changes 05.08.2026 33min

  Read Full Blog Here With the negative gearing and CGT changes now law, the property industry is racing to devise workarounds to keep investor interest alive. As a genuinely independent, asset-class-agnostic firm with no bias toward property, Stuart puts six of the most likely strategies under the microscope, because to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The starting point: under the new rules, the after-tax internal rate of return on established property falls from around 11% ...
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  Q&A: Deploying $800k, structuring for the future, and what to spend on a car 04.08.2026 36min

  Four listeners at pivotal moments. "John," 55 and five years cancer-free, has $800k from selling an investment property and a detailed plan for a downsizer contribution, an experiences fund, helping both daughters into homes and one big question: will his super comfortably fund $100k a year in retirement? Stuart stress-tests the numbers and the strategy. "Chris," 44, lays out a layered plan involving an SMSF property, an investment property and a granny flat, and asks whether it's solid or wh...
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  Eight Rules Revisited #7- Own property that everyone will always want 30.07.2026 18min

  Rule 7 in Investopoly was direct: only invest in investment-grade property. Eight years on, the core of that still holds, but Stuart has sharpened the method and genuinely changed his mind about one part of it. In this episode, he explains why Wealth by Design reframes the rule from "invest in investment-grade property" to something more demanding: own property with enduring, scarce and growing demand. It's a shift from a label to a test—what makes an asset something people will always want, ...