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9 October 2026
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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.
Retirees should discuss goals and plans with their adult children, including wills, finances, consequences of incapacitation and current plans. Includes a suggested 'Goals and Plans' document to kick off the conversation.
Most people in retirement will have three financial goals in the decumulation stage to take account of the uncertainty of health, longevity and markets, and here's a framework to help.
Don replies to Peter. People saving for retirement should separate shallow and deep risk. Shallow risk, where prices fall, can be good in accumulation phase. Deep risk is a serious long-term deterioration.
Take investment risk in the early years when there is little financial capital at stake and lots of future earning potential, and follow a sort of glide path to reduce exposure to risk later in life.
Bond markets are adjusting to a new reality, but not in the ways investors expect. With markets repricing and capital competing for attention, investors may need to rethink where resilience and opportunity lie.
What if the warning signs are already everywhere? From supermarket aisles to company failures, investors are being bombarded with recession signals. But most face a different risk that can be just as dangerous for portfolios.
The tax bill might be yours, but the event that caused it may not be. A key Division 296 calculation can sometimes attribute earnings in ways that many SMSF trustees won't instinctively expect or fully appreciate.
Negative gearing changes formally begin in 2027, but the first consequences may already be here. A subtle shift is quietly influencing who can borrow, how much they can access and which property strategies still stack up.
The biggest threat to markets may not be what investors are watching. The numbers have stopped adding up and supply is harder to measure, with forecasts becoming simple guesses. A more fragile reality is being masked.
Australians are investing more than ever, yet a surprising divide is emerging between those building wealth effectively and those making costly mistakes. Surprisingly, the gap has little to do with income, age or starting capital.
A case study shows that the ‘30% minimum CGT’ is a poorly conceived tax that adds significant complexity to an already over-complex system. A less complicated model would create a much fairer progressive tax scale.