u/Cunce_NZ

Decided to finally embrace FIF tax instead of doing everything possible to avoid it.

I’ve got a Hatch portfolio under my partner’s name as well as shes not using her FIF allowance. She uses Sharesies for ETFs, although I honestly hate their fees. I use Hatch for international investments and then InvestNow for managed funds and ETFs.

A couple of years ago I put around 49.5k into her Hatch account and deliberately left it there so it stayed under the FIF threshold. Reading forums online, everyone seems obsessed with avoiding FIF at all costs. But recently I saw a couple of comments saying just embrace it and stop letting the tax tail wag the dog, and that kind of changed my thinking.

So I’ve decided bugger it, I’m just going to go for it on my personal account. This account is about 12 months old now and has had some pretty solid returns.

From what I understand, even if you’ve got 100k invested, under the FDR method you’re effectively paying tax on 5% deemed income, then your marginal tax rate on that. I’m on the 39% bracket, but when you actually do the maths, it’s not exactly life changing money. A couple of grand added to the tax bill on a decent-sized overseas portfolio doesn’t really seem like the end of the world.

I’m not touching the other investments sitting in InvestNow or my partner’s Hatch account, but on my personal one I’ve decided to stop worrying about it and just crack on!

Anyone else just embraced FIF tax and moved on with life?

Hey everyone, curious what people here are doing for emergency funds.

For context, I’m in my 30s, have a mortgage, savings, investments, and around $300k+ invested overall. I’ve followed a lot of Dave Ramsey-style principles over the years and they’ve honestly worked pretty well for me so far.

One thing I still go back and forth on though is the emergency fund itself.

Right now I keep roughly 6 months of living expenses sitting in a savings account with ANZ. It’s safe and accessible, but at the same time part of me wonders whether that’s too conservative when that money could be invested instead.

So I’m curious:

How many months of expenses do people actually keep?
Are most people holding it in cash/savings accounts?
Or are you investing part/all of it and just relying on being able to liquidate investments if needed?
Is 6 months still considered pretty standard these days, or are people leaning more toward 3 months?

I know offset mortgages are a popular option too, but personally I don’t really like the idea of suddenly paying interest on that money if I need to use it temporarily.

Mainly just interested in hearing different approaches and the reasoning behind them.

Decided to embrace FIF tax.

Emergency Funds