Podcast · Business

Investopoly

by Stuart Wemyss & Campbell Wallace · English · Business

Investopoly is a twice-weekly podcast designed to help you make better financial decisions and build wealth with clarity and confidence. Hosted by Stuart (tax adviser, financial adviser, and mortgage broker) and Campbell (senior financial adviser), each episode delivers concise, practical insights g

New episodes: Daily
Typical length: 33 min
Latest: 13 Oct 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

13 Oct 2026 · 27 minNew

Ep 430: Is financial advice worth it? What rules can't fix.

Read Full Blog Here Russell says advice adds 5.5% a year and Vanguard says 3%. A disciplined, rules-based approach captures much of that, but not all of it. I think these reports overstate things by assuming that without an adviser you'll panic, chase returns and keep changing strategy. In this episode I split the mistakes the reports cite into two groups: the ones a rules-based framework prevents, like concentrated portfolios, cash drag and return chasing, and the ones it can't, like ownersh...

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Earlier episodes 29 most recent

12 Oct 2026 · 37 minNew
Q&A - Debt recycling when you sell your home: keep the deduction
Selling your home needn’t undo debt recycling. I’d substitute the security with a term deposit or your next home to keep it deductible. In this listener Q&A I walk Dave through substitution of security and simultaneous settlements, and explain why I’d pay a little more for a flexible lender. I then answer Marcus on whether to offset an investment loan or use a high-interest savings account. On the top marginal rate the offset usually wins, unless a low-income spouse changes the maths. I a...
E429 · 6 Oct 2026 · 38 min
Ep 429: How much do you need to retire & are you on track? Work it out here.
Read Full Blog Here To spend $120k a year from age 60, you need about $3m to never touch your capital, or $2.1m if you plan to run it down to zero by 90. Most super calculators can't tell you whether you're on track, because they ignore investments held outside super, especially geared property, and they don't handle retiring before 60. In this episode, I walk through a set of tables you can use to add up your super, ETFs, and investment property and see where you'll land. I also cover how to...
5 Oct 2026 · 37 min
Q&A- Sequence of returns risk retiring early: bridging to super
Sequence-of-returns risk in early retirement is manageable with a big enough cash buffer. What I'd test is how you'll feel spending it. In this listener Q&A, I work through Michael's plan to retire at 52 and use an ETF portfolio plus three years of living expenses in an offset to cover the eight to ten years until he can access super. I also explain why I like locking in an undrawn loan facility before you need it. Then I look at a 33-year-old couple's debt recycling bonus and RSU income ...
E428 · 29 Sep 2026 · 29 min
Ep 428: Why interest rates may need to stay higher for longer
Read Full Blog Here Back in 2023, Stuart argued that inflation and rates could stay higher for longer than most expected, drawing on 50 years of history showing that once inflation tops 8%, it typically takes a decade or more to settle. That call has aged well: after cutting through 2025, the RBA has already hiked three times in 2026, and underlying inflation has climbed back to 3.6% in a second wave the Bank's own models failed to anticipate. But revisiting the research has sharpened his thi...
28 Sep 2026 · 36 min
Q&A: Upgrade or rentvest, home equity loans, and going non-resident
Four listeners think several moves ahead. Silvia, who arrived in Australia in 2025 with a high income but low super, lays out a detailed plan: switch to variable with an offset, interest-only to preserve deductibility, build a buffer while catching up on super, and asks the deeper question: does stretching for a $1.6M blue-chip upgrade in her 40s make the household too single-point sensitive, or is superior asset quality worth the serviceability risk? And if they move abroad in seven years, i...
E427 · 22 Sep 2026 · 36 min
Ep 427: How to assess whether property and share markets are attractively priced
Read Full Blog Here Stuart calls his approach value-aware: buying high-quality assets when they're attractively priced. Quality decides whether something is worth owning; price decides when to invest and how much. In this episode, he explains why both matter: your return comes from two engines: growth in an asset's underlying value and the uplift (or drag) as its valuation mean-reverts toward trend. For property, the entry price is everything because it's lumpy, illiquid, and bought at a sing...
21 Sep 2026 · 36 min
Q&A - Deploying an inheritance, selling an average property, and funding a long retirement
Four listeners at very different scales. "James," 45, describes himself as not being great with money but ready to fix that with a $480k inheritance, a high income, and 15 years to run. His head is spinning: pay off the mortgage, debt recycle, go all-in on ETFs, start an SMSF, and is property still viable over a 14–15 year horizon versus shares? Stuart brings order to the questions. Alex, in his early 40s, asks a question many quietly avoid: when do you sell an underperforming or average inve...
E426 · 15 Sep 2026 · 28 min
Ep 426: The do not invest list: why good investors say no
Read Full Blog Here Most investors think good investing means finding more things to say yes to: more opportunities, more asset classes, more products in the mix. Stuart argues the opposite: the people who build the most wealth over a lifetime have the discipline to say no, repeatedly, to almost everything that crosses their desk. Even the small urge to "switch up" your monthly ETF purchase, just because buying the same thing five times feels unsophisticated, quietly erodes result...
14 Sep 2026 · 33 min
Q&A - Choosing a pension account, topping up in retirement, and offset versus debt recycling
This episode answers five detailed listener questions spanning retirement income, structure, and the offset-versus-invest decision. A listener retiring at 60 with $1.3m compares the Vanguard SpendSmart allocated pension against his current fund on fees, and asks whether a growth or balanced diversified option suits an account that will be his sole income stream. A couple in pension phase, about to max their transfer balance caps with a further $300k left over in accumulation, ask ...
8 Sep 2026 · 41 min
Ep 425: Family trust investing: Are trusts still worth it under proposed tax changes?
Read the blog online here. Two tax changes could materially alter how Australians own investments and use family trusts. The first is Division 119, which has already been legislated and will impose a minimum 30% tax on capital gains made after 1 July 2027. The second is a proposed minimum 30% tax on distributions from discretionary family trusts, including both income and capital gains, from 1 July 2028. The interaction between these measures creates a serious problem. Under the draft l...
7 Sep 2026 · 40 min
Q&A - Cash-heavy at 48, bridging to early retirement, and debt-free at 31
Four listeners at genuine turning points. "Steve," 48, with a wife of 54 and a large cash holding, knows he's too conservative and wants to move into ETFs ahead of retirement at 57, while supporting a special-needs adult child and navigating his wife's super unlocking first. How should that shape the inside-versus-outside-super split? An anonymous couple on the Mornington Peninsula, 39 and 40, have built a four-property-plus-SMSF portfolio but zero borrowing capacity, and want to be work-opti...
E424 · 1 Sep 2026 · 32 min
Ep 424: Should you hedge your international share portfolio
Read Full Blog Here If you're following the case for going underweight Australian shares and leaning into global developed markets, you inherit a new question: what do you do about currency risk? Every international investment has two return drivers: the underlying market, and movements in the Australian dollar, and this episode is a clear-eyed guide to whether you should neutralise the second. Stuart explains what hedging actually does, why it never removes 100% of currency risk, and the sin...
31 Aug 2026 · 35 min
Q&A - Untangling a messy structure, cutting losses, and low-income investing
Three listeners wrestling with structure and second-guessing. "Marty," an Adelaide doctor who's become genuinely financially literate since engaging a planner two years ago, feels his arrangement is messier than it should be: managed funds underperforming at a 2.9% IRR, borrowed money in the trust, and a cash-flow plan he's no longer sure about. He asks whether to pause super contributions, rethink gearing inside the trust given a possible 30% distribution floor, and what broad directio...
E423 · 25 Aug 2026 · 29 min
Ep 423: Negative gearing deferred - heres how to manage the cash flow gap
Read Full Blog Here Quarantining negative gearing doesn't just reduce a tax benefit; it can blow a hole in an investor's cash flow. Take a property with a $30,000 annual shortfall: previously, offsetting that loss might have clawed back $12,000–$14,000 in tax, bringing the real cost to around $16,000–$18,000. Now that loss must be carried forward, potentially for 10 to 20 years, leaving the investor to fund the full $30,000 upfront. For many, that makes established property simply unaffordabl...
24 Aug 2026 · 37 min
Q&A - Super recontributions, property versus ETFs, and the grandfathering question
Four listeners bring sharp, forward-looking questions. "Tony" wonders whether super recontribution strategies, used to cut the taxable component and reduce death benefit tax, could be the next target for a budgetary hatchet, and asks for Stuart's view without giving the government any ideas. An anonymous listener, 37, mortgage-free on a rural Victorian property with $300k in cash, feels he's at a genuine crossroads: use a buyer's agent to acquire an inner-Melbourne house and hold, or aggressi...
E422 · 18 Aug 2026 · 30 min
Ep 422: Blame the 20-year growth cycle, not necessarily the Victorian government
Read Full Blog Here Melbourne has tested investors' patience like nowhere else. Its median house price has grown just 1.8% a year since early 2017, below inflation, meaning that, in real terms, property is cheaper today than it was almost a decade ago. Naturally, investors want someone to blame. But in this episode, Stuart argues the usual suspects are largely wrong. Victoria's land tax regime, tenancy reforms and ballooning state debt get cited endlessly, and Stuart doesn't dismiss them. Sti...
17 Aug 2026 · 38 min
Q&A- Structures, debt recycling, and accessing super
Six listeners grapple with how the new tax landscape reshapes their thinking. Nick, six years into regular ETF investing, asks whether to keep his current setup or start fresh for cleaner record-keeping, and whether a trust is now worth considering mid-journey. Matthew and Michael both probe the fine print: does the "property in a company" strategy become more attractive under a 30% minimum CGT rate, and does debt recycling for an IP deposit still preserve deductible interest? Michelle explor...
E421 · 11 Aug 2026 · 28 min
Ep 421: Liquidity: what it really buys you
Read Full Blog Here It's been fascinating to watch how differently asset classes have performed lately, share markets delivering strong double-digit returns while unlisted commercial property trusts and residential property in Melbourne and Sydney have struggled. But this episode isn't about which asset class wins. It's about something quietly more important: liquidity, and the optionality it buys you. Liquidity is how quickly and cheaply you can turn an asset into cash without disruption, an...
10 Aug 2026 · 37 min
Q&A: Company land tax, debt recycling, and building versus selling
Six listeners bring some genuinely meaty questions. Sandy digs into the technical weeds of owning property through a company—whether a discretionary trust as sole shareholder forfeits the NSW land tax threshold, and how the 25% versus 30% company tax rate applies when a capital gain lands. Prashant asks for a candid critique of his simple, four-ETF debt recycling portfolio and its cash-flow reality. Mark poses a clever SMSF puzzle: is deliberately exceeding the concessional cap effectively an...
E8 · 5 Aug 2026 · 21 min
Eight Rules Revisited #8- The four risks that can derail a plan
Eight Rules Revisited is a companion series to Stuart Wemyss's updated book, Wealth by Design, working through each of the original eight golden rules from his 2018 book, Investopoly, one episode at a time. In each episode, Stuart tests his 2018 thinking against eight more years of evidence and client experience, and is upfront about what has changed, what has simply sharpened, and what has held firm all along. In this final episode of the series, Stuart takes on risk management, the ru...
E420 · 4 Aug 2026 · 33 min
Ep 420: Can anything make property investing attractive again after the tax changes
Read Full Blog Here With the negative gearing and CGT changes now law, the property industry is racing to devise workarounds to keep investor interest alive. As a genuinely independent, asset-class-agnostic firm with no bias toward property, Stuart puts six of the most likely strategies under the microscope, because to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The starting point: under the new rules, the after-tax internal rate of return on established property falls from around 11% ...
3 Aug 2026 · 36 min
Q&A: Deploying $800k, structuring for the future, and what to spend on a car
Four listeners at pivotal moments. "John," 55 and five years cancer-free, has $800k from selling an investment property and a detailed plan for a downsizer contribution, an experiences fund, helping both daughters into homes and one big question: will his super comfortably fund $100k a year in retirement? Stuart stress-tests the numbers and the strategy. "Chris," 44, lays out a layered plan involving an SMSF property, an investment property and a granny flat, and asks whether it's solid or wh...
E7 · 29 Jul 2026 · 19 min
Eight Rules Revisited #7- Own property that everyone will always want
Rule 7 in Investopoly was direct: only invest in investment-grade property. Eight years on, the core of that still holds, but Stuart has sharpened the method and genuinely changed his mind about one part of it. In this episode, he explains why Wealth by Design reframes the rule from "invest in investment-grade property" to something more demanding: own property with enduring, scarce and growing demand. It's a shift from a label to a test—what makes an asset something people will always want, ...
E419 · 28 Jul 2026 · 29 min
Ep 419: The best super fund for 2026? You’re asking the wrong question
You can download the full report, including the four decision flowcharts and annual review checklist, here: https://prosolution.com.au/best-super-fund-australia/ Most people choose a super fund by looking at which fund produced the highest return last year. But that is the wrong question. The better question is: which investment strategy and super structure is most likely to deliver the best after-fee, after-tax outcome over the next 20 to 40 years, given your circumstances? In this episode, ...
27 Jul 2026 · 33 min
Q&A - Property at 49, timing the cycle, and investing through an AI downturn
Three thoughtful listeners, each already doing a lot right and looking for the sharpest next move. A 49-year-old single police officer, no mortgage, $810k in super, a growing ETF portfolio, asks the perennial question: buy an investment property, keep doing what's working, or borrow to invest further in shares? Stuart weighs the options against her plan to retire at 57. Slav returns with two connected questions. Having ridden the "rising tide" to 40%+ gains on regional Queensland properties a...
E6 · 22 Jul 2026 · 18 min
Eight Rules Revisited #6- The ETF boom broke my rule, do I tightened it
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...
E418 · 21 Jul 2026 · 30 min
Ep 418: Why discipline was never going to fix your cash flow
Read Full Blog Here 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 ...
20 Jul 2026 · 36 min
Q&A - Property crossroads, gearing decisions and modelling for inflation
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 esta...
15 Jul 2026 · 24 min
Eight Rules Revisited #5: The rule i got half wrong
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 r...

About Investopoly

Investopoly is a English business podcast from Stuart Wemyss & Campbell Wallace. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: Stuart Wemyss & Campbell Wallace
Language: English
Category: Business
New episodes: Daily
Typical length: 33 min
Latest episode: 13 Oct 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1348458167

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