Personal Finance · My Setup

How I Actually Invest: My Simple, Set-and-Forget ETF Setup

By Lee · MoneyHackHQ founder · Last updated 22 May 2026

People often expect my investing to be complicated because I write about money. It’s the opposite. My whole approach is built around spending as little time on it as possible, because the point of money for me isn’t a bigger number on a screen — it’s freedom and time. Here’s the actual setup, why it’s deliberately boring, and how the pieces fit together.

My philosophy: freedom over growth

Most investing content is built around maximising returns. Mine isn’t. I optimise for a life with flexibility — the ability to travel a few months a year, work the hours I choose, and not feel chained to a desk. That changes how I invest: I want a system that runs itself, doesn’t need constant decisions, and won’t fall apart while I’m away.

A boring, automated, low-cost setup wins on every count there. The less I touch it, the less chance I have to do something clever and regret it. “Set and forget” isn’t laziness — for me it’s the entire strategy.

The three layers

I think of my money in three layers, in order of priority. ETFs are only one of them — and not the first.

The ETF layer, in detail

Here’s where people expect a clever portfolio of ten funds. There isn’t one. I use a single all-in-one growth ETF (DHHF) for the entire growth layer, because one fund already spreads across thousands of companies globally and rebalances itself. Adding more funds would mean more decisions and more admin for no real benefit at my stage.

As an illustrative example of the structure: say a spare $1,000 a month is going to investing. Rather than agonising over timing, it buys into the same fund automatically on the same day each month — up markets, down markets, doesn’t matter. That’s dollar-cost averaging, and the main thing it does is remove me from the decision, which is the point. (Real amounts vary month to month, especially since I travel; the example is just to show the mechanic.)

Because DHHF is 100% shares, the growth layer is volatile — and I’m fine with that precisely because layers one and two exist. The cash buffer means I never have to sell ETFs in a downturn, and super is handling the very-long-term money. If you want the detail on the fund itself, I wrote a full guide to investing in DHHF.

Why I use Betashares Direct for it

The platform matters more than people think when you’re investing small amounts regularly. A $3–$10 brokerage fee on every monthly buy is a real drag when you’re putting in modest sums. I use Betashares Direct because it’s zero brokerage on ASX ETFs, lets me auto-invest, and buys fractional units from $10 — so my whole contribution goes to work and the routine is genuinely automatic.

It’s not perfect for everyone — it’s custodial rather than CHESS-sponsored, and ASX-only — and I weigh those trade-offs honestly in my Betashares Direct review. If you want to see how it stacks up against the alternatives, I also compared it in Betashares vs Stake vs Pearler. For my goals — cheap, automatic, hands-off — it fits.

How little I actually do

Once it’s set up, here’s my entire ongoing involvement: the auto-invest fires each month on its own, distributions reinvest automatically, and I glance at it maybe once a quarter — mostly out of curiosity, not because anything needs doing. I don’t check prices daily, I don’t try to time the market, and I don’t tinker.

That’s the whole system. A cash buffer so I’m never forced to sell, super doing the tax-advantaged heavy lifting, and one ETF quietly buying itself every month. It’s not exciting, and that’s exactly why it works while I’m off doing something better with my time.

What I’d tell someone starting out

I’m not going to tell you what to buy — that depends on your situation and is a conversation for you and a licensed adviser. But the structure I’d gently suggest thinking about is the order: buffer first, then make the most of super, then invest the rest in something simple and automatic. Most people get this backwards, chasing returns before they’ve built the foundation that lets them stay calm when markets drop.

The boring version, done consistently for years, beats the clever version you abandon after a rough month. That’s the only real “hack” here.