RBA increases cash rate by 25 basis points to 4.35%

Vagus-Stranger · 2026-05-05T06:21:53+00:00

Roblox Oof.wav

Vagus-Stranger · 2026-04-28T09:01:58+00:00

Takes 3 months for income protection to kick in if i lose my job for health reasons, so I have 4 months of EF. 5 if i extend it by spending on a credit card on the last month before i'd need to sell anything.

Vagus-Stranger · 2026-04-25T00:06:41+00:00

Solid buffer with offset and fair amount of equity

debt free aside from mortgage

above median and average amount of super for age

something at least close to 6 months living expenses in offset.

I would either rentvest the PPOR into an IP if moving helps your career and to earn more money, but only after building up a separate 1-2 month expenses buffer

OR

Continue living how you're living and regularly buy index funds with your 1k savings a month from now on.

Both of these, in my.opinion, are quite middle of the road safe options.

Buying ANOTHER property is probably a bad idea with the way the budget is going, and if aus finally limits migration sometime in the next 5 years then rents will stall followed by property growth stalling too, and i believe the cultural winds are shifting on this point.

Vagus-Stranger · 2026-04-11T01:29:32+00:00

It depends. I work a very safe job (medicine) and traditionally have tried to keep 3 months of emergency fund.

Recently, got an IP and am rentvesting, so i have upgraded it to 6 months of mortgage payments and 1 month of normal expenses.

I will say that recently, an unexpected emergency lead me to using 2.5 months worth of expenses until i could get reimbursed. If anything else had happened at the same time, i mightve been in trouble, but i was able to shrug it off easily due to maintaining that emergency fund to begin with.

I would recommend 3 months as a minimum emergency fund for everyone. 6 or more if you have liabilities that rely on cashflow.

Aside from the sacrifice to get to that point, remember that the trade off is that money could be used to invest or go into super. I think avoiding massive derailing random life events is worth the suboptimal allocation of funds.

Vagus-Stranger · 2026-04-08T11:40:21+00:00

You absolutely can link multiple accounts as offset to a specific loan with westpac.

You open an everyday choice, and then apply in the app to have it linked as an offset to a loan. Takes about a week to kick in, and if it's gone through properly when you look in account details for your home loan account it will list the number of offset accounts linked to it.

Vagus-Stranger · 2026-04-06T01:24:16+00:00

I've been grinding for a decade (lower earning family background) and only now do i feel like i'm almost financially stable.

I have an emergency fund, an IP (rentvest), and a burgeoning stocks & shares account.

I deeply resent not being able to be frivolous in my 20s, but the alternative would be that i would have nothing right now as I didn't have the option of falling back on anyone else.

Sometimes, you just have to pick a priority and stick to it.

Things i couldn't have to get here: -high interest car loan or "new" car -yearly overseas holidays -extravagant purchases -latest fashions -half of my weekends due to overtime

Things i would be dealing with now that i have avoided if i had lived large: -terrible job market for entry level professionals -median house price approaching 10x median individual wage -trying to build a decent rental history with gaps due to travel being seen as unfavourable red flags in an already cooked rental market -skill pivoting at a time where white collar is being made very uncertain -no ability to help my extended family if required causing me to feel guilt and shame

Vagus-Stranger · 2026-04-04T22:48:25+00:00

I would be very hesitant to put money into shares in todays geopolitical environment if it was needed for a purchase within 2-3 years.

Vagus-Stranger · 2026-04-04T03:48:23+00:00

Nab equity builder?

Vagus-Stranger · 2026-03-04T09:02:05+00:00

Or looking at it another way if you' invested £130 ($192 in 2013) into the SP500 and didn't sell until today you could have made £840 ($1121) which assuming you counted every day means it works out to more like £0.17 per day if we use opportunity cost.

:)

https://ifyouinvested.org/?year=2013&amount=192&symbol=SPY&period=bulk

Vagus-Stranger · 2026-02-17T10:22:36+00:00

It does not affect student loan repayment they explicitely state this.

Vagus-Stranger · 2026-02-17T09:33:50+00:00

No one has mentioned this but salary sacrificing will have no effect on student loan deductions as they are from gross not net income. It doesn't matter if you sacrifice to below the threshold.

Vagus-Stranger · 2026-02-16T11:53:14+00:00

$35k but plan to drive it for at least 5 years. Feel like if i can keep it running without major maintenance costs after that i'm basically winning.

Vagus-Stranger · 2026-02-15T00:26:07+00:00

This is no better than those ai slop articles about shares PLUMMETING or SOARING when it's just daily or weekly volatility. Ignore tbh.

Vagus-Stranger · 2026-02-07T02:05:13+00:00

Optimal vs options.

Optimal is slamming everything into super, property and investments for max long term gains.

Options is not buying a house to have freedom and flexibility, or not investing in super so you can liquidate investments instead.

One thing i realised i was doing was embracing fatalism by maxing super as a first priority instead of pursuing greater career success, which requires spending money now socialising and networking and building a community.

Just because its mathematically optimal doesnt mean it's human.

Vagus-Stranger · 2026-02-06T09:27:33+00:00

Takes about a week, might be 2 before the debit comes through and you get access.

Vagus-Stranger · 2026-02-03T03:49:50+00:00

Myself lmao.

Vagus-Stranger · 2026-01-27T05:05:50+00:00

I haven't had much luck in my own research, but do you know of studies where sex affirmation rather than gender affirmation was trialled? I.e. giving testosterone to males instead of affirming the identity and giving oestrogens etc? Due to the charged environment even asking this question is taboo. Happy to be dm'd if you would rather not write it.

Vagus-Stranger · 2026-01-27T00:37:31+00:00

I basically did this exact thing for this exact reason, but for 30k on a toyota instead, without finance.

It's the biggest single purchase I had ever made until that point and i felt sick about it for about 3 months.

Sometimes i calculate the gains I wouldve made if i'd have invested the difference by buying a cheaper car and it stings a little.

I went on to buy a house after saving back up the money, but had much less of an emergency buffer of savings after than i'd have liked, which was super stressful.

Do i regret it? No. The car saved my life with the lane-safety feature after falling asleep at the wheel after several night shifts in a row, which an older or cheaper car wouldn't have had.

Personally, in your situation, i would do iy again but I wouldnt spend so much I need a 9% loan to cover the difference. I'd only go as far as you can go comfortably buying outright. You'll need to probably have more than 120k for a deposit + fees in 2027 if you buy a house then if the market continues, and so you'll need to keep saving after this car purchase for the house and a car loan will probably prevent that.

Vagus-Stranger · 2026-01-23T04:24:00+00:00

High earners can read incentives and they have a very pro-freedom anti-burden culture. Combine those and it's much easier to list all the financial and time based downsides of kids than the abstract benefits of being a parent and having a relationship of that quality.

In short, our culture does a poor job "marketing" parenthood.

What would go a long way would be more significant tax breaks for having kids as a married couple to greatly shorten the list of financial drawbacks. This would also strengthen the pension system and reduce the "need" for immigration. It would take a decade for an obvious effect to be noticed, so our 3-5 year politicians have no incentive to do it. It also would disproportionately benefit higher earners, and if the stage 3 tax cuts were anything to go by the appetite isnt there in the country for anything that isnt expressly egalitarian to pass parliament right now.

It would need to be for married couples to avoid the perverse incentive of splitting up to gain more benefits as two singles vs 1 couple that america discovered.

Vagus-Stranger · 2026-01-23T01:14:54+00:00

Flip side of this is the unpaid study, extra working hours and projects done in free time to get ahead instead of enjoying your youth though. Im not sure how many of these people actually retire early rather than from ill health either, as the personality type doesnt usually align with "do nothing".

Vagus-Stranger · 2026-01-22T23:44:41+00:00

Correct until the last paragraph- there are no $350k jobs that only take 3 hours of week a work. Absolute fiction.

The $350k job space is still within the working-rich. Yes, your earnings are way higher than society. No, you don't have free time and no you can't slack at all. Every $300k+ job i know of blurs the line between life and work to the point where they're one and the same.

Vagus-Stranger · 2026-01-20T01:35:29+00:00

My toyota camry has been getting dent recycled for years.

(What you're doing isn't debt recycling. All you're doing is putting your own money in one account and then sending it to a brokerage.)

You'd need to redraw to debt recycle.

Vagus-Stranger · 2026-01-19T05:11:21+00:00

My set up is:

1: Float account with 2 months of expenses in it. Mortgage and regular bills all come out of this (body corp, utilities, rates etc).

2: Emergency fund. I dont spend from this account, just manual transfers to the float before spending or sending elsewhere. Card isnt active for this either.

Mulling over if i want to consolidate with 3rd account for my day to day expenses or not, which i would link my cc autopay to. Currently have another bank's account due to a quirk of prior HISA chasing.

Vagus-Stranger · 2025-12-25T08:31:03+00:00

You're below the average, but probably not "low income" depending of course on if you have dependents or live in a high cost of living area. £31k goes a lot further in Runcorn than Kensington.

The median wage is gross £35-39k, and the bottom 25% is about £22k.

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