939b AMA with GJ: rental ethics, money in relationships, speccy plays, how we make $ + more

Glen James (0:06)

Today on the show, I am doing an AMA. I asked you in the Facebook group, if you've got any questions for me, it could be about anything. There's a fair bit in here, so we're gonna get straight into it. If you do wanna join the Facebook group, money money money, the code word, because we get a lot of spam and bot accounts, the code word will be deck, because I'm looking at my stream deck here, D-E-C-K, code word deck will know that you're not a spam or a bot account. Meredith in the group said, Love some thoughts on, I guess, money philosophy, balancing profit versus value slash ethics. Quick examples, sustainability slash company values versus profit affecting share prices. Property prices slash rents, decreasing to ease pressure as a landlord. I've always enjoyed your take on ethics and giving back. I thought it would be interesting to hear your in-depth, your take in-depth. So thank you, Meredith, for that. I don't know if I've actually got an in-depth take on philosophy and all this stuff, but your first example about sustainability slash company values versus profit affecting share prices. I don't really, well, I personally don't invest in any type of ethical slash green slash planetary type planet ETFs. I just use broad-based indexes.

And it's interesting to see because if you double-click on some of the ethical funds, with the screening, you're actually surprised what companies are still in there and what the rationality. So when it comes to, I guess, my philosophy around the sustainability slash company values versus profit, I don't really have a dog in that fight because the more you screen out of stuff to invest in, the more you're going to end up with only being able to invest in cash. Weirdly though, just as a note, so there's the VDHG, which is the Vanguard ETF, that is the diversified ETF. The version of that that they've used in their Vanguard Superfund actually screens out armaments and some of the SIN stuff, the tobacco-y stuff and naughty stuff. So they have made a change to that. I don't know why they've done that. I don't know if it's a marketing thing around ESG. I don't know if it is a trustee thing. But yeah, it's interesting if you have a look at the difference between VEHG in that Vanguard Superoption versus the one on the shelf. They've screened out a bit of naughty stuff.

So yeah, I really don't have an in-depth philosophy. I don't individually direct invest in direct shares. Like I don't buy tobacco companies or drone companies or Lockheed Martin Direct or anything like that.

I've just taken the view that I'll just invest in broad-based ETFs. Because if you have a look at the number of companies that are in an index for the long term, there's only a real handful that does the heavy lifting.

But just on this property prices slash rents decreasing to ease pressure as a landlord, like number one, I own properties. My own view is, well, I'm not a charity. And if the, you know, I don't have any obligation to provide free or really cheap accommodation. Like I just, I don't, I'm collecting market-based rent for that property. But in my own life, I've kind of got the view that, and I'll give you a real life example. Recently one of the properties came up for rent. It was $700 per week.

The agent was like you could probably get $740 to $750 rent for that property. And then I did my own analysis and I reckon I could have got $790, like pretty confidently. But if we have a look, yeah, so I could have easily turned around and increased the rent to $790. But yeah, that's like a 12.86% increase.

And I'm just not interested in doing that. So we went back and I said, look, what about you do $740 and then $700 to $740. I'm being really lazy.

$740 is a 5.7% increase. So that's getting up there, right?

And this is coming off a, this was a two year lease. So I had an increase through the rent on this property for two years. We'd locked it in for two years. So on a human level, in terms of my philosophy and balancing profit versus values and ethics, I wasn't comfortable turning around and slapping $790 on there, at like 13%.

I wasn't comfortable doing the $750, like the top end of what the agent suggested. So we did the $740 and then they came back to me. They came back to me, the tenant, which is fine. I think if you're a tenant, you should always have a negotiation and going for that. They came back and said, $740 is too much. What about $715? And at that point, it's like, well, no, I'm not doing that because, you know, I'm just not like, it was what's, $700 to $715.