Nanozine wrote: Wed Oct 22, 2025 5:40 pm
1. Country of residence: Australia2. International lifestyle: Currently no plans to change residency but would like some flexibility (am considering FHSS but will probably not be aiming to max it out currently)
3. Age: 20
4. Desired asset allocation: 100% equity w/ emergency savings unless otherwise deemed too risky. Currently looking to invest ~25-30k P.A
5. Currency: AUD, considering American and international markets (30/70)
6. Emergency funds: 12k in parent’s mortgage account but have minimal mandatory expenses.
7. Debt: 11.7k HECS, most likely will be 25-30k after graduation
8. Current retirement assets: Few hundred dollars of mandatory super
Just starting to get into investing and am looking to buy into ETFs. Have read most of the passiveinvestingaustralia.com articles and landed on Webull for ASX due to $0 brokerage, deposit and withdrawal fees, and IBKR for any foriegn markets due to their low forex rates. My main questions are as follows:
a. How should I pick which ETFs to invest in? I’ve been looking for low fees so far but other than that I’m not sure what to look out for. Also, what services are good for searching through different ETFs? The ones on Vanguard and IBKR have been bad for finding ETF fees.
b. Should I try to build my own ETF portfolio with similar asset allocations to https://passiveinvestingaustralia.com/t … portfolio/ or just use the exact portfolio they recommended. Would like to minimise fees and if possible optimise returns. VAS and VGS do seem like what I’m looking for but if possible I would like to reduce fees further e.g if I decided to allocate some funds to VOO’s 0.03%. Am also considering the leveraged GHHF.
c. I watched this video about Dimensional funds and they do seem interesting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfknibBat2A. Are they worth considering or are the higher fees not worth it? The financial theory about risk premiums presented seems sound and I learnt a decent amount from the channel’s other videos.
d. Is it worth taking the Student Start up loan for investing into ETFs? I am eligible for it. AFAIK HECS is the lowest interest-rate debt you’ll get and it seems like a relatively save bet that the market will grow faster than the HECS indexation rate but there is still risk and everyone I’ve asked about it so far thinks it’s a questionable idea. Maybe tax makes it not worth it?
e. How do you optimise these ETF investments for tax? And any tax and super tips just in general? I’m aware of the tax brackets, FHSS and the gov super co-contribution but anything else is very welcome. Vaguely know about concessional/non-concessional super contributions from pasinvaus but I’m still don’t quite understand exactly how the tax benefit works.
Sorry for the wall of text and thank you for any help.
a. Set your goals first, then choose which accounts to use for which goals, then choose an asset allocation for each goal, THEN (and only then) choose the ETFs that give you that asset allocation.
b. What asset allocation should you use? Pick something reasonable, fund it adequately, and stick with it. But don’t try to find the perfect asset allocation. It doesn’t exist. It can only be known in retrospect.
c. Generally not worth paying the advisory fee if you don’t otherwise value the advisor, but now you can get DFA ETFs (and Avantis ETFs) without paying an advisory fee. I’ve decided it is worth it for my US small value and international small value holdings. Others may decide differently. Certainly not some huge mistake to use DFA funds.
d. Not generally a fan of margin investing, but if you need to take that risk to reach your goals that sounds like relatively attractive debt.
e. Not familiar enough with AUS tax system to really answer that one, but learn as you go and do pay attention to tax-efficiency. I know lots of tricks to use in the US tax system and I bet you’ll learn a bunch about the AUS tax system too. I just don’t know what they are.
