Author Topic: Case Study (sort of) - Australian (sort of) - Is this a good plan?  (Read 1657 times)

Kaminoge

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 348
  • Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina
Thanks to my last post I got some very useful information and so I'm posting again to see if there's anything wrong with my latest plan.

The facts. Recently married but this is just about my money. My husband is American so through his side we've got money in the US and money in Vanguard US. We're keeping our investments etc separate (although we share money for daily stuff) because honestly we don't even know where we'd begin trying to combine stuff and because we're not at all sure about tax stuff and keeping our stuff in individual names seems safest for now.

So here's me. 42. Four investment properties in Australia (total worth approx 1.1 mil.). Total debts a smidgen under $400,000. I'm a non-resident for tax purposes so if I sold every cent would be subject to CGT. All the debt is mortgages, there's nothing else. In addition to the properties I've got approx $40,000 in a managed fund and about the same in Super. Haven't lived in Australia much since I left university and have no particular plans to return (although I didn't know things would pan out this way when I got into investing in property).

For a while I've been wanting to diversify but couldn't figure out a way to do it. People didn't want to deal with me because of my status as a non-resident. Thanks to a recent thread on here I realized the (ridiculously obvious in hindsight) fact that I can simply buy shares through my bank account which I could have been doing all along but hey, better to figure it out now than in another 10 years.

So my plan is now this.
   1. Drop down what I'm paying on my mortgages to the minimum repayment. I already have lots of equity in the property.
   2. Invest the money I'm saving (approx $1500/$2000 a month - depending on how much I have to spend on the properties and what the Australian dollar does).

I've read a couple of books and a lot of threads. Pretty much enough to know that I have only the vaguest clue what I'm doing. So my thinking is that every few months I buy a big chunk of something. I'm charged $29 per transactions so I don't want to make too many transactions. Over the course of the next year or so I'd build up to having a portfolio that was approx 40% bonds and 60% shares. The managed fund is all Australian shares (I'm planning to keep it - given how difficult it has been for me to find a way to invest my money I'm not keen to give up any of the sources I have) so I'm thinking maybe 20% Australian, 40% the rest of the world.

I don't plan to pick shares myself. Based on reading on here it seems simplest to use Vanguard shares (I don't even know if that's the right word). I can't invest with Vanguard itself since I'm not a resident and I'm not in Australia.

And the idea is that while I'm doing this I'll keep reading and keep trying to learn. I figure that I'm more likely to pay proper attention and actually learn stuff if I start buying (rather than just keeping on putting money into the mortgages and trying to make a perfect plan before I start).

While I build up a "chunk" to spend it will be sitting in a mortgage offset account so it's no terrible to have it there.

Does this seem like a reasonable plan? Is there anything I'm missing? I presume this is going to complicate my life come tax time each year but I'm hoping that if I don't sell stuff it's not too terrible.

pbkmaine

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 8927
  • Age: 67
  • Location: The Villages, Florida
Re: Case Study (sort of) - Australian (sort of) - Is this a good plan?
« Reply #1 on: June 19, 2016, 09:06:38 AM »
You might want to cross post this to the Real Estate and Landlording thread.

 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!