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Wednesday, 19 January 2022
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Super counts for only 20% of the wealth of Australians. For retirement incomes, most younger people today will still receive most of their income from the age pension when they retire in three decades’ time.
Most Australians are comfortable in retirement provided they own their homes. We’re failing retirees who rent but we also need to include more of the family home in the pension assets test.
Grattan has released a response to the above Mercer critique, with this short summary of their position and the longer paper attached. The coming retirement review will need to cope with such diversity of opinions.
Economic growth and interest rates affect housing prices, but political decisions around zoning, migration, and taxes are also strong influences. Overall, the current climate suggests a much slower growth in house prices.
Businesses exploit the psychological processes that people go through when they decide to buy something, but does the US research work when faced with "traditional hard-bitten, no-bullshit Australian scepticism"?
This is our annual checklist of what retirees need to be aware of in 2022. It is a long list of 25 items and not everything will apply to your situation. Run your eye over the benefits and entitlements.
Australians are generally optimistic about retiring comfortably but their confidence lags retirement savers in other countries. They are also the most unsure about future returns and withdrawal rates in retirement.
Depending on personal circumstances, it may be time to rethink the bias to paying down housing debt over wealth accumulation in super. Do the sums and ask these four questions to plan for your future.
As we enter a new year, we dive into the Morningstar database to see which asset classes have performed well over various time periods, with the related risks and largest historical drawdowns.
The Warren Buffett/Charlie Munger partnership is the stuff of legends, but even Charlie admits it is coming to an end ("I'm nearly dead"). He is one of the few people in investing prepared to say what he thinks.
We often assign quality in investment choice by historical returns, backed up when we see fund flows directed towards such historically well-performing funds. This is a mistake made by investors and regulators.