by James Coyle | Apr 18, 2024 | Retirement Advice
A couple of weeks ago I came across a Retirement Happiness Index. This index, launched by Challenger on 4 April 2024 makes for interesting reading. It indicates Australian retirees have plenty to keep us busy and engaged, we feel mentally healthy, but we are a bit...
by James Coyle | Apr 18, 2024 | Centrelink Age Pension
Last week we revealed a little known fact about the Age Pension – and that is, how very unfair the asset test rules are for renters and single renters in particular. We had a lot of media attention following the publication of this Age Pension anomaly. Our team has...
by Kaye Fallick | Apr 18, 2024 | Superannuation
When it comes to retirement, forewarned is forearmed. This is definitely the case as we approach the End of Financial Year (EOFY) when many rules will change. Today we are sharing updates on five different super rules that may affect your own financial planning. We...
by James Coyle | Apr 11, 2024 | Centrelink Age Pension
There are many ways of saving for your retirement. You can pay off your home, put money into super, an investment property or managed funds. Perhaps invest in art, cars or fine wine. I’m not a big fan of those last three, unless you have real expertise in...
by Kaye Fallick | Apr 11, 2024 | Retirement Spending
Your retirement journey is likely to be as quirky and individual as you are. But whilst most of us love fun and adventure, volatile cash flow is not the type of adventure we would embrace. Predictable income becomes even more important in retirement when you can’t...
by Kaye Fallick | Apr 11, 2024 | Centrelink Age Pension
Federal Budgets can seem a long way removed from our day-to-day lives. Telephone book number expenditure is often quoted on some very abstract projects (infrastructure? cyber safety? border security?) which are hard to relate to. But the money that is allocated in the...
by Kaye Fallick | Apr 3, 2024 | Planning for Retirement
Most of us are open to doing the maths and setting goals if we believe those goals are achievable. Resistance can set in, however, if we think that the targets are unrealistic. It could be that this has become the case with the commonly accepted quarterly ‘Retirement...
by James Coyle | Apr 3, 2024 | Centrelink Age Pension
Do you, too, find the Work Bonus credit as clear as mud? We suspect this may be the case because of the volume of questions we receive on this topic. It seems that many Retirement Essentials’ members are simply bamboozled by what should be a straightforward...
by Jeremy Duffield | Mar 28, 2024 | 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...
by James Coyle | Mar 27, 2024 | Centrelink Age Pension
This week one of our team, Mikahil Walden, pointed out an anomaly in the Age Pension thresholds that really disadvantages one group of people. And in the midst of a national housing crisis it’s renters that are missing out. So what’s going on? The recent release...
