r/AUFinance

For a generation, the default Australian financial playbook was: buy a home, leverage up, buy an established investment property, and let negative gearing and the CGT discount subsidize your losses until retirement. Now that the government has systematically targeted both of those levers in a single budget cycle, it feels like the barrier to entry for property has become laughably high compared to liquid equities. For the property bulls on this sub: is there any mathematical justification left to take on an 8.80% variable mortgage for a low-yield rental unit over just pumping cash into a diversified global equities index?

I'm not talking about obvious expensive stuff, but normal everyday items you used to buy without thinking twice.

For me it’s weird seeing basic things slowly move into the maybe next week category because the prices just keep creeping up.

Feels like everyone has that one item now where they look at the shelf price and think nah, not worth it anymore.

What’s yours?

I got asked this at work…would you rather?

A) Affordable houses, but your property stops growing like a money printer

OR

B) Your house keeps exploding in value, but future generations are basically locked out unless they inherit money

What side are you on?

The Treasurer just announced a 30% minimum tax on income distributed from discretionary trusts starting July 2028. This basically kills the strategy of distributing to low-income family members to stay under the 19% or 32% brackets. For those of you with a trust for your share portfolio or small business: are you looking at winding it down, or is the asset protection still worth the "flat tax" hit? Does this make a Corporate Beneficiary (Bucket Company) the only viable move left?

CBA losing nearly $30 billion in value after a profit increase is kind of wild, but honestly the stock had been running insanely hot for years. A lot of people were already saying it was trading more like a US tech company than a bank. Now analysts are warning this could just be the start of a bigger reset across the ASX, especially with money piling into the same big-name stocks through ETFs and super funds.

The 2026 Budget just dropped and it’s a massive shake-up for investors. From July next year, negative gearing is being restricted to new builds only, and the 50% CGT discount is being replaced by inflation-adjusted indexation for established homes. It feels like the Government is finally trying to push capital toward new supply rather than just trading existing houses. What’s everyone’s move- are you pivoting to new builds, or is this the "buy before July" signal for established property?

Hi everyone,

My wife is expecting later this year. We have about 70k in our offset and a mortgage to pay. Mortgage payments are around 4k per month. Take home combined is around 230k py combined.

My wife currently gets a work vehicle provided but when she goes on maternity leave this will need to be handed back. Our only other car is my 20 year old beater. In decent nick but old.

We have been looking at buying a new car before the baby arrives and looking around the 35-40k mark which would significantly deplete our savings.

We are feeling a lot of decision paralysis and just looking for advice on whether we're thinking rationally about this.

With a baby on the way and a reduction in income locked in (probably to about 150-160k py until she goes back to work) would we be better off not buying the car and keeping our offset maxed out.

Thanks in advance for any advice.