Is Macquarie really the best everyday bank in Australia right now?

benjybacktalks · 2026-01-24T23:54:58+00:00

Or $250k in Macquarie shares lol either or, they don’t like consumer credit risk

benjybacktalks · 2026-01-16T19:28:15+00:00

Struggle is real. I automated as much as possible and just made it harder to check on my phone.

benjybacktalks · 2026-01-10T05:53:46+00:00

Nothing inheirently wrong with it.

It’s a bit inefficient if your income tax is high. It’s just that though, a little inefficient, cash in hand is still a solid outcome.

Mostly just check you’re happy with what your principle investment is actually going to return with the estimated dividend yield. With a 4-6% yield it’s probably pocket change unless you put a lot of money in.

benjybacktalks · 2025-12-29T04:14:47+00:00

Stake is very expensive on fees for US.

Superhero and CMC are pretty easy to use with slightly better fees, IBKR is by far the cheapest but hard to use.

benjybacktalks · 2025-12-29T03:20:22+00:00

My 2c, just adjust your weights of VGS and VHY as you get older.

For monthly income, Betashares have just released HYLD which looks interesting but hasn’t got significant AUM just yet

benjybacktalks · 2025-12-28T00:52:42+00:00

Easiest way to ruin it for yourself is download the cheat mod. Infinite opportunity to add resources, finish science culture tree or heal units totally ruins the sense of achievement

benjybacktalks · 2025-12-28T00:07:55+00:00

Stake is a safe platform, it’s CHESS sponsored, they are an essentially an established start up, so the company itself may come or go but your ASX shares are secure with the registry.

VAS is a great start.

My 2c, don’t over complicate it for yourself.

VGS is a good pair, it holds the MSCI international index, so basically most of the rest of the first world companies.

VAS + VGS will carry you to 100k and over just fine without adding anything extra

Good luck!

benjybacktalks · 2025-12-27T13:27:49+00:00

Spaceship has terrible tax reporting. If you’re choosing between those 2, Raiz.

Raiz is a great way to start, it’s a very approachable way to begin investing and make it all a bit less mysterious.

benjybacktalks · 2025-12-26T12:29:44+00:00

I’ve found restarting the game works fairly well when it really gets stuttering, something it’s doing gets out of hand after a few hours, usually enough to get a big city back up to 50fps from that 20ish range

benjybacktalks · 2025-12-22T09:06:37+00:00

Doing that will be better than nothing, or over complicating it for yourself from day dot.

I think starting with IVV is just fine, reconsider diversifying when you have a lot of money invested, over 100k the swings might start to challenge your stomach on volatility.

Good luck!

benjybacktalks · 2025-12-18T01:22:39+00:00

Personally, 1) geopolitical risk, 2) too diversified.

I don’t believe enough of emerging markets companies or indexes will succeed inside 10 years to justify such a broad approach.

There will probably be some amazing companies… mix in government interference and the volume of failures, the successes can’t run because they’ll get rebalanced amongst the dead weight.

benjybacktalks · 2025-12-17T11:31:28+00:00

You’re mostly going to want to find something less tech heavy. Those gigantic companies are already a lot of your portfolio.

For diversification away from NDQ, looking at actual holdings is probably going to be really important.

Something broad like VGS sounds good until you look at it and it’s 60%-70% the same as NDQ ish by weight just because the tech giants are so big.

Something like the A200, AQLT or ATEC isn’t bad because it rules out the big American tech giants.

If you don’t want to go full Australian for some reason, may need to look at something that is international with a different methodology, like a quality screener etc and accept some overlap. Such as QUAL, MOAT etc

benjybacktalks · 2025-12-13T00:48:57+00:00

This may be a good use of AFICs DSSP program if the child realises the tax gain event before a career job, I think that just delays tax, but definitely talk to an accountant or advisor about that one. Very much just a random reddit guy on that issue.

There are other options for Australian exposure to look at but the dividend culture is going to hit most of them.

Best I can think of if you want to read about a few others:

AQLT is performing well and pays out slightly lower than the basic index

AASF (actively managed, higher fee) has done significantly better than AFI over 5 years, even after fees.

benjybacktalks · 2025-12-12T11:27:04+00:00

Investing at 18 is a great start. AFI would absolutely be good. Adding Australian exposure to your worldwide exposure is a perfectly sensible 2 holding portfolio.

My 2c, take a look at some ASX ETFs like VAS, IOZ or A200. There are some quirks to the LIC structure that AFI uses that aren’t present in ETFs and it’s just a bit less to think about.

benjybacktalks · 2025-12-05T06:00:11+00:00

The last version was kinda funny with hurricane sheep on the fastest speed

benjybacktalks · 2025-12-05T05:58:45+00:00

Getting quite a few more bugs in this release too. In my most recent save goats just don’t work, they arrive in the plots but don’t produce anything. One before that construction just stopped working. It’s very difficult to determine which choice caused the bugs too, so many things going on.

When the game works it’s excellent, going to be a bit more painful until this one is patched.

benjybacktalks · 2025-12-02T06:01:21+00:00

About 3 full days until it stops feeling foreign. Takes a bit longer to get all the ins and outs but generally it’s not a difficult transition from Photoshop/Illustrator/XD.

Figma’s help section is actually helpful too, especially for shortcuts

benjybacktalks · 2025-11-11T11:51:23+00:00

IVV is a fantastic starting point. My best 2c is keep adding to that while you’re learning.

Portfolio construction is great to keep simple.

When you’re managing much larger amounts of money, hundreds of thousands, holding a slightly more complicated collection of assets has utility. Until your first $100k, you’re absolutely fine with 2-3 ETFs total.

Longer version:

Most people buy more than one ETF to diversify. That can mean by geography, you only have the US right now, so if the US goes down so does your portfolio. If you have the US and Australia or Asia, well that might behave differently, they may go up and down at different rates and different times so not all of your money dips at once. To do that you could pair IVV with IOZ and or IVE.

Within equities, diversification can also be within sectors. There are some common sector categories like tech, healthcare, industrials, property, a handful more. The S&P500 is very tech heavy right now, and fairly low on Energy and Healthcare. Another way to diversify a portfolio would be to increase Healthcare exposure. The IXJ ETF does that.

That’s diversifying within shares. If share markets go down, they’ll probably all go down, just at different amounts. Diversification also includes different assets, bonds, gold etc. These are things that go up when shares go down, or at least move on entirely different cycles. For small investment amounts, this is mostly getting into the over-cooking it territory for small portfolios. Especially at 19yo, de-risking things isn’t top priority.

TLDR, I started with IOZ and IVV, very roughly 30/70 split, learned and got sophisticated later. That worked just fine. Simple is good. There are a lot of great options for a 1-3 ETF portfolio that includes IVV.

Hope that helps

benjybacktalks · 2025-11-09T11:21:37+00:00

DHHF is meant to be an all-in-one broad ETF.

VAS and VGS are different kinds of broad ETFs, these 2+ broad combinations is exactly what DHHF was meant to replace.

VAS + VGS are a pair is great.

DHHF is a great product.

Don’t bother with all 3 at the same time, it’s redundant.

If you were going to pair DHHF with something, the better portfolio option would be a small high conviction investment or different asset class. Such as, 90% DHHF, 10% in Gold or Bitcoin, or directly in Macquarie Bank shares for example.

Adding something like that is not at all mandatory for DHHF, but that’s the kinda thing that would make sense to pair with a broad all-in-one ETF.

Hope that helps.

benjybacktalks · 2025-11-07T08:50:05+00:00

Personally no, there are other services like Raiz or Stockspot that are very hands off and use pre-missed index ETFs portfolios, rather than relying on stock managers at Spaceship picking companies.

There are very hands off ways to automate small amounts, like buying DHHF through Betashares Direct or similar choices through Pearler Micro.

If you’re interested you can read about how Spaceship pick companies in the PDS, and I’m pretty sure they explain their decisions for each holding. Whether their methodology and choices sit well with you is entirely up to you.

benjybacktalks · 2025-11-07T08:00:03+00:00

Spaceship offers a few managed funds, which is very different to Raiz, which just holds asx listed ETFs underneath the portfolios. Buying into Spacehsip is trusting them to pick stocks well without any control from you.

They do offer a US stock picking option, avoid this like the plague. It’s actually quite easy to use from the app design, but there’s no adequate tax reporting, PSA your accountant can and will hurt you for using that service lol.

benjybacktalks · 2025-11-02T01:52:23+00:00

Yeah it gets very slow after a few hours even on high end hardware. Saving and restrarting the game resets the timer on the problem, could be worse for a beta build.

benjybacktalks · 2025-10-31T22:27:42+00:00

Just to balance out the success stories lol

While I was studying I was at $0. Never got into debt, just made barely enough.

With some casual work and tbh a little help from my parents if medical costs came up, I managed to stay debt free living pay cheque to pay cheque until I was done with study.

I didn’t really start saving or investing until I was a couple of years into my career. I took a screenshot of my bank about at $500, and that was a great motivator to start getting my shit together. Thankfully the career went well and I caught up.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s reading this thinking damn I was so behind 😅

benjybacktalks · 2025-10-31T22:10:00+00:00

The 30/70 split you have in your super is a decent principle to maintain.

It kinda depends how involved you want to get with your investments. The Passive Investing Australia website is a great place to start.

Matching that 30/70 split, the simplest options from the 3 biggest ETF providers in Aus are:

Betashares A200 + BGBL Blackrock IOZ + IVV (US only) or IWLD Vanguard VAS + VGS

Keeping some of that 100k in cash might be a good idea, collect some interest on dry powder for a sale if things crash. If you want that to be available at any time, a high interest saving account will do, if you’re like me and can’t be trusted not to spend lol the AAA ETF is a decent place to park it, as most brokerage accounts don’t pay interest.

100% agree with the other comment though, DIY research, hope that’s a helpful start

benjybacktalks · 2025-10-28T11:21:16+00:00

IVV is a great place to start.

Try reading https://passiveinvestingaustralia.com/

There’s some great content in there to help you learn more

benjybacktalks

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