Jeremy Duffield, Author at Retirement Essentials

Resourcing your retirement

A good retirement is about so much more than money – whole books are written about getting the most out of your life after ending full time work. But when the payslips end, you become responsible for funding your retirement necessities and your pursuits out of your “retirement resources.”

Through super and savings you’ve been getting ready, building a nest egg. It’s time to call on the nest egg and start drawing it down. It’s a big change in the way you need to think about your finances…and requires a bit of planning and forecasting to work out how much you can afford to spend and how to make the most out of your retirement.

Retirement Principle #1 The first rule of retirement finances might be: The greater your retirement resources, the more you can afford to spend in retirement.

No duh, eh? It sounds obvious that the bigger your nest egg, the more you can afford to spend. And that the opposite would be true too; the lower your retirement resources, the less you can spend.

But what are your retirement resources? How much do you really have? And if you’re not yet retired, but getting ready, what can you do to increase them?

We’re not trained for retirement

by Jeremy Duffield | Centrelink Age Pension, Retirement Advice

With the footy season underway, I thought I’d share a favorite story: I was lucky to spend a few moments alone with Geelong Captain Joel Selwood, at a 2013 Grand Final Day event. He was pretty subdued as Geelong had missed the big game due to a memorable 5 point Preliminary Final loss to the Hawks. The Cats had been ahead 20 points at three quarter time but faced a resurgent Hawks to lag by six points with seconds to go. Geelong’s Travis Varcoe had the opportunity to tie the score when he kicked from 30 metres in front. The kick sailed right to record a minor score..and the game was lost.

I said, “great year, Joel. Hope the team isn’t going to give Travis Varcoe too hard a time.” Joel simply said: “Well, we’re trained to get those.”

That short reply said a lot. Still hurting. High expectations. Incredible intensity and competitiveness. And even though we’re trained over and over, we professionals still miss. We make mistakes.

Imagine then that you were playing a really important game, but one you’ve never played before. Maybe watched a match once or twice from the grandstands. You don’t know the rules —and they’re really complex. And have never been trained.

That’s what going into retirement is like for most Australians.

It’s not a game they’ve played before; it’s got complex rules; and they haven’t been trained. And with the small number of financial planners, and the very high costs of traditional financial planning (typically $3500-$5,000), there’s very little affordable coaching staff available —except to the wealthy.

Enough

by Jeremy Duffield | Planning for Retirement

I love the story Jack Bogle, legendary founder of Vanguard, told to open my favourite of his dozen books:

“At a party given by a billionaire, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, ‘Yes, but I have something he will never have…enough.’”

I like the way it reminds us that it’s not money that brings the greatest happiness to life. There’s so much more. It reminds us that we don’t necessarily need a lot to live on…so long as we really appreciate the things around us. (Surrounded by my seven grandkids and the rest of my family at Christmas, I thought, what else do I need?)

It’s a great word, “enough,” with so many uses. And it’s core to what we do at Retirement Essentials. We’re helping with the “enough” problems. Do I have enough to retire? Will we have enough to last us? And often, I’ve had enough of Centrelink or the super rules? Can you help me work it out?

While money isn’t the secret to happiness, it helps. And you need enough to live your life.