Despite efforts to encourage retirees to use income stream products, many are still opting for lump sum payments when accessing their super. In fact, there's been an increase in lump sum withdrawals recently. Are you making the most of your retirement savings? In this article, we discuss why this matters to you and what you can do about it.
Deciding when to retire is one of the most significant financial decisions you'll make. The right time to retire varies for everyone, influenced by personal circumstances, financial readiness, and lifestyle goals. Here, we'll explore key considerations for determining the best time to retire and how to prepare for a comfortable and fulfilling retirement.
Twice a year, Commonwealth benefits are automatically adjusted. In the current high inflation environment, this month’s adjustments are quite substantial.
What’s the ideal age to retire? We came across some intriguing research recently that shows that people’s ideal retirement age changes as they get closer to actually retiring. And, perhaps surprisingly, the closer we get to leaving work, the more we want to keep working!
You can generate super savings in two ways: contributions and investment earnings. While you work, investment earnings are really important. Once you retire, earnings become even more important.
Working Australians contribute money into super each year. It may be tempting to think that these contributions make up the bulk of your retirement savings. But, for most people, that’s not how it works. There’s a super secret and we want to let you in on it.
You know that the worst of Covid is behind us when the rules for your super start to bounce back to normal. On July 1 this year, we saw yet another temporary Covid measure come to an end. Minimum income stream payments are back to where they were in 2019.
This is the third in our trilogy examining superannuation throughout a working life. Having looked at those people starting out in their career and those in the middle decades of their career, let’s focus on people in the last ten to fifteen years of their working lives. People for whom the gold watch of retirement is coming into view.
Last week we discussed how the Governor of the Reserve Bank Phillip Lowe recently recommended that home borrowers ensure that they have a ‘buffer’ against the time when interest rates inevitably rise. Interest rate buffers are not the only type of buffer in good financial planning. Buffers are used in many areas, but the need for buffers always comes from the same source: understanding that the way things are now is not likely to be the way things are in the future.
This week, we want to explore the concept or borrowing in retirement a little more fully by looking at a unique way of doing so – the Commonwealth Government’s Pension Loan Scheme.