I'm at a point of my career where I'm starting to earn decent money and can put decent chunks away.
The question I have is mostly around whether I should max out my superannuation contributions in Australia.
My understanding is that I can contribute up to $25k/year to my super at the lower tax rate of 15%.
In terms of return on investment, this seems like an easy win.
The downside of course is that I can't use this money until retirement.
I have a student loan of $27k from the New Zealand government - this is currently accumulating interest at 4.3%.
The question is - if I have say $15k a year I can either be contributing extra to super, or paying off my student loan, or putting into an index fund or similar - and potentially buying a house in the future - what's the calculation I need to make here?
As far as the house calculation goes - as far as I understand it - it's if (estimated capital gain + benefits of owning a house) - (cost of mortgage interest + rates + other expenses - cost of rent you would be paying otherwise) > amount you would earn from investing
then buy a house.
Is there anything I'm missing here? For example - any tax incentives for owning a house?
Short of house prices doubling again in the next few years kind of thing - is there any reason I shouldn't be just maxing out my Super?
Additionally - it looks like a lot of the more aggressive index funds perform better than 5% - is it reasonable to just pay the minimum on my student loan - and put my in index funds, rather than paying my student loan?