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Home / Author: Don Ezra

Don Ezra

The five-act future if we knew we’d live to 100

If we knew we'd live to 100, we’d pace ourselves differently. Instead of 'learn-earn-burn' where the young study, the middle-aged work, and the old volunteer or rest, life’s path would have on-ramps and off-ramps.

How to help people with retirement spending decisions

Super funds will soon be required to offer retirement income strategies for members in decumulation. With uncertain returns, uncertain timelines, and different goals, it's possibly “the hardest, nastiest problem in finance".

Many people misunderstand what life expectancy means

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.

Digging deeper into planning for retirement spending

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.

Three steps to planning your spending in retirement

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.

Have the rules of retirement investing changed?

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?

Latest Updates

Planning

Testamentary trusts have secured the CGT exemption

Treasury’s latest CGT reform draft delivers a win for testamentary trusts and deceased estates, exempting estate-derived gains from the 30% floor. However, questions on death and divorce rollovers remain unresolved.

Superannuation

How much super should you have?

Average super balances are one of the most misleading benchmarks. They ignore your goals, spending and future needs, creating a false sense of security. Here is how I calculate exactly where I need to be at every decade.

Retirement

Retiring from work is easy, retiring into life is harder

Most people spend decades planning how to retire. Far fewer plan for what comes next. The biggest retirement challenge isn't always financial, and it often catches even the most prepared retirees completely off guard.

Shares

Right asset class, wrong index: the trap in Australian small caps

Most Australian portfolios are concentrated in large caps, with relatively little exposure to smaller companies. But what if the biggest risk isn't the economy, interest rates or valuations? For many, the risk is hidden in plain sight.

Property

Are these assets the missing piece in Australian portfolios?

Many investors remain concentrated in shares, cash and property. Despite their popularity among institutional investors, real assets remain underrepresented in many SMSF portfolios. Could they be the missing piece?

Investment strategies

The biggest risk that buy-and-hold investors ignore

Investors spend decades learning how to stay invested, yet few have a plan for getting out. When a financial goal has a hard deadline, a worked example shows why a fixed derisking schedule should outrank buy-and-hold discipline.

Investment strategies

How passive investing is driving the decline of active fund alpha

Why have active managers struggled as passive investing has surged? Research suggests that flows into index funds and ETFs are creating structural headwinds, penalising the stock-picking strategies that once generated alpha.

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