What is the biggest expense you have had so far this year, and how did you pay for it?

EXPENSE: Purchasing an investment property. Paid for: With a truckload of debt. That might not be repaid. Ever.

It had been a while since Mrs DebtMan and I had made a significant investment. Some parcels of shares here and there. But in recent years, our focus has been elsewhere, not on investment strategies.

After the DebtKids were discovered in the cabbage patch, priorities got shuffled. This included swapping a chic DINKs inner-city terrace for a house with a backyard. With the bigger backyard came the monster mortgage.

But every year, so I keep bleeting, Gen Xers should be doing something on the investment front. And we’d missed a few years.

Investments need to be continually added to. And they should involve some pain. That is, by investing (with or without debt), you’re stopping yourself from spending money now.

Sure, a dirty big property mortgage means we haven’t, technically, paid for it. But buying property with cold, hard, cash, when you’ve still got a mortgage on your home, usually (a) isn’t possible and (b) doesn’t make financial sense.

But it will involve pain. Every month, we’ll have to fund the difference between rent and the mortgage, until the rent rises sufficiently. That will take many years.

And debt that might never be repaid? We still have considerable home-loan debt. From a tax perspective, it always makes more sense to pay down (non-deductible) home-loan debt than (deductible) investment property debt.

Like most Gen Xers, our home loan debt still feels like Mt Everest. That’s where spare cash will be going. For years. And years.

Bruce Brammall is the author of Debt Man Walking (www.debtman.com.au) and principal adviser with Castellan Financial Consulting.