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Hi there, I am 49 and have been investing small amounts for about a year. 60% IVV 30% IOZ 10% Hack; do you think I am making a mistake by investing in ETFs instead of directing these funds to super/ mortgage? I do make additional contributions through salary sacrifice to my super which is close to 250k, and hubby and I are aiming to pay mortgage in the next 6-7 years 🙂 thank you 🙏
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Mila Thomas
Asked on 11 July 2025
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Hi Mila, I am the same age as you. Dont take this as specific advise however just as an example here is what I did:
- Pay off the Mortgage as a priority. Its as good as erning your interest rate in investments and its risk free. Sounds like you have a plan to do that and you want to aim to pay it off before you retire (the sooner the better). Once paid you can keep the loan open by not completely paying it out, that way you can access the loan facility if you ever need to down the track. I used a LOC account so that if I needed to I could access those funds in the future. You just need to be disiplined and not touch those funds unless for good reason.
- Pay extra into Super. There are very few structures that offer better tax benefits for most people than Super. I control my own super through a super fund. So I choose where I want to invest my money (ETFs) within the super fund structure. To date I have well outperformed most super fund Balanced and High Growth funds consistantly and my fees are much lower. This is not for everyone however if you are a diciplined investor it can add a substantial benefit to your balance over time.
- Create a protfolio outside of Super that you can tap into before retirement age. To do this I used my equity to get a second Mortgage account against my equity. The account is seperate and is only used for investing to keep everything seperate for Tax purposes. The benefit is my interest rate is much lower than an «investment loan» and I can claim a tax deduction against the interest. I then ensure that the dividends from my portfolio cover the interest payments (less tax). So I keept paying down my home loan while recycling the equity back out to build a portfolio that in turn covered the additional interest payments.
This is not for everyone but let me just say this startegy worked exteremely well for me with time in the market. Eary on returns were minimal however over time with compounding the returns started to snowba
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Super has much better tax benefits for anyone with income >$18K (I believe).
So if you aren’t planning on retiring in the next 11 years, your contributions will work harder if invested in a high growth super option. (High growth is mostly shares so is more comparable in risk to share ETFs invested outside super).
If you anticipate you need to access the money sooner than age 65 (when you can access super without leaving your job), then keep it out of super.
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