Tag: GGUS

Buy a House vs Invest in ETFs

This is a common dilemma. You are saying up money and want to know if it is better to buy a house and live in it or invest in ETFs and rent (also known as rentvesting).  Personally I would invest in ETFs. The reason why is because the key difference between the two options is you pay far higher taxes when you buy a house.

For example, if you buy a house then you’re need to pay stamp duty. On a $1 million house that is roughly $57k in stamp duty, which will reduce your net worth. Assuming you save up a $200k deposit, then right after you buy your house your net worth will be $143k whereas if you simply keep your money in ETFs you’d still be at 200k.

However, an argument can be made that if you buy a house, because you have borrowed money to buy $1m worth of asset then you have leveraged exposure, which moves you up the risk-reward curve (also known as the efficient frontier). If you save $200k and invest it in ETFs, if there is a 10% increase, you have made $20k. However, if you have purchased a $1m house and it goes up 10% then you have made $200k. However, what is misleading about this comparison is that it compares apples with oranges, that is, it is comparing leveraged real estate vs unleveraged ETFs. To compare apples with apples, you need to compare leveraged real estate vs leveraged ETFs. Leverage does not increase returns without any consequences. Leverage increases risk, which may result in higher returns.

You can move up the risk-reward curve with ETFs simply by reallocating a portion of your ETFs into internally leveraged ETFs e.g. GEAR or GGUS. Another option is to invest in higher risk niche ETFs (e.g. ROBO or TECH) to move up the risk-reward curve. The benefit of buying higher risk ETFs is that there are no mandatory monthly mortgage payments or, if you take out a margin loan, margin calls. The effect of leverage is handled by the fund itself and there is no obligation for you to pay anything.

Gearing into equities is expensive before tax but cheap after tax

Another way to move up the risk-reward curve is to take out a margin loan and buy ETFs with it. The downside to taking out a margin loan is higher interest rate compared to home loans. According to Canstar, the cheapest margin loan rate is 5.20% from Westpac whereas the cheapest home loan it is 3.49% from Reduce Home Loans. However, if you buy a home to live in, the mortgage debt is not tax deductible, but the margin loan debt is tax deductible, i.e. you can negatively gear into ETFs by taking out a margin loan, which effectively lowers your interest rate by your margin tax rate. Assuming you earn between $87k and $180k and face a 37% margin tax rate then rather than pay 5.20% interest rate you are effectively paying 3.27% which is in fact lower than the home loan. If you have chosen to leverage using internally geared ETFs, because the fund manager has high bargaining power, he or she is able to get low interest rates anyway. According to the GEAR and GGUS brochure from Betashares, “the fund uses its capacity as a wholesale investor to borrow at significantly lower interest rates than those available directly to individual investors.”

Another advantage of investing shares or ETFs is that Australian shares often pay dividends with attached franking credits (e.g FDIV pays 100% franked dividends), which lowers you tax burden even further.

Capital gains tax has little impact

Even though living in a home does not make you eligible for negative gearing, you are eligible for capital gains tax exemption. However, capital gains tax is easy to avoid if you buy a hold shares or ETFs. Because capital gains tax is triggered with you sell and because capital gains tax is charged at your marginal tax rate, simply buy and hold and wait until you are retired. When you are retired, you will earn no salary, so your income will drop and your salary will likely face lower income tax, perhaps even being within the tax free threshold. You then sell off shares or ETFs bit by bit when you’re retired, ensuring that you pay little or no CGT.

Low rental yields vs high dividend yields

Now that we have established that ETFs have lower borrwing costs than real estate due to the impact of negative gearing, stamp duty avoidance, and franking credits, a huge argument for investing in ETFs rather than real estate is the huge difference between rental yields and dividend yields. As of right now, a three-bedroom unit in Brunswick East costs $1.3m and has rental yield of 1.42% i.e. around $18.5k in rent per year. However, as of right now, Commonwealth Bank shares are paying gross dividend yield of 8.6%. This means that if you have $1.3m, then rather than buying the Brunswick East unit and living in it, you can simply take out a margin loan, invest $1.3m all in CBA, and then receive $110k in dividend income per year. After income tax and franking credits, this will be around $90k. After paying rent of $18.5k you have roughly $70k per year extra simply by using ETFs.

Not only do you get $70k per year extra thanks to the extreme spread between rental and dividend yields, but the benefits for ETFs are magnified even further because of lower post-tax borrowing costs.

Using one Brunswick East unit vs one high dividend paying stock (CBA) is an extreme example. Not all stocks are the same and not all residential real estate is the same. However, the general trend is indeed that rental yields in Australia are low and dividend yields on Australian stock are high. If you bring up a list of all properties on the BrickX fractional property platform and sort by rental yield, the highest yield property, a one-bedroom unit in Enmore NSW only delivers a rental yield of 2.76% with the average rental yield about 1.5%. However, a broad ASX200 ETF such as STW provides gross dividend yield of 5%.

 

 

 

Why You Don’t Need Debt

I do have debt, but it’s a small amount. For example, I have credit cards, but I always pay it off before there is interest. I also have a margin loan, but I have this so I can buy easily when the opportunity presents itself, and I try to pay off any debt quickly.

Many people talk about how debt is a tool for making money, and theoretically this can be true. For example, if you borrow at 4% from the bank and invest in something an asset, e.g. an investment property that makes 8% then you make a profit. However, if you borrow money from the bank to invest, you need to ask yourself why the bank didn’t invest in that investment itself. The answer is that it is risky.

Banks have a certain level of risk they are willing to take. The property could have gone up 8% but there is no guarantee that it will. If there were a guarantee that the property would go up 8% then the bank would simply invest in it rather than let you borrow money to invest in it. By letting someone else borrow money to invest in the house, the bank effectively transfers risk. If the bank vets the borrower to make sure they e.g. have high enough income, etc and if there were clauses in the contract enabling the bank to seize assets in the event of default, then that 4% the bank makes is almost risk free.

But don’t you need to take on more risk to make more return?

Risk appetite is a very personal topic because everyone has different risk appetite. Generally speaking, it is recommended that young people take on more risk because they have greater ability (and time) to recover should something go wrong. This is the main principle behind the “age in bonds” rule, which states that you own your age in risk-free investments, i.e. government bonds. For example, if you are 25 you should own 25% of your wealth in government bonds.

However, if you’re a 25-year-old who has higher risk appetite, the “age in bonds” rule can be modified to e.g. (age – 25)% in bonds. This slightly more complex rule states that the 25-year-old would have zero in government bonds, which would increases to 1% when he or she is 26 and so forth.

A 25-year-old who has no government bonds and puts all his or her wealth into, say, the stock market, has a high risk appetite, but more risk can be taken if he borrows to invest.

You don’t need to borrow to take on more risk

However, even if someone does no borrow, he can still take on more risk. This can be achieved by investing in internally leveraged ETFs (e.g. GEAR and GGUS) as well as investing in more risky investments, such as emerging markets (e.g. VGE), small caps (e.g. ISO), tech stocks (e.g. TECH and ROBO), and cryptocurrency (e.g. bitcoin, ether, or litecoin).

Right now bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general are making headlines because of spectacular growth. Had you purchased $10k worth of bitcoin in 2013, you’d be a millionaire today. However, everyone knows that bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general are risky, and when you hear stories about people borrowing money from their homes and putting it all into cryptocurrencies, most people think this is stupid. It is not that it is stupid but rather than their risk appetite is very high.

However, the example of leveraging into cryptocurrencies shows that you don’t need to borrow in order to gain access to high risk and potentially higher returns. If you simply invest in a riskier asset class, e.g. cryptocurrencies, you already increase risk and the potential for higher returns.

Debt is slavery – the psychological benefits of having no debt

I would argue that there is no need to borrow to increase risk and return because you can simply reallocate your money to risker assets (unless you believe that leveraging into bitcoin is not enough risk).

The benefits of having no debt goes far beyond the lower risk you’re exposed to. Debt is slavery. Happiness is an elusive goal. It is almost impossible for you to know what will make you happy in the future. You may think a particular job, relationship, car, holiday, or house will make you happy, but once you actually have it, you may not be happy. Trying to predict what will make you happy is hard, which is why the best way we humans can be happy to experiment and try out different things. In order to be able to try or experiment with different things that will make us happy, we must have the freedom to do so, and you don’t have that freedom if you’re forced to work in order to pay debt.

Even though freedom does not guarantee happiness, freedom is the best assurance we have of being happy.

Freedom comes from reducing your obligations. Obligations are mostly financial obligations (debt) but can be non-financial as well.

Ultimately it depends on your risk appetite

As I mentioned earlier, everyone has a different risk appetite. I have a fairly high risk appetite myself, but there are limits. For example, I’m happy to put 5% of my net worth into cryptocurrencies. I invest in certain sector ETFs because I estimate that they will outperform in the future (e.g. I am bullish on the tech sector).

Market fluctuations can result in the value of my ETFs and shares to go down by tens of thousands of dollars and I would sleep fine at night. However, there have been many times in my life when I have gotten carried away with buying too using my margin loan account and regretting it. You know you’re taken on too much risk when you worry about it.

Results don’t matter

The outcomes from investing are probabalistic, not deterministic, so results don’t matter. This is a common investing fallacy. Some guy would claim that he is worth $100 million due to borrowing money to generate wealth and that this is proof that you must use debt in order to become rich. However, this is misleading.

The outcomes from investing are probabalistic, not deterministic.

A person may borrow money to invest and be very successful, but another person may replicate the process, borrow to invest, and lose everything. What happens for one person may not necessarily happen for another person. For example, in 2013, there were many people who stripped money from their homes using home equity lines of credit and invested all that money into bitcoin. Just about everyone called these people stupid, but now they are multimillionaires. Does this mean you should borrow to invest in bitcoin right now? No. Just because bitcoin went up from 2013 to 2017 it doesn’t mean the same thing will happen e.g. from 2018 to 2020. Investing is not deterministic. Luck plays a major role.

Do you need debt?

Suppose you put 100% of your investments into risky areas such as cryptocurrencies, frontier market ETFs, mining stocks, etc. If you feel that this is not enough risk, borrowing to invest may be the answer, but I believe that most people do not want to take on this level of risk.

Where debt may be appropriate is if you having little savings and need to borrow money to invest in something that you are fairly certain is greater than the cost of borrowing, e.g. borrowing money for education and training can in most circumstances be a good idea. Even though borrowing money will cost you in interest, you boost your job prospects and your income. If you have savings (or if your parents have savings) then it is better to use those savings to educate or train yourself, but if you don’t have this, you need to go into debt as a necessary evil.

unsplash-logoAlice Pasqual