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Who I am and how I became "that novated lease guy"

About me

By training, I am a medical doctor (anaesthetist).

I have a long‑standing background in competitive mathematics, having twice been a national representative in mathematical olympiads earlier in life. As an adult, while no longer working in a strictly related field, I remain deeply engaged in personal finance discussions. I enjoy building spreadsheet models to simulate financial scenarios and provide insights in areas I have deep knowledge of.

I am also a qualified biostatistician. Through training and a theoretical framework in probability and statistics, I am accustomed to thinking in terms of distributions rather than point estimates i.e. anticipating variability and quantifying uncertainty. Interestingly, this also intersects nicely with my professional role as an anaesthetist.

This way of thinking translates naturally to financial decision‑making: understanding not just the expected and average outcomes, but also downside risks, edge cases, and worst-case scenarios. Much of the analysis on this site is shaped by that mindset.

My story with novated lease

  • Cash is king
  • You will never save money by buying a new car
  • Novated leasing is a scam
  • Most of the benefit goes to leasing companies
  • It’s only worth it if you’re on the top tax bracket and drive a lot
  • It’s better to own than to lease
  • You should never finance a depreciating asset

You may have heard some variation of these rules of thumb from your uncle or internet strangers.

These heuristics were mostly true for a long time, and for the vast majority of people they still serve as reasonable default advice.

The problem is that over time, many people began treating these rules of thumb as axioms — statements assumed to be universally and eternally true — and stopped re‑examining them even when the underlying conditions changed.

The FBT‑exempt novated lease for EVs is one such change.

How I ended up questioning old assumptions

I have always liked EVs for their driving characteristics. I hired them for road trips in 2021 and 2022 and enjoyed the smoothness, instant torque, and quietness.

But financially, they made no sense to me at that stage.

Compared to a typical ICE car, the additional $30–50k upfront cost of an EV was never going to be recouped, even with “free charging” and lower servicing. So for years, I ignored them like a financially responsible adult.

Novated leases were not new either. My salary packaging provider had been trying to sell them to me for years. Every time I ran the numbers for an ICE vehicle, it never stacked up.

Then in late 2022, legislation was introduced to exempt eligible EVs and PHEVs from fringe benefits tax. I became aware of this in early 2023.

Out of curiosity, I decided to look again.

The rabbit hole

At the time, I owned a perfectly good four‑year‑old Mazda 6 worth around $25,000.

A Tesla Model 3 was roughly:

  • $70k for the base model
  • $80k for Long Range
  • $90k+ for Performance

On the surface, this looked absurd. Every mantra I listed earlier screamed that this was a terrible idea.

But I like numbers, and I like checking assumptions.

So I obtained a novated lease quote and went down a spreadsheet rabbit hole.

Then another spreadsheet.

Then a more refined one.

Many versions later, this turned into a calculator that I shared with other finance‑minded people. It was scrutinised, corrected, and virtually peer-reviewed. Along the way, I learned far more about novated leasing than I ever expected to.

The mind-blowing discovery

After carefully modelling multiple scenarios, the results were counter-intuitive:

  • When comparing buying an EV outright with cash versus acquiring the same EV via an FBT‑exempt novated lease, the novated lease option was approximately $46,000 cheaper over five years for my personal circumstances. No, that is not a typo.

  • When comparing keeping my $25k Mazda 6 versus switching to an $81k Tesla, the difference in my overall net worth over time was roughly neutral over five years.

I checked the calculations repeatedly. I shared them with others who were sceptical. The conclusion held.

For people in the top or second‑top marginal tax brackets at least, the FBT exemption fundamentally changes the economics. It overturns many of the rules of thumb above.

Over time I also came to learn about some of the traps of novated lease, and have diligently shared them to help people make more holistic decision about their candidacy for novated lease.

Why this site exists

This site exists because I realised two things:

  1. Many people are dismissing EV novated leases for the wrong reasons, based on outdated heuristics rather than current rules.
  2. Many people are entering novated leases for the wrong reasons, based on misleading sales pitches rather than a clear understanding of costs, risks, and trade‑offs.

This is not a sales site. I am not a leasing company. I do not receive commissions from leasing companies.

The goal here is simple: to explain how novated leases actually work, where the benefits really come from, where the risks are, and who should or should not consider them.

Optional Support

Both this guide and the spreadsheet are free. If they prove helpful, consider: