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18 June 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.
Beneath the dominance of the ASX's largest stocks, much of the market has been left behind. High-quality companies are now trading at levels rarely seen, offering opportunities for investors willing to look deeper.
Something unusual is happening in markets. The winners are pulling further ahead at an extraordinary pace. As return dispersion hits extreme levels, volatility is rising and the investing landscape is becoming harder to navigate.
Extreme wealth concentration is no longer just a side effect of growth. As inequality deepens, its consequences are shifting from a social concern to a broader threat to economic stability and democratic resilience.
AI exuberance is colliding with economic reality. Cracks are emerging as spending surges, ROI remains uncertain and enterprise behaviour shifts. The next phase may look less like an expansion and more like a reckoning.
The 2026 budget has reignited Australia’s tax reform debate, but more work remains. Beneath the surface lies a harder question: what structural reforms are needed to make the country's tax system fit for the future?
The Budget's negative gearing changes defer deductions rather than deny them, yet a worked example shows quarantining can halve the tax benefit's present value for buyers of established dwellings.
In just four years, Australia's private capital landscape has transformed. We are seeing changes across who deploys capital, how deals are structured and why new platforms and investor pathways are rapidly emerging.