Before you start getting excited im not a chick!! ha ha just joking champ!!
I would like to basically know how you have got started in all of your investing?? Iam at a similar age to you 22. I have bought my own PPOR that set me back $145k last year, now Iam looking to sell this place(I should make about $80k after everything goes through) and get into investing but im just not too sure ho to go about it.
Mate id be very greatful for any information and help that you can give me!!
I know your letter wasnt addressed to me but I thought I would give you my opinion. I am not much older than you at 24 and if I was you I would keep your ppor. You say that you should get about 80k when you sell it, it may be a better idea to keap the house but borrow against it using the equity that has amassed. As for getting started I am only new to this website myself but would suggest reading books such as rich dad poor dad, 0 -130 properties, property millionaire and other such books in that section of your local book store. You can also get good info from like minded people in your area so look for a club there seem to be a few advertised on this site. And last of all just keep asking questions, the people here seem real friendly (most of them) are willing to help a newbie. Hope it all works well for you.
Scott
“Together we combine our strenghts and eliminate our weakness”
very interested also… please tell. I myself am still at school at 21 (uni actually) and am having a challenging time getting started whilst on uni student income. What do you attribute to your sucess thus far???
cheers
tim
Money is an elastic resource, it can be created. Time is not.
Great to see many young people my age on here, first up i would agree with strw23. You can keep your place and use the equity, though for me personally, if you have the availability to live with family and dont need to live at your PPOR, i would sell it or turn it back into a IP (i mean rent it out), reason being is that you, PPOR what real tax benefits can you claim.
Sounds like your off to a good start Rolonation, at your age and 80k to spend, i like it.
Alrighite guys, to be honest, ive done it the same way most people have, but i just took it a little step further and tweaked some investment strategies.
I use a strategy called Offset Gearing.
This is how it works.
Purchase a property that is going to go boom or appreciate in value, (a property that is in your affordability range). Most likely it will be a negative geared property. Let the propery go boom and appreciate in value. (This you will have to research and work out for yourself, but if you study the market, you will learn quickly which area is most likely to boom and appreciate)
With what equity you have and what you can play with buy an IP that is going to be positively geared. But not just positively geared but enought rental income to cover both property expenses, so they offset against each other.
eg.
+ve + -ve = 0 (no cost at all to you)
Divide your properties into 4 categories.
Passively Geared – Enough Income to Offset another property, or too much income, that is taxable Positivly Geared – The property has enough rental income to look after itself. Neutrally Geared – Negative geared property that becomes positive after a tax return/rebate……Or a property that is positvely geared, but due to, too many expenses and vancies becomes negativly geared Negativly Geared – The rental income is not enough, so you have to subsidse out of pocket expenses.
Work out which type of property invesment you need in order to buy to keep all costs offseted against each other.
If you do this right, then your income from your job, will not be affected, allowing you to further save more dollars or have more opportunity in spending your work dollars.
As for getting the cash up, i dont have any savings in the bank, any money i save, or from work or i put aside is put into shares or managed funds reason being is, you can quickly liquidate this money when you need it and beats the interest return you get from the bank.
But my real success is, in studyin the market, the guys that know me on here, will tell you i spend alot of time every day just studyin and lookin at property. Other thing too is i have an accounting background, so this sorta helps, though its not that necessary, for me personally its just being able to understand and being able to read both properties and the property market.
sorry if i didnt answer all the questions, but post them up and ill try to help out, also are any of you guys payin hecs? if you are ill show you how to avoid paying them legally through property.
cheers
s.i.s
Save on a regular basis
“People forget that by saving just $3 per day and investing it sensibly over a working life, you’ll end up with around $1 million.”
SIS – on another thread someone asked about your forum signature. I reckon you need to invest at about 11-12% to do your $3 a day = $1million.
Where did you get that line from – and where do you get 11-12% per year, every year. Would seem to be an aggressive rather than “sensible” investment strategy… (Not saying that aggressive is not sensible, just interpreting “sensible” as akin to conservative).
that quote is from Paul Clitheroe, that tv guy and share market expert, he is the one that hostes that television program “Money”.
i havent caculated that signature, but i know it does stand its truth, many other sayins like if you put $20 a week away and invest it, by 65 you will be a millionaire, it has the same fundamentals and gist about it as the signature.
cheers
s.i.s
Save on a regular basis
“People forget that by saving just $3 per day and investing it sensibly over a working life, you’ll end up with around $1 million.”
S.I.S – please tell us your secret on avoiding HECS fees legally through property? Would love to hear on behalf of two of my kids. The third is paying hers upfront through a scholarship.
Thanks
Shirley
To avoid paying hecs, oh by the way, or pay minimal amounts, there are several ways.
To avoid paying hecs, you need to have an income of less than about $24,000.00…. To the people who have an income that exceeds this amount, you need to bring your taxable threshold below this, many ways you can do this is through claiming your depreciation, (as long as you dont sell the property or you will pay HCG Tax).
After all related expenses for property investments, that are tax deductible and partly refundable, they can reduce your tax threshold or minimise payments.
This also applies to offset gearing, because you have your properties offsetted against each other. meaning there is cashflow happening, but it is being superseded by expense and debts, you are neutralising all payables by receivables which equals = a neutral cashflow, (yet at the same time paying down and owning all properties).
Chuck in the depreciation and other little expenses that are legally claimable, you have been able to achieve a lower taxable threshold, and still maintain and own all your properties.
Though this might work now, it will catch you later if your investments do exceed the taxable threshold, but keeping control over your investments you can continue to avoid payin or minimise your Hecs debt or Hecs debt repayment.
Cheers guys – hope this helps
s.i.s
Save on a regular basis
“People forget that by saving just $3 per day and investing it sensibly over a working life, you’ll end up with around $1 million.”
nah i dont use trust, for PI at the moment…lol, im trying to achieve a income tax threshold of under $6000….. Reason being, so i dont pay tax,[][][]
but yeah of course, ill be at Sydney Forum Meeting this Thursday. This Thursday Meeting, i think there is going to be some talk about Hybrid Trust, different types of trust and their pros and cons.
cheers
s.i.s
Save on a regular basis
“People forget that by saving just $3 per day and investing it sensibly over a working life, you’ll end up with around $1 million.”
I am paying HECS at the movement, and have a similar background to you. But I thought the HECS repayment works off the Taxable Income excluding the losses from the properties.
Save on a regular basis
“People forget that by saving just $3 per day and investing it sensibly over a working life, you’ll end up with around $1 million.”
Any losses or profits you make that are involved in your earnings, will change your taxable income/treshold. Dependent on your income threshold, you only pay Hecs due to the amount you earned.
If you go to your Uni and ask for the “HECS Information Booklet 2004” You will find everything is listed in it and is well detailed and exampled well.
cheers
s.i.s
Save on a regular basis
“People forget that by saving just $3 per day and investing it sensibly over a working life, you’ll end up with around $1 million.”
SIS, I agree with Julie. For HECS income calculation it is your assessible income plus any losses from property. So if you negatively gear and get a loss this can’t help you reduce your HECS payment, but can help reduce income tax. That is my understanding anyway-from a few years ago now.
Where ever your taxable threshold falls, you only pay Hecs to what threshold you fall into. If you can get your income earnings under the HECS repayment scheme, you wont pay HECS at all, if you dont you will have to pay for which HECS repayment threshold you fall into.
Save on a regular basis
“People forget that by saving just $3 per day and investing it sensibly over a working life, you’ll end up with around $1 million.”
It’s not quite true that you can “avoid” paying HECS. You can *defer* payment, but you will still have to pay it at some stage in your life- when your income goes to a repayable amount of income. The new higher Education Bill just went through parliament. The following will now occur:
A HECS repayment threshold of $35000 in 2004-5 and $36184 in 2005-6. This ups the original repayment threshhold from the amounts mentioned of $25348.
If people don;t repay HECS now, you will have to repay it at some point, and inflation is added to it. This meant that, a couple of years ago, when CPI was 6% (following the introduction of the GST), your HECS bill added 6% to your bill. You can’t avoid paying HECS unless you die, or live overseas- forever.
A better solution, if possible, is to pay HECS upfront- you get a 15% discount on the amount if you pay it upfront.
Kay Henry – A 15% discount sounds a lot, but I’d be wary about paying HECS off quickly if you have little money and are keen to get into investing ASAP.
Yes HECS is a debt, but the interest rate is CPI only and (assuming you have an investment program) will soon rapidly fall as a proportion of net wealth, even with no voluntary repayments from you.
Imagine you had a $10k HECS debt and $10k in the bank.
You could pay off the HECS ($8.5k) and have $1.5k left for your everyday account. But you have no portfolio and no passive income.
Now if you were to not pay HECS and invest the $8.5k, you’d at least have a nice start to the portfolio. You’d use this money to buy shares, managed funds, think about a deposit on a property, etc. An $8.5k start beats an $0k start and you could regard it as a funny sort of leverage (the HECS loan having nothing to do with your financial investments).
I chose the latter approach and am very glad I did.
I did consider HECS inflation, but much more important in the early years was using all available cash as seed money for investments.
I found there are economies of scale, and $10-20k is considerably better than $2k to start a proper diversified portfolio.
Paying off your HECS can slow progress towards this threashold. Thus foregoing the 15% discount was a small price to pay IMHO.
But about 5 years later I had a term deposit maturing and was wondering whether to use it to pay off HECS. I did some calculations and there was very little in it (there might have been a $500 benefit over several years).
However by this time the portfolio was well-established and I could pay HECS without wrecking it. So I did. This improved my after-tax income, which I put straight into increased monthly investments (in non-cash areas).
In both cases I think I made the right decision. Deferring payment was unambiguously good as it meant I could start the portfolio years earlier, which provided experience.
The second decision was not as clear cut with only a slight possible benefit and was nowhere near as important as the first.
So in summary, HECS is ‘not-bad’ debt and I see no compelling reason to pay it off quickly. The main exception is if you have a lazy non-performing term deposit maturing, and you aren’t about to need it to pay a property deposit.
Early HECS payment cannot be a bad decision, but for some people (especially those with little money) it has opportunity costs that I think they should carefully weigh up.
It’s usually only the reasonably wealthy who can pay HECS upfront anyway. You can pay it off upfront before you study, or you can also get benefits if you pay off lump sums throughout the lifetime of the loan.
I was lucky in that I did my undergraduate degree when it was free education- no HECS! It wasn’t that long ago :o(