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1 December 2023
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Australian retail investors remain wary of the rising stock market. In fact, they are more defensively positioned than at the height of the Covid crisis, crowding primarily into domestic large cap companies.
The Australian retirement funding system relies on three pillars: the age pension, superannuation and voluntary savings. Most retirees have their wealth tied up in the family home, so what role does it play?
Risk isn’t something to be avoided altogether. To achieve returns beyond the government bond rate, some level of risk must be accepted. Assessing which risks to take and calibrating them is the investor's challenge.
Super is reducing reliance on the age pension for the majority of people entering retirement. Most newly-retired Australians are not accessing the age pension at all, and only 25% of 66-year-olds are drawing a full age pension.
Many SMSF trustees rely heavily on the Top 10 stocks on the ASX for income including franking, but the capital preservation has not been good. The franking debate was a good reminder to reconsider the asset allocation.
Watch the exact timing of super contributions to create a tax deduction, especially this year, and anyone with a pension that reverts to another person on death has particular timing issues to address.
What do many of Australia’s top experts in superannuation and retirement planning think the government should focus its policies on? A long article but with many interesting ideas.
Three weeks to go before the EOFY is still enough time to comply with the rules and make the most of superannuation and income tax opportunities. Here's a quick checklist.
With more people living longer, retirement expectations are being reshaped and redefined. Now is the time to consider the financial and cultural solutions for making the most out of the gift of a longer life.
To avoid retreating from making investment decisions during uncertainty, investors are compelled to rely on 'rules of thumb' to guide them in decision-making. Here are many of the more popular commonly-used rules.
This analysis suggests that Australian investors who lose franking credit refunds under the Labor proposal should significantly increase holdings of global equities to meet an efficient investment frontier.
Rarely do we go into an election with such contrasting policies from the major parties, and no more so than in superannuation. The nation's decision on 18 May will have a big impact on retirement savings.
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 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'.
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.