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1 December 2023
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You may have spent years, and a significant amount of money, making your current home your 'forever home' so thinking about downsizing can be hard. This is a guide to help you make an informed downsizing decision.
The rules to age successfully include, 'the unexamined life lasts longer', 'change no more than one-eighth of your life at a time', 'nobody is thinking about you', and 'pursue virtue but don’t sweat it'.
Inflation is one of the biggest risks that retirees face. By constantly eating away at the value of savings and income, inflation will slowly reduce our purchasing power in retirement – if we don’t do anything about it.
Managing retirement is as important as building a superannuation balance. Leaving work can lead to a loss of identify if there is a failure to craft a new life and it is a big shock for many retirees.
Pension payments in super after the age of 60 are tax free and anyone over 65 can switch their super into a pension account even if they do not change their employment. Why do so many continue paying 15% tax?
Age Pension costs should not be compared with super tax concessions for future retirees as they apply to different generations and purposes. But what is the long-term financial impact for both individuals and Government?
Super concessions are forecast to overtake the cost of the Age Pension in the 2040s. They're creating a skewed system of reward for higher super balances in retirement and will widen the gap between rich and poor.
Retiring means your salary stops and you need to fund your lifestyle using savings plus any Age Pension income entitlements. Here are some suggestions about the best ways to make the money last through retirement.
Paul Keating envisaged a super system which funded retirement. For many, it has become a tax shelter where wealth is captured and passed on to descendants and the role of the family home is substantially overlooked.
As the life expectancy of most Australians continues to rise, many indigenous people are lagging behind. A recent court case on early access to pensions highlights the need to create conditions for equal lifespans for all.
The Intergenerational Report uses an outdated method to calculate our ageing population that can lead to unnecessary fear and unhelpful policies. Using a more realistic approach, we're ageing at a much less dramatic pace.
The Intergenerational Report features an ageing population and rising aged care demand as key long-term themes. These trends reinforce the need for Australians to consider their aged care needs rather than wait for a crisis.
A new report suggests that Australians are ill prepared for the largest intergenerational wealth handover in history. It's estimated $3.5 trillion in assets will be transferred from Baby Boomers to their children by 2050.
Many people in the Firstlinks community have been reading my articles and editorials for 10 years or more, and worked with me for decades before that, and deserve an explanation for why I have suddenly stopped writing each week.
The ASX 200 is around the same price that it was 16 years ago. The poor long-term performance can be largely blamed on our taxation system, which encourages companies to pay out most of their earnings as dividends.
John Bogle famously advocated a two-fund portfolio of US stocks and bonds. Recently, I tried to create an Australian version of the Bogle portfolio and found that what seems simple can quickly turn complicated.
Money withdrawn from super after age 60 is tax-free but less understood are arrangements that allows a couple over the age of 67 to earn up to $57,948 per year outside super and pay no tax with LITO and SAPTO.