u/SirSighalot

I have never seen this site melt down harder and on a more regular basis than on this issue, even the Voice didn't have them melting down this hard.

Go on literally any sub and there will be a post by some person in absolute tears, desperate and freaking out about the fact that people are looking to vote a way they don't want them to (in a democracy). Then there will be a new one posted an hour or two later just repeating all the exact same things.

And any time they ask someone to explain why, and the person does so in completely valid reasons, they just bulk downvote them and ignore what they are saying and insult them as being dumb or whatever.

Some of the absolute hysterics about what they seem to think One Nation are or will actually do is hysterical too, they all just go on & on with the exact same copy-pasted talking points about bots, 'stupid people', Gina, 'voting against their own interests', on and on. I don't know if they are just shilling or they actually believe these things, but it's amusing either way.

And the funniest thing is that the more anti-One-Nation posts that get posted, their polling seems to rise higher and higher, giving them more free exposure & achieving the opposite effect. Truly one of the funniest things I have seen on here.

I know the conventional wisdom is just 'buy into a diversified global index fund and hold forever', but can't help shake the feeling that is based on a world that was continuing to grow and that 'past performance is no indicator of future performance' might be applying here.

There are so many headwinds economically globally from a growth perspective, including the fact that global populations (when population growth is what powered a lot of the economic returns of businesses in Aus but also worldwide just by virtue of creating more consumers) are going to plateau.

Plus higher interest rates for longer, huge debt levels in most countries, people having fewer kids, AI potential for job losses, local tax changes making investing in shares worse, blah blah.

So given the mortgage offset account is a guaranteed, tax-free, safe return, and given the increased hurdle rates in the market you'd need to achieve to beat it, can anyone persuade me why dumping extra $$ into the offset isn't the best way to go moving forward? Especially when feels like the "guaranteed 10% return from shares" expectation might be a bit of a relic of the past.

god forbid we can get some meagre points to buy the odd small thing by running literally every household purchase through a credit card...

Dear X,

The Reserve Bank of Australia is making changes to Australia's card payment system which will affect how card benefits are provided to customers.

As part of our ongoing review of our products and rewards program, we're closing the CommBank Awards program, and making some changes to your credit card features and benefits. Any Awards Points you don't redeem by the time the Awards Program closes, will be converted to CommBank Yello points.

These changes will affect your Smart Awards credit card ending in XXXX.

To support these changes, we're updating the Awards Program Terms and Conditions on 28 September 2026. We're also updating your Credit Card contract, including the CommBank Credit Card Conditions of Use, your Schedule of Credit Card Particulars, and related insurance, with changes taking effect on 29 September 2026.

Writing this to ask as most of the info that turned up after searching this topic is from over a year or more ago

For those who have added a granny flat in Aus to your back yard, what did your end total cost end up being? And how big was it/what features did it have ideally please? Oh and roughly how long did the whole thing take?

Just trying to get a sense of what range we might be looking at before we go through the painful process of getting quotes

Cheers

Writing this to ask as most of the info that turned up after searching this topic is from over a year or more ago

For those who have added a granny flat in Aus to your back yard, what did your end total cost end up being? And how big was it/what features did it have ideally please? Oh and roughly how long did the whole thing take?

Just trying to get a sense of what range we might be looking at before we go through the painful process of getting quotes

Cheers

seems like this place has been suddenly heavily trafficked by people with little to no interest in actual personal finance ever since the budget was announced, more just interested in scoring points for their 'team'?

and that people who bring up any objection to the budget changes based on actual true maths and their own investments get brigaded hard?

then you also get the same handful of users just spamming pro-budget articles daily and who never even comment or actually discuss them, kinda sus

Dunno if this qualifies as 'tinfoil hat' or whatever, but the net effect feels like it's making non-Super investing less appealing for anyone trying to reach financial independence early or semi-retire even in their 50s let alone earlier

You're basically incentivised to keep contributing to Super and work until you can access it, and god knows if the pension age will even stay at the same in future decades without being raised even higher anyway.

If you were trying to maximise Aus labour force participation, income tax revenue, and reduce pension costs, wouldn't you end up designing a system that heavily favours investments you can't touch until preservation age like we have even more now?

kinda depressing feeling having to grind away this brief existence we have working even more with even less of a way out, sigh

Not sure if I am missing something, but new CGT rules seem to reward putting every spare dollar into your home. Isn't that a bit... counterproductive?

investments like shares, ETFs and investment properties become less tax-efficient outside super, while the principal place of residence remains exempt from CGT. So wouldn't most people simply be better off buying the most expensive home they can comfortably afford, or continually upgrading their PPOR?

Seems like we are now telling people "buy the biggest house possible, keep as much wealth as possible inside your PPOR, invest less outside housing".

How does that make the economy or innovation & similar etc more productive? After the initial shock wears off & this becomes common knowledge won't it then just encourage people to bid more for houses all over again?

That feels like the opposite of what you'd want if the goal is encouraging productive investment into businesses and the broader economy... 🤷

I don't get it, we aren't the ones who are making the housing issue worse or investing in an asset that takes up something in limited supply for people to live in

in fact many of us avoided doing that because we felt we didn't want to contribute to that problem in the first place

why is there so much hate towards all of us?

accountants must be rubbing their hands together 👀

I purposely avoided investing in property because I considered it unethical to contribute to pushing housing prices even further out of reach for younger Australians.

Instead, I put my small amounts of spare money THAT I EARNED THROUGH HARD WORK in shift work at my hospital into shares and ETFs, investments that help fund businesses & them to raise capital, innovation, jobs, and the broader economy without directly making housing affordability worse. I could have spent that on a new iPhone or Bali holiday instead and YOLO like many people do, but no I wanted to do the 'responsible' thing.

Now these new CGT changes seem to be saying “lol j/k, actually, we're going to hit those investments harder too while still keeping property equal to them, something something housing trustmebro.”

So what exactly were people supposed to do? If you bought investment properties, you got years of tax advantages, leverage from bank loans, and massive untaxed gains from the housing boom while contributing to housing unaffordability.

If you deliberately stayed out of property for ethical reasons and invested in equities instead, now your savings & long-term investments are being targeted as well... and meanwhile, the core housing incentives and structural shortages remain largely untouched.

Wtf kind of logic is this messaging they are running with?

And no, $250 in two years is not that. Meanwhile, bracket creep is still doing its thing on the $45k to $135k bracket where the bulk of middle Australia sits.

If they're going to be raking in billions by killing property and trust loopholes & making shares worse to "reward effort," why does it feel like workers are getting pocket change while the structural reliance on income tax stays exactly the same?

The amount of cheering for people who are barely even wealthy getting taxed more after these CGT changes is insane, I'm not talking about actual richies and trust fund people in the top 5% or boomers hoarding 20 properties or anything either.

Australia has one of the highest tax rates in the world, massive tax brackets that punish anyone who actually tries to get ahead yet the loudest voices here act like anyone who cracked $150k salary, lucked out and bought a property before 2022 by pure chance, or dares to invest their money in shares instead of taking trips to Bali must be a moustache twirling billionare.

The tall poppy syndrome is off the charts, cheering for literally just average semi-successful professional workers or younger aspirational people to pay more tax. Success isn't celebrated on this site AT ALL, it's interrogated, resented, and torn down.

what a depressing and spiteful platform.