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
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...
by Kaye Fallick | Mar 27, 2024 | Superannuation
The Aged Care Taskforce report was finally released in mid-March. It answered some difficult questions and raised a whole lot more. The goal of the taskforce was to consider how aged care services might be funded more equitably and sustainably. Shortly before the...
by James Coyle | Mar 27, 2024 | Retirement Advice
The American Association of Retired Persons – or AARP as it is now called – has been around since 1958 and has 38 million members. Late last year they asked their membership about being a grandparent and how this affects their own finances. The results were telling:...
by Kaye Fallick | Mar 21, 2024 | Retirement Income
If you’re a 65-year old male reading this article you stand a good chance of living until at least 85.3 years. If you’re a female of the same age, you’re likely to get more than 20 years, with life expectancy of 88 (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare). Half of...
by Jeremy Duffield | Mar 21, 2024 | 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...
