Most people have a mortgage and this may seem to be a hurdle to start saving. It needn’t be.
This strategy will demonstrate how you can reduce your mortgage and build an investment portfolio at the same time.
All about debt
Firstly there are two types of debt: good and bad. That’s it, just two types of debt. As you can tell by the name, good debt isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as I will explain.
Bad debt, for example, is your home loan, personal loans, credit cards and store cards. It is referred to as bad debt because this debt is non-deductible. That is, you cannot claim a tax deduction on it on this type of loan. Good debt however, is what you should always aim to have. It is a tax deductible, investment loan used to acquire an asset such as direct shares, managed funds or other growth assets.
Don’t borrow against your house to pay for the school fees. This will again be ‘bad debt’. Start now with an investment loan with the available equity in your home.
Most people wait until the have paid off their home loan before they commence investing in other assets. Why? Why miss out now on all those growth assets currently going on in the market place?
One strategy for doing this is debt recycling.
How does debt recycling work?
If you have available equity in your home, that is, you have paid-off enough of your loan, you can then be taken out—or drawn down—from the bank the amount equal to the equity in your home. For example, your home is valued at $500,000. You have paid off $200,000 so your outstanding mortgage is $300,000. This means the available equity in your home is $200,000.
This available equity can then be drawn down as a loan against your home. In this example, say you decide to borrow a $100,000 against the $200,000 available equity. This $100,000 would then be invested into an investment portfolio.
Then as you receive the income from that investment, you place that money back into your home loan with the major aim to reduce the mortgage (ie., the bad debt.)
The crucial element
As you reduce your home loan, you concurrently increase your investment portfolio loan (ie., good debt) and add the new available funds into your investment portfolio. The investment portfolio is increasing as your mortgage is decreasing.
Overall the debt recycling strategy is reducing your home debt (the bad debt) by investing available funds of your home into an investment fund (an investment loan is used—good debt) then paying the income earned from the investment back into your home loan account. Every year you repeat the process. As your home loan balance reduces you increase your investment loan by the same amount.
The available funds must be invested and especially into growth assets—such as Australian industrial shares. As your capital grows and the income also increases with each year, the franking credits income received go directly go back into the mortgage (the bad debt) to keep reducing the home loan, year after year.
As you are reducing your home loan debt and increasing your investment loan the returns on your investments are compounding every year. As you are invested in an industrial share fund with increasing income this will play wonderfully in your favour.