Rule 7 in Investopoly was direct: only invest in investment-grade property. Eight years on, the core of that still holds, but Stuart has sharpened the method and genuinely changed his mind about one part of it.

In this episode, he explains why Wealth by Design reframes the rule from "invest in investment-grade property" to something more demanding: own property with enduring, scarce and growing demand. It's a shift from a label to a test—what makes an asset something people will always want, and keep wanting, decades from now.

Stuart is candid about the one 2018 position he's since reversed: the old line that it's "never a bad time to buy." He now believes price and cycle matter more than he once allowed, and explains why. He introduces the idea of buying for the future buyer rather than today's, choosing property whose appeal will still be scarce and sought-after when you eventually sell.

He closes with a simple forced-hold test you can run on any property this week, a quick way to pressure-test whether what you own or are about to buy truly has demand that endures.

Our most popular free guides:

Over the years we've written hundreds of articles. These three bring our best thinking together on the topics that matter most right now: choosing a super fund, debt recycling, and navigating the new tax changes.

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My new book, Wealth by Design, is out now:

Buy online or in bookstores. The ebook is available now, audiobook coming soon.

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Important

This podcast provides general information about finance, tax and credit. It doesn't take into account your specific objectives, financial situation or needs, so you need to assess whether it's relevant to your circumstances before acting on it. If you're not sure, speak to a licensed, trustworthy professional.

You can download the full report, including the four decision flowcharts and annual review checklist, here: https://prosolution.com.au/best-super-fund-australia/

Most people choose a super fund by looking at which fund produced the highest return last year. But that is the wrong question.

The better question is: which investment strategy and super structure is most likely to deliver the best after-fee, after-tax outcome over the next 20 to 40 years, given your circumstances?

In this episode, I explain why choosing the best super fund involves two separate decisions: how your money is invested and which structure holds those investments. I compare pooled funds, Member Direct options, wrap platforms and SMSFs, and explain how to assess each using four key factors: transparency, tax effectiveness, cost, and flexibility and control.

I also discuss why “Balanced” investment options can be misleading, the risks of excessive exposure to Australian shares and unlisted assets, when greater control may be worthwhile, and the insurance mistake you must avoid before changing funds.

Finally, I explain why this should be an annual review rather than a one-off decision. As your balance, investment horizon, fees and insurance needs change, the best structure for you may change too.

Our most popular free guides:

Over the years we've written hundreds of articles. These three bring our best thinking together on the topics that matter most right now: choosing a super fund, debt recycling, and navigating the new tax changes.

Download them here

My new book, Wealth by Design, is out now:

Buy online or in bookstores. The ebook is available now, audiobook coming soon.

Got a question for the podcast?

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Important

This podcast provides general information about finance, tax and credit. It doesn't take into account your specific objectives, financial situation or needs, so you need to assess whether it's relevant to your circumstances before acting on it. If you're not sure, speak to a licensed, trustworthy professional.

Three thoughtful listeners, each already doing a lot right and looking for the sharpest next move. A 49-year-old single police officer, no mortgage, $810k in super, a growing ETF portfolio, asks the perennial question: buy an investment property, keep doing what's working, or borrow to invest further in shares? Stuart weighs the options against her plan to retire at 57.

Slav returns with two connected questions. Having ridden the "rising tide" to 40%+ gains on regional Queensland properties and leveraged into a Melbourne outer suburb, he wants to know how you actually track a changing cycle to decide when to sell and reinvest in stronger locations. His second is timely and unsettling: with AI disrupting white-collar work, how sustainable is a 70–80% LVR portfolio if both incomes disappeared for an extended stretch?

Finally, "Celeste," 44 and mortgage-free in Kingscliff, feels stuck in analysis paralysis. Is it too late to buy property, or should surplus keep flowing into ETFs and super? She also asks how to structure children's investment bonds, and whether to draw on ETF income or shift assets into super in retirement.

Grounded, practical answers for real crossroads.

Our most popular free guides:

Over the years we've written hundreds of articles. These three bring our best thinking together on the topics that matter most right now: choosing a super fund, debt recycling, and navigating the new tax changes.

Download them here

My new book, Wealth by Design, is out now:

Buy online or in bookstores. The ebook is available now, audiobook coming soon.

Got a question for the podcast?

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Important

This podcast provides general information about finance, tax and credit. It doesn't take into account your specific objectives, financial situation or needs, so you need to assess whether it's relevant to your circumstances before acting on it. If you're not sure, speak to a licensed, trustworthy professional.

Pre-order Wealth by Design Here

Golden Rule 6 was simple: invest in the share market using low-cost index funds. Eight years on, that argument has been comprehensively won, arguably too well. Stuart charts the scale of the shift: the ASX ETF market has ballooned from 133 funds to more than 450, and from $36 billion to over $350 billion. Indexing went from contrarian to consensus.

But that very boom created new traps. When everything gets rebranded as an "ETF," the label stops telling you much about what you're actually buying. In Wealth by Design, Stuart tightens the rule from "index funds" to evidence-based investing, a sharper standard for a crowded market.

He explains why not every product wearing the ETF badge deserves your money, and how to interrogate the index sitting underneath a fund before you buy it, since the benchmark quietly determines your returns. He's also candid about two positions he has genuinely reversed since 2018, updating his thinking as the evidence moved.

The episode closes with the five filters every fund in your portfolio should pass, giving you a practical checklist to separate genuinely sound investments from cleverly marketed ones.

Our most popular free guides:

Over the years we've written hundreds of articles. These three bring our best thinking together on the topics that matter most right now: choosing a super fund, debt recycling, and navigating the new tax changes.

Download them here

My new book, Wealth by Design, is out now:

Buy online or in bookstores. The ebook is available now, audiobook coming soon.

Got a question for the podcast?

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Important

This podcast provides general information about finance, tax and credit. It doesn't take into account your specific objectives, financial situation or needs, so you need to assess whether it's relevant to your circumstances before acting on it. If you're not sure, speak to a licensed, trustworthy professional.

Read Full Blog Here

Pre-order Wealth by Design Here

You can't build wealth unless you spend less than you earn and invest the difference, which makes cash flow the most fundamental discipline of all. The trouble was always effort. For years, Stuart's method was to hand-categorise three months of transactions a deliberate compromise, since analysing two or three years by hand was simply unrealistic. But three months is a snapshot, not a picture: it misses the annual rhythm of holidays, school fees and insurance renewals, and it can't reveal a trend.

In this episode, Stuart explains how AI has quietly removed that barrier. Using a tool like Claude to categorise transactions turns hours of tedium into minutes, so you can finally see the real shape of your spending, consistency, and the slow "drift" of lifestyle inflation that hides over a single quarter. He shares how his prompt works, plus two things AI still can't do for you, and the privacy step to take before uploading a single line of data.

But knowing your number is only half the job. Insight without structure rarely changes behaviour, so Stuart lays out the three automation principles pay yourself first, isolate discretionary spending, hide your savings, that make good decisions the default and willpower irrelevant.

Our most popular free guides:

Over the years we've written hundreds of articles. These three bring our best thinking together on the topics that matter most right now: choosing a super fund, debt recycling, and navigating the new tax changes.

Download them here

My new book, Wealth by Design, is out now:

Buy online or in bookstores. The ebook is available now, audiobook coming soon.

Got a question for the podcast?

Email us at [email protected]

Interested in working with our team?

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Important

This podcast provides general information about finance, tax and credit. It doesn't take into account your specific objectives, financial situation or needs, so you need to assess whether it's relevant to your circumstances before acting on it. If you're not sure, speak to a licensed, trustworthy professional.

Pre-order Wealth by Design Here

Five listeners at very different life stages, each wrestling with where to direct capital next. Perth couple "Amelia and Ivan," with two investment properties and a baby on the way, weigh three distinct strategies: hold and sell later to fund a renovation, swap a townhouse for a better-taxed property, or add a third and keep them all. Stuart works through the trade-offs and what a year or two off work really means for the plan.

A 26-year-old in Sydney real estate asks how to play the long game: buy a first home to live in and later upsize, or turn it into a rental? A 40-year-old in Ocean Reef with a healthy offset balance wonders whether an investment property makes sense now, whether to deploy cash or super first, and whether a trust is premature. And "Gus, the country copper," living rent-free with strong super, debates whether to keep funnelling surplus into shares via his trust or gear into another property purely for leverage.

Plus a genuinely useful technical question on inflation: how to treat it in wealth modelling, and whether to convert future assets back into today's dollars to track real progress.

Our most popular free guides:

Over the years we've written hundreds of articles. These three bring our best thinking together on the topics that matter most right now: choosing a super fund, debt recycling, and navigating the new tax changes.

Download them here

My new book, Wealth by Design, is out now:

Buy online or in bookstores. The ebook is available now, audiobook coming soon.

Got a question for the podcast?

Email us at [email protected]

Interested in working with our team?

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Subscribe to my weekly blog:

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Important

This podcast provides general information about finance, tax and credit. It doesn't take into account your specific objectives, financial situation or needs, so you need to assess whether it's relevant to your circumstances before acting on it. If you're not sure, speak to a licensed, trustworthy professional.

Pre-order Wealth by Design Here

This one is different. Of all the rules in the series, Rule 5 is the first where Stuart admits he has genuinely changed his mind, not refined a nuance, but rethought the core idea.

In Investopoly, he taught the textbook approach: blend negatively correlated assets to smooth out portfolio volatility, the classic diversification playbook most investors are told to follow. Eight years and a lot of evidence later, Wealth by Design makes a different case. The real risk controls, he now argues, aren't clever correlations at all—they're quality and price. Own high-quality assets, avoid overpaying, and you've addressed risk at its source rather than papering over it with offsetting volatility.

He reframes the role of defensive assets too. Rather than acting as a permanent volatility damper that quietly drags on long-term returns, they work best as a targeted one-to-three-year spending buffer, enough to ride out a downturn without being forced to sell growth assets at the wrong time. And he explains why long-term returns are far more predictable from starting valuations than most investors appreciate.

An honest, evidence-driven episode about updating your thinking when the data demands it.

Our most popular free guides:

Over the years we've written hundreds of articles. These three bring our best thinking together on the topics that matter most right now: choosing a super fund, debt recycling, and navigating the new tax changes.

Download them here

My new book, Wealth by Design, is out now:

Buy online or in bookstores. The ebook is available now, audiobook coming soon.

Got a question for the podcast?

Email us at [email protected]

Interested in working with our team?

Discover how we can work together

Subscribe to my weekly blog:

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Important

This podcast provides general information about finance, tax and credit. It doesn't take into account your specific objectives, financial situation or needs, so you need to assess whether it's relevant to your circumstances before acting on it. If you're not sure, speak to a licensed, trustworthy professional.

Read Full Blog Here

Pre-order Wealth by Design Here

For decades, negative gearing tipped the scales toward borrowing for an investment property over spending more on your home; investment interest was deductible, home loan interest wasn't. But with negative gearing quarantined and the effective capital gains tax rate climbing from around 20% to closer to 30–35% under the post-2027 indexation regime, that old comparison is dead. In this episode, Stuart rebuilds it from scratch.

The new contest: is a high-income household better off borrowing to upgrade the family home, or borrowing to invest in shares? He models two households starting identically, same income, same $1 million of extra debt, same 18-year repayment, and the result genuinely surprised him. Over 10 years, geared shares edge ahead; over 20, it's a dead heat; over 30, the bigger home wins. The reason is tax leakage: once the debt is repaid, the share portfolio's deductible interest shield vanishes while the home keeps compounding tax-free.

Stuart also walks through six things the model can't capture: liquidity, the willingness to downsize, home growth quality, lifestyle, and explains why, with these settings still politically contested, the smartest move may be to preserve optionality and reassess in 12 to 18 months.

Our most popular free guides:

Over the years we've written hundreds of articles. These three bring our best thinking together on the topics that matter most right now: choosing a super fund, debt recycling, and navigating the new tax changes.

Download them here

My new book, Wealth by Design, is out now:

Buy online or in bookstores. The ebook is available now, audiobook coming soon.

Got a question for the podcast?

Email us at [email protected]

Interested in working with our team?

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Important

This podcast provides general information about finance, tax and credit. It doesn't take into account your specific objectives, financial situation or needs, so you need to assess whether it's relevant to your circumstances before acting on it. If you're not sure, speak to a licensed, trustworthy professional.

Pre-order Wealth by Design Here

Three richly detailed listener situations, three very different crossroads. First, Charles, 51, unemployed, four kids in private school, and a sprawling portfolio spanning a Singapore apartment, an SMSF, regional Queensland property, land parcels and a $500k crypto holding. His question is deceptively simple: in what order should he sell to fund a Melbourne home, and can he actually afford to retire? Stuart untangles the sequencing and confronts the concentration risk head-on.

Next, Matt and his wife in Lugarno, sitting on strong equity after a major renovation but facing single-income pressure with a young family and more children planned. Should they pour surplus into the mortgage, or recommence property investing to ultimately pay the home down faster? We weigh the options against cash flow reality.

Finally, an anonymous single mother of three, a medical professional on the Sunshine Coast, asks how solo parenting reshapes retirement planning. Should she sell underperforming shares into super, lift her contributions, rethink her growth allocation, or consider property despite constrained borrowing capacity?

Honest, numbers-first guidance for anyone wondering whether their strategy genuinely stacks up, and what to prioritise next.

Our most popular free guides:

Over the years we've written hundreds of articles. These three bring our best thinking together on the topics that matter most right now: choosing a super fund, debt recycling, and navigating the new tax changes.

Download them here

My new book, Wealth by Design, is out now:

Buy online or in bookstores. The ebook is available now, audiobook coming soon.

Got a question for the podcast?

Email us at [email protected]

Interested in working with our team?

Discover how we can work together

Subscribe to my weekly blog:

Stay connected here

Important

This podcast provides general information about finance, tax and credit. It doesn't take into account your specific objectives, financial situation or needs, so you need to assess whether it's relevant to your circumstances before acting on it. If you're not sure, speak to a licensed, trustworthy professional.

Pre-order Wealth by Design Here

In this episode, Stuart revisits Golden Rule 4 and admits that half of it has changed. In Investopoly, the advice was to build your asset base, then tilt toward income as retirement approached. Wealth by Design confirms the first half but overturns the second. Here's why.

Stuart makes the case that the real objective isn't income at all; it's after-tax total return and liquidity. He explains why the conventional glide path into conservative, income-heavy assets as you near retirement can quietly backfire, amplifying two risks retirees underestimate: inflation eroding your purchasing power, and longevity outlasting your money. The instinct that feels "safe" may actually be the riskier choice over a multi-decade retirement.

The alternative is what he calls a perpetual portfolio: one structured to keep compounding even as it funds your lifestyle, so you're drawing an income without dismantling the engine that generates it. Stuart walks through the total-return decision filters he uses to judge whether an asset earns its place, and how to think about funding spending without reaching reflexively for yield.

He closes with one simple action you can take this week to start reframing your own strategy.

Our most popular free guides:

Over the years we've written hundreds of articles. These three bring our best thinking together on the topics that matter most right now: choosing a super fund, debt recycling, and navigating the new tax changes.

Download them here

My new book, Wealth by Design, is out now:

Buy online or in bookstores. The ebook is available now, audiobook coming soon.

Got a question for the podcast?

Email us at [email protected]

Interested in working with our team?

Discover how we can work together

Subscribe to my weekly blog:

Stay connected here

Important

This podcast provides general information about finance, tax and credit. It doesn't take into account your specific objectives, financial situation or needs, so you need to assess whether it's relevant to your circumstances before acting on it. If you're not sure, speak to a licensed, trustworthy professional.