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21 August 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.