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Don Ezra

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?

Life after retirement doesn’t need to be scary

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.

Five financial stages in everyone's life

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.

Latest Updates

A speech from the Prime Minister on fixing housing

“Fellow Australians, I want to address our most pressing national issue: housing. For too long, governments have tiptoed around problems from escalating prices, but for the sake of our younger generations, that stops today.”        

Taxation

Family trusts: Are they still worth it?

Family trusts remain a core structure for wealth management, but rising ATO scrutiny and complex compliance raise questions about their ongoing value. Are the benefits still worth the administrative burden?

Exchange traded products

Multiple ways to win

Both active and passive investing can work, but active investment doesn’t in the way it is practised by many fund managers and passive investing doesn’t work in the way most end investors practise it. Here’s a better way.

Economy

The Future Fund may become a 'bad bank' for problem home loans

The Future Fund says it will not be paying defined benefit pensions until at least 2033 - raising as many questions as answers. This points to an increasingly uncertain future for Australia's sovereign wealth fund.

Investment strategies

Managed accounts and the future of portfolio construction

With $233 billion under management, managed accounts are evolving into diversified, transparent, and liquid investment frameworks. The rise of ETFs and private markets marks a shift in portfolio design and discipline. 

Property

Commercial property prospects are looking up

Commercial property is seeing the same supply issues as the residential market. Given the chronic undersupply and a recent pickup in demand, it bodes well for an upturn in commercial real estate prices.

Infrastructure

Private toll roads need a shake-up

Privatised toll roads in Australia help governments avoid upfront costs but often push financial risks onto taxpayers while creating monopolies and unfair toll burdens for commuters and businesses.

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