930 super, invest or offset, couples & money, negative gearing change explained + more

**Glen James** (0:06)
Today on the show, we are talking, it's actually a bit, I don't know, when I put these things together, sometimes I'll see a question, and then the next question was like, oh, there's a bit of a theme here.
But we're talking mat leave, what are we doing with our financial goals on mat leave? Couples and money, how are we managing money? What if there is a couple with a relationship age gap, which is common, it's out there, and investing brokerage accounts. There was a bit of a scandal in the Facebook group for the community segment of the week, and we'll get to that very soon. But I am joined today by Rachelle Kroon, host of the This Is Property podcast, and my co-author of the book, The Quick-Start Guide to Your First Property. Rachelle, welcome back to the pod studio.

**Rachelle Kroon** (0:51)
Thank you.

**Glen James** (0:52)
You're ready to have a crack at this?

**Rachelle Kroon** (0:54)
I'm really ready.

**Glen James** (0:55)
All right. Do you want to have a look at Anonymous? And we'll get the ball rolling.

**Rachelle Kroon** (0:59)
Okay. Anonymous is 36 currently on maternity leave and receiving 12 weeks of paid parental leave plus a pro rata bonus. I'm planning to return to full-time work in February next year. I earn 140,000 a year plus bonus, share portfolio 50,000, super portfolio 160,000, a joint mortgage of 600,000, the property is valued at 850,000, a joint offset with 350,000 in it.
We're planning to sell our current home and buy another property for around 1.5 million.
If you were in my position, would you, one, salary sacrifice into super to reach the 32,500 concessional contributions cap, two, invest extra funds into ETFs, three, keep the additional money in the offset account, especially with a larger mortgage on the horizon. For context, I'm a long-term investor and generally don't sell my shares once I've bought them. Keen to hear what others would do and the reasoning behind it. Thanks.

**Glen James** (2:07)
A lot's going on here and I'm going to talk everyone through my process of thinking about questions when they come in. More from a financial advisor type vibe or what will Glen do type vibe, then I'll get Rach's view. The first thing is when people put questions in the Facebook and Grieve and We Love It, there is just so much context that isn't missing. For example, what's the partner earn? What's the partner's age?
We want to know, you talk about salary sacrificing to super to the concessional cap. Well, what amount is there between your current 12% SG and the cap? I've just kind of had to assume around 15 grand based on 140k income. And even on that, we don't know if that 140k is a package or base plus super plus bonus. So, lots going on here. I don't know if it's the first child or the second child or the fifth. We don't know that.
We also want to know how this 350 of cash got in the joint offset account. Was it an inheritance? Was it saved? Was it? Who knows? I'm assuming it was just saved over the years because clearly they're crushing it.

**Rachelle Kroon** (3:23)
They are crushing it.

**Glen James** (3:24)
I remember commenting on this in the Facebook group. And I pretty much wrote along the lines of, what about we pause for five minutes, get you back to work, then we'll put a strategy in place. Like we're literally on mat leave. This episode is up at the end of July. We were recording at mid July. We recall within two weeks of things going up like in this-

**Rachelle Kroon** (3:42)
You've never been a high performing woman on maternity leave. We, our heads go a hundred miles an hour. I know.

**Glen James** (3:48)
And this is why I want to get your view on this because number one, our show, the listeners have a skew towards being high performing financial people, right? Yeah. I get that. I love that. But why, like, just in my mind, take the foot off the gas for 10 minutes, just accrue cash for the next six months against your offset, like on the mortgage. Then when you're back to work, then when the budget resettles, because we've got another child or on maternity leave, what's the actual figures look like? And they might know the answer to that. Yeah. But my thoughts, this is what others would do, and the reasoning would be absolutely nothing. We build cash. We enjoy being a mum for the second time or the fifth time or first time.
And then we go, okay, what does it look like? And then secondly, we're planning to sell our current home and buy another property.