Early 40s couple, 2 kids and renting

Rachel had a lovely story out of Sydney to tell about a couple who are a professional couple in their early 40s with two young children.

One is a lawyer and the other one is also an IT. Now, she’s a part-time lawyer, you know, but they have got very solid savings and they’re currently happily renting in the Sydney market in the area that they’ve enjoyed living in. They want to stay in that area, because they think their children are going to get the best opportunity in that area.

Now, this is an Irish couple, and recently their backstory was that they decided to move back to Ireland. Now, when they moved back to Ireland, they lasted six months before they worked out “Nop, this is not the right decision, we’re coming back to Australia! We’ve now made a confident decision around that, so now we need to get serious about providing for our financial future.” I thought that was really interesting.

Some of the big-ticket items that they wanted to focus in on. Ultimately, they do want their own principal place of residence, even though they’re renting now. They obviously want to provide for their family, so things like the children’s education, the Catholic education is going to be important for them.

They don’t want to stretch themselves, so they haven’t gone super aggressive in their plan.

They want to be able to live now, but also build out wealth over time and obviously having Irish connections, they’re going to be doing lots of visiting friends and relatives and potentially hosting people back here in Australia.

That was quite an interesting brief, but I think Rachel did a great job in solving it. So, here’s what the plan is:

The first part of the property portfolio plan is we’re going to buy a $1 million investment property, but that investment property is going to turn into their principal home once the kids are old enough and they leave the nest.

We are getting that good value asset in a good location in Sydney and ultimately will be their principal home, but it’s going to be an investment property to start up with.

In addition to that property, when cash flows have allowed we’ve now gone and planned for three further investment properties over the course of the next ten years.

So, that will then allow us to then build out that investment portfolio before we start retiring the debt, and to retire the debt, there is a focus on the MoneySmarts solution, which is about helping them manage their money better to be able to retire that debt.

So, quite a comfortable plan for this couple out of Sydney.

A lovely couple to deal with I’ve been told from Rachel. A really pleasing story and for me the transformation that’s going on for this couple is, you know, they’ve had a bit of uncertainty in their life, you know, moving quickly into Ireland giving that a go and then working out no wasn’t for them, they’ve made a mistake. Reversing that situation, coming back into Australia, they now have, you know, solidified that position and now they’ve got a roadmap. They’ve made a commitment that this is their long-term story, and now they’ve got a financial roadmap that’s going to help them on that journey.

I really like that in terms of their self-funding retirement, they’re targeting around their mid-60s. Obviously early 40s with the young children, so they need a little bit more time and they’re targeting $100,000 passive income for them to enjoy in retirement. Another great story for one of Rachel’s clients and I’m really pleased to be sharing that one now.