Thinking & perspective

A minimum 30% on capital gains, and the super contribution that used to fix it

Selling an asset in a low-income year, then making a large deductible super contribution, has been one of the most reliable moves in Australian tax planning. From 1 July 2027 it stops working the way it did.

Published 6 September 2026

Negative gearing after 2027, and the date that decides your position

From the 2027-28 year, losses on an established rental only offset other property income. What matters most is a single evening in May 2026 — and whether you owned the place before it.

Published 6 September 2026

When an SMSF invests in someone else's unit trust

The 5% in-house asset cap does not apply to a genuinely unrelated trust. Whether yours is unrelated turns on control, not on the size of your holding — and it can change without anyone telling you.

Published 6 September 2026

What Division 296 means if your super is near $3 million

The new tax on large balances applies for the first time this financial year. The final version is meaningfully different from what was originally proposed.

Published 21 August 2026

How a discount from your own firm can tax your SMSF at 45%

The non-arm's length rules catch trustees who were trying to save the fund money. The rules changed in 2024, and most of what is written about them is now wrong.

Published 21 August 2026 · Updated 6 September 2026

An honest guide to running a self-managed super fund

Everyone who sells you an SMSF has a reason to recommend one. This is the version written from the other side — what it costs, what it forbids, and what changed in 2026.

Published 21 August 2026

What happens to your SMSF if you move overseas

A secondment longer than two years can cost your fund its complying status — and the penalty is assessed on the whole balance, not the year's earnings.

Published 21 August 2026 · Updated 6 September 2026

SMSF property rules after the 2026 borrowing ban

From 10 August 2026 an SMSF can no longer borrow to buy residential property. What is actually banned, what survives, and what it means if your fund exists to do exactly this.

Published 21 August 2026

The tax your adult children will pay on your super

Australia has no inheritance tax. It has something that works very like one, it applies to most adult children, and almost nobody plans for it.

Published 21 August 2026

The absence of unhappiness is not what you were promised

There is a restlessness that arrives after life has gone right. It appears in quiet houses, on weekday mornings, in lives that look successful from outside.

The dishwasher is never the dishwasher

Most money arguments in a marriage are not about the thing on the table. Underneath is a language neither person has ever explained.

Diversification is a decision about attention

Two of investing's most quoted maxims flatly contradict each other. They are not competing advice — they are advice for different people living different lives.

Freedom is the ticket, not the destination

He sold the business at forty-three and never had to work again. By the fourth month he felt increasingly low and directionless, and was secretly reading job listings.

The quiet weight of debt

It does not knock you down. It simply means that when the right opportunity arrives, you cannot jump as high as you used to.

The lines you were handed before you could read

A surprising amount of money fear is not fear of what is happening now. It is fear from a threat that belonged to someone else's past.

A drawer full of business cards

Three years of doing exactly what the advice said. Wealthier in contacts, poorer in actual connection, and no longer quite sure who she was.

The net that closes one reasonable decision at a time

His income nearly doubled. His discretionary cash fell to the lowest point of his life. He had not made a single extravagant decision.

The private constitution you wrote before you knew better

Five small expressions are responsible for more unnecessary financial suffering than any others in the language. You have used several of them today.

Ninety minutes, four times a year

A budget review asks whether the numbers behaved. This asks a better question — whether the life that produced those numbers is still the one you would choose.

Standing guard at the door of your attention

More information does not reliably give you more truth. Past a certain frequency, it gives you almost nothing but noise — and the frequency is the part you control.

The last question money will ever ask you

At the end of your life, what will you wish you had done with it? Few people ask while the answer can still change anything.

The power point in the wall that is never switched off

She had already scheduled all three requests before her shoes were off. She was not angry. She was not even unwilling. That is what made it serious.

Why waiting for certainty can leave investors behind

He had fifteen years in the industry and sat entirely in cash, waiting to be sure. The confirmation he wanted only exists after the move it was meant to confirm.

The razor that cuts most of your decisions

Everyone agrees you should not lose money. Almost nobody uses it as a tool, which is a different thing entirely from agreeing with it.

Children learn the weather, not the words

The first piece of money education in your home is not for the child. It is for you, and it is already being delivered whether you have prepared it or not.

Your calendar is a more honest balance sheet than your bank statement

Show me how a person spends a week and I will tell you, more accurately than any statement could, who they are becoming.

When a problem becomes a noun, it becomes a wall

Four monolithic burdens walked into the room. Four specific situations walked out. Nothing had been solved — the grammar had simply changed.

Two countries, one household

One spends as though every dollar is renewable. The other treats sufficiency as the goal. Neither is wrong, and the gap between them tends to widen over time.

Wealth with room to live

Past a modest threshold, wealth stops arriving in the form of more. It arrives in the form of space — and space is measurable, just not in dollars.