Investopoly

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.
My new book is available for pre-order now: Pre-ordering the book will help me get it into bookstores. So please do me a favour - please consider pre-ordering now - links and pre-order bonus are available here: https://prosolution.com.au/book-preorder-bonus

Do you have a question for the podcast? Email us at questions@investopoly.com.au.

If you're interested in working with our team and me, discover how we can work together here: https://prosolution.com.au/family-office-services

If this episode resonated with you, please leave a rating on your favourite podcast platform.

Subscribe to my weekly blog: https://prosolution.com.au/stay-connected

IMPORTANT: This podcast provides general information about finance, taxes, and credit. This means that the content does not consider your specific objectives, financial situation, or needs. It is crucial for you to assess whether the information is suitable for your circumstances before taking any actions based on it. If you find yourself uncertain about the relevance or your specific needs, it is advisable to seek advice from a licensed and trustworthy professional.

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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.
My new book is available for pre-order now: Pre-ordering the book will help me get it into bookstores. So please do me a favour - please consider pre-ordering now - links and pre-order bonus are available here: https://prosolution.com.au/book-preorder-bonus

Do you have a question for the podcast? Email us at questions@investopoly.com.au.

If you're interested in working with our team and me, discover how we can work together here: https://prosolution.com.au/family-office-services

If this episode resonated with you, please leave a rating on your favourite podcast platform.

Subscribe to my weekly blog: https://prosolution.com.au/stay-connected

IMPORTANT: This podcast provides general information about finance, taxes, and credit. This means that the content does not consider your specific objectives, financial situation, or needs. It is crucial for you to assess whether the information is suitable for your circumstances before taking any actions based on it. If you find yourself uncertain about the relevance or your specific needs, it is advisable to seek advice from a licensed and 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.
My new book is available for pre-order now: Pre-ordering the book will help me get it into bookstores. So please do me a favour - please consider pre-ordering now - links and pre-order bonus are available here: https://prosolution.com.au/book-preorder-bonus

Do you have a question for the podcast? Email us at questions@investopoly.com.au.

If you're interested in working with our team and me, discover how we can work together here: https://prosolution.com.au/family-office-services

If this episode resonated with you, please leave a rating on your favourite podcast platform.

Subscribe to my weekly blog: https://prosolution.com.au/stay-connected

IMPORTANT: This podcast provides general information about finance, taxes, and credit. This means that the content does not consider your specific objectives, financial situation, or needs. It is crucial for you to assess whether the information is suitable for your circumstances before taking any actions based on it. If you find yourself uncertain about the relevance or your specific needs, it is advisable to seek advice from a licensed and 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.
My new book is available for pre-order now: Pre-ordering the book will help me get it into bookstores. So please do me a favour - please consider pre-ordering now - links and pre-order bonus are available here: https://prosolution.com.au/book-preorder-bonus

Do you have a question for the podcast? Email us at questions@investopoly.com.au.

If you're interested in working with our team and me, discover how we can work together here: https://prosolution.com.au/family-office-services

If this episode resonated with you, please leave a rating on your favourite podcast platform.

Subscribe to my weekly blog: https://prosolution.com.au/stay-connected

IMPORTANT: This podcast provides general information about finance, taxes, and credit. This means that the content does not consider your specific objectives, financial situation, or needs. It is crucial for you to assess whether the information is suitable for your circumstances before taking any actions based on it. If you find yourself uncertain about the relevance or your specific needs, it is advisable to seek advice from a licensed and 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.
My new book is available for pre-order now: Pre-ordering the book will help me get it into bookstores. So please do me a favour - please consider pre-ordering now - links and pre-order bonus are available here: https://prosolution.com.au/book-preorder-bonus

Do you have a question for the podcast? Email us at questions@investopoly.com.au.

If you're interested in working with our team and me, discover how we can work together here: https://prosolution.com.au/family-office-services

If this episode resonated with you, please leave a rating on your favourite podcast platform.

Subscribe to my weekly blog: https://prosolution.com.au/stay-connected

IMPORTANT: This podcast provides general information about finance, taxes, and credit. This means that the content does not consider your specific objectives, financial situation, or needs. It is crucial for you to assess whether the information is suitable for your circumstances before taking any actions based on it. If you find yourself uncertain about the relevance or your specific needs, it is advisable to seek advice from a licensed and trustworthy professional.