Applies to: Australia
Every published order of operations is the same list for everyone. This one is worked out from your rates and your ceilings, so it can come out in a different order from the standard list and from your neighbour's. Card, buffer, super, offset — ranked by what a dollar actually earns in each, and filled until each one stops earning anything.
| Taxable income | Tax on this income | Marginal |
|---|---|---|
| $0 – $18,200 | Nil | 0% |
| $18,201 – $45,000 | 15c per $1 over $18,200 | 15% |
| $45,001 – $135,000 | $4,020 plus 30c per $1 over $45,000 | 30% |
| $135,001 – $190,000 | $31,020 plus 37c per $1 over $135,000 | 37% |
| $190,001 and above | $51,370 plus 45c per $1 over $190,000 | 45% |
Because every destination has a ceiling, and a ceiling is what turns a ranking into an order. The offset's rate does not fall as it fills — it stops entirely, at the loan balance. Concessional super stops at the cap. A card stops when the balance is gone. So the answer is never "put it all in the best one": it is put it in the best one until that one is full, then the next.
The rates are yours, which is why the order can differ from the standard list. A reader on a low marginal rate gets a smaller super uplift and may see the offset rank above it; a reader with a 20% card sees everything else pushed below it until the card is gone. The page sorts what you gave it.
Because it is the one step here that is not an investment. Without a mortgage a buffer sits in savings earning perhaps 4.5% taxed at your marginal rate — about 2.7% net at 39% — against a super uplift near 39%. Ranked purely by rate it would come last, and a tool that told someone with no cash reserve to lock their money away until 60 would be giving a bad answer with correct arithmetic.
The buffer's job is to stop one bad month putting you onto a card at 20%. Super cannot do that job at any rate, because it cannot be reached. So the buffer is pinned above super and the page says so on the step itself, rather than leaving an inconsistency for you to notice.
Because they are not the same kind of number. Super's uplift is a one-off on the way in: a pre-tax dollar is taxed at 15% in the fund instead of your marginal rate, so it buys more invested capital, once. The offset's saving recurs every year and grows, because interest you do not pay comes off the principal and the loan shrinks faster than it otherwise would.
And one of them is locked. So for super, and only for super, the page shows the trade: net worth at 60 on each path, and what is reachable before 60 on each. The first argues for sacrificing and the second argues against, and which binds depends on whether you expect to need the money. That is not something a calculator can know, so it shows both and stops.
This one answers where the next dollar goes. Each step links to the tool that answers that step in depth: the offset step to the offset cascade calculator if you have a second loan, and the property question to the negative gearing calculator if one of them is an investment. This page does not duplicate its working. It is the spine; they are the detail, and a spine that also carried the detail would be a worse version of both.
Salary growth is not modelled. Modelling it would invent a number that changes every output on the page, and people rarely raise their contributions in step with a pay rise anyway — so a projection that assumed they did would overstate the super side of the trade. It is left out and said out loud rather than left out quietly.
The marginal rate is applied flat. A deduction large enough to cross a bracket would be worth slightly less than shown, because the last part of it would be relieved at the lower rate.
The interest figures are arithmetic; the projections are estimates. What an offset saves is not a forecast — it is interest not charged, and it is exact. What super is worth at 60 depends on a return nobody knows.