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20 November 2025
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Life expectancy numbers are often interpreted as the likely maximum age of a person but that is incorrect. Here are three reasons why the odds are in favor of people outliving life expectancy estimates.
Don Ezra's article on retirement spending was highly popular, and here he responds to some of the many comments. As he says, no plan will ever work out perfectly, but the work in the plan will help you to adapt.
What happens when a superannuation expert sets up his own retirement portfolio using decades of knowledge? He finds he can afford much more investment risk in his portfolio than conventional thinking suggests.
In retirement, we still want to reduce stock volatility while generating cash flows. The two needs have not changed, but the reward expected in the old days from interest payments has gone. What should we do?
Many of us worry about retirement – can we afford it? will we enjoy it? will we feel like we’re on the sidelines of life? – but little is written about what that phase of life is actually like.
It is useful to think of your financial life and psychological adjustment in five stages: a family and career phase, pre-retirement, close to retirement, just past retirement, and then lifestyle downsizing.
Retirement isn’t a clean financial arc. Income shocks, health costs and family pressures hit at random, exposing the limits of age-based planning and the myth of a predictable “retirement journey".
With fertility rates at a record low, many say young people aren’t having kids because they’re too expensive. Turns out, it’s not that simple and there are likely other factors at play.
Passive ETFs have become wildly popular just as markets, especially the US, reach extreme valuations. For long-term investors, these ETFs make sense, though if you're investing in them to chase performance, look out below.
The Big Four banks shrugged off doomsayers with their recent results, posting low loan losses, solid margins, and rising dividends. It underscores their resilience, but lofty valuations mean it’s time to be selective.
AI is booming, but like the 19th-century gold rush, the real profits may go to those supplying the tools and energy, not the companies at the centre of the rush.
Economic experts, including the RBA, get plenty of forecasts wrong, but that doesn't make such forecasts worthless. The key isn't to predict perfectly – it's to understand the range of possibilities and plan accordingly.
Wealth keeps growing, yet few ask “how much is enough?” or what their kids truly need. After 23 years in philanthropy, I’ve seen how unexamined wealth can limit impact, and why Australia needs a stronger giving culture.