Seeking as much advice as I can muster on this one:
We have a mortgage on our home. The purchase price was 1.06M, We owe just under 690K. Property has appreciated somewhat, maybe worth 1.2, 1.3.
When we bought this home, I sold an investment property and as a result we have a redraw available on the Mortgage around 100K.
I'm contemplating investing half (50K) that redraw into shares. My approach for the choice of shares to invest in are:
1 ) Low-risk
2 ) Diversified (banking, retail, mining, agriculture, telco/tech)
3) Pays more than 4% dividends annually, fully franked
The benefits I see in this approach are:
1) We're not solely invested in property (if our primary residence can even be called an investment)
2) We'd be getting an effectively higher interest rate because >4% dividends are worth more than the offset the same money would save us on our mortgage
I'd keep half the redraw in the mortgage, at least to start with, in case of 'emergencies'.
So, you people who have more experience with this kind of thing (i.e: everyone), my question is - are there any pitfalls to this idea that I haven't considered? Would we really be better off?
This depends on how you define 'the long term'. If you were buying shares in 2005 you may not have made a profit on them until now, because of the GFC, or you may still be a long way behind (eg BHP).