Kaye Fallick

Kaye is a retirement commentator and coach, with 25 years’ experience writing about retirement income. She has authored two books on life stage changes – Get a New Life and What Next? – and enjoys regular radio and podcast appearances. Her favourite mission is to offer plain English explanations of complex rules so that all retirees can benefit. She is based in Melbourne but enjoys escaping to Italy whenever possible.
Money can’t buy health

Money can’t buy health

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One of the world’s oldest medical journals – the British Medical Journal or BMJ – recently published statistics that reveal, when it comes to longer lives, Australians have won the lottery. The study, Life expectancy and geographic variation in mortality, reviewed data on life expectancy across six high-income English-speaking countries between 1990 and 2018. The countries included in the research were Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, United Kingdom and the United States.

The conclusions were that Australia is the ‘clear best performer’ in life expectancy at birth, leading its peer countries by 1.26–3.95 years for women and by 0.97–4.88 years for men in 2018. It also experienced the lowest levels of inequality, with Ireland, New Zealand and the US experiencing the highest levels. The BMJ reached the conclusion that 

Australia serves as a potential model for lower-performing countries to follow, to reduce premature mortality and inequalities in life expectancy. The worst performing nation was the US.

Aged care changes: what will you need to pay?

Aged care changes: what will you need to pay?

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Last week the long awaited changes to the Aged Care sector were released. You could be forgiven for being confused, with headlines in Money magazine stating that ‘Pensioners pay more’ while the Australian Financial Review reported ‘Aged care taps rich retirees’. 

What is the truth – who has been hit the hardest?

We sought the most authoritative summary and response from Louise Biti, principal of Aged Care Steps, who has many years’ experience in helping consumers, advisers and policy makers on how aged care works. The following is an edited summary of Aged Care Steps report on the proposed changes and how they will affect different retirees.

Boomers fuelling inflation?

Boomers fuelling inflation?

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The other night I saw an ABC TV report by business reporter, Daniel Ziffer. I normally find Mr Ziffer’s work to be both informative and interesting. So when he spoke of a ‘generational divide’ in Australia’s spending habits, I was all ears.

The report was based upon data from the May 2024 Commonwealth Bank Cost of Living Insights research. This report draws from spending patterns of seven million Australians and shows, amongst other findings, the differences between age groups. To cut to the relevant excerpts from the chart below, the report shows a shrinkage in spending for 25-29 year olds by 3.5% (or $2099) over the past 12 months, contrasted with increases for most other age groups, particularly those aged 65-69, which were up by 4.4% (or $3253), peaking at 6.8% (or $2408) for those aged 75+.