Aussie FIRE | Financial Independence Retire Early

← Aussie FIRE | Financial Independence Retire Early25 Sept · 42 min

93. Q&A: Optimising CGT, home bias and when spouses don't agree

93. Q&A: Optimising CGT, home bias and when spouses don't agree25 Sept42 min

Retiring overseas might sound like a straightforward FIRE move. But what happens when your portfolio was built around Australia, changing tax residency could create a tax event, your partner has a completely different appetite for risk, or you finally start selling ETFs you have been buying for years?

In this listener Q&A, Dave and Hayden tackle three questions that show just how quickly a simple investing strategy can get more complicated once real life enters the picture.

In this episode we'll discuss:

🌏 Why home country bias exists in Australian portfolios, and whether it still makes sense if you plan to live somewhere else.

💸 What changing your Australian tax residency could mean for a portfolio you have spent years building.

🧾 Why simply holding investments through an overseas brokerage account may not remove the Australian tax considerations discussed in the episode.

🤝 What happens when one partner is comfortable riding out market crashes and the other is much more cautious about equities.

📉 Why your theoretical risk tolerance and your actual reaction to a large market fall may be

two very different things.

🏠 Why some investors can view highly leveraged property as "safe" while seeing share market volatility as risky.

⚖️ How couples with different risk tolerances might find a middle ground without forcing either person into a strategy they cannot live with.

🔥 Why getting to financial independence does not necessarily require massive investment risk or spectacular returns, particularly during the earlier wealth-building years.