The 15 minute retirement plan

The ‘get retirement quick’ guide you need to learn from.

In this edition

• Take our Epic ‘Retirement Planning’ Survey

• Feature Story: The 15 minute retirement plan

• From Bec’s Desk

• Your letters: Starting over pension thresholds

The 15 minute retirement plan

I saw an advertisement for a ‘15 minute retirement plan’ promoted this week and I couldn’t resist clicking on it. I clicked, then I went down a rabbit hole trying to find out what they were promising in their amazing plan that could purportedly make a process I teach in 8.5 hours with 6 hours of expert Q&A so darned slick and simple. 

The ad led me to a web form requesting personal details - name, email, address, phone number, and exactly how wealthy I am before I could get access to the elusive guide. I used a pseudonym to access it. Then, when I did download it, it sure as sugar didn’t provide me with a guide on how to do it all in 15 minutes, or even how to do it at all. Instead it told me how hard and complex investing is, and how I could never do it without their professional advice. Essentially, the guide prescribed a single solution: enlist the services of their investment company and allocate the remaining 14 minutes to prayer.  This felt like clickbait for retirement planning.

The lesson… I’m quite sure that there will be a few companies who will have a go at sucking you in over the years ahead with these types of things. So, I want to make sure you’re smarter than that!

I want you to know that there’s no shortcut to planning for your retirement yourself. Sorry! Even engaging an experienced and capable adviser won’t take away the need to shape your own plan using their advice. Learning about it yourself IS key.

I want you to recognise that it’s perfectly normal to feel doubt, uncertainty and fear at this stage of life, and to use that to LEARN, not let it lead you to buy ‘quick fix solutions’. Embracing this truth allows you to sit back and take a more sensible approach to the years and journey ahead. 

The transition into retirement really is best taken slowly with patience and a fair dose of introspection. As tempting as it is to seek a ‘get retirement quick’ approach, you must remember that you can’t rush real progress. (Gosh I’m full of cliches today aren’t I!)

Instead, tell yourself that you have to invest your time into the process of learning how to retire well, and take that time to consider what you want your retirement to look like. Then, once you are able to start to contemplate a picture, it’s time to work through the simple but time-consuming process of learning about retirement and how it works. That knowledge which you should seek from multiple sources - financial advisers, your super fund and other experts (of which I am just one) - will allow you to feel more confident as you move towards and into retirement, ideally more slowly than it used to be prescribed. 

Of course I think there’s some important lessons from this ‘get retirement quick’ approach - and they are basically ‘do the opposite’. 😉

Build your own vision of retirement, don’t buy someone else's

Every single person I speak to has a different vision of what retirement means for them. And that’s OK. The proactive ones take ideas and inspiration from everywhere, watching their friends, reading books, watching movies and documentaries, and keeping up with media stories too. Then they sit back and contemplate how they can combine them to form their own picture. That’s the beauty of being older and wiser.  We don’t all want to do the ‘same thing’ as everyone else like we did when we were young. And we know we don’t have to be wealthy to have an epic retirement. 

A retirement plan is no longer a prepackaged wealth solution sold by a financial institution. It is now about embracing a learning journey that incorporates sound advice, education and a willingness to find what’s right for you in the next stage of life.  

Understand your financial landscape early on

Money is important, but there’s many facets to your retirement finances. You need to work through the creation of your own financial balance sheet, budget and investments and then really understand how your money is meant to work in the next stage of life. It might be a process that you abhor or even fear, but it’s also one of the most critical parts of retirement planning. Remember the difference between a vision and a plan, is that a plan is realistic and practical. It needs to work when put into practice. This is a big job. There’s saving for retirement using tax-effective concessions, budgeting your cost of living, investing your hard earned superannuation over the long term and monitoring it. Then there’s understanding the systems of retirement like superannuation and the age pension and how they fit around you and learning how you will create a layered income from all these sources that will last a lifetime. And finally, there’s working out how much you can afford to spend, without running out of money. 

Consider this: you're embarking on a new chapter of life that could span 30 or 35 years. Will you rely solely on advisers to handle everything, or will you take the time to understand the ropes yourself and seek their guidance as needed?

I simply want you to know how to ask the right questions and feel calm because you know what’s quite likely to be ahead of you. 

Go looking for your sense of purpose in the next stage of life

We all fear irrelevance. Whether we’ve worked in a hospital, cared for a family all our lives, or climbed up a corporate career, we all get to a point where change is inevitably going to lead to a shift in our daily activities. So rather than let it take you by surprise, take that bull by the horns and go looking for ways you can be more fulfilled from your days. Look for new activities, new social communities, and new organisations you can contribute to. Or lean into some you’ve been trying out and enjoy. That way as you head into retirement, you’ll feel invigorated as you move towards something, rather than afraid as you step away from something. 

Take control of your health

You’ve heard me say it many times before - you can’t have an epic retirement without your health. So what are you going to do about it? We all need to do 150 minutes of zone 2 cardiovascular exercise each week, and 2 sessions of muscle mass exercise too. We also need to work on our balance, ideally 3 times per week. That’s the most sensible way to manage ageing. No vitamin, supplement or potion will do a better job than good old exercise. Every retirement plan should have a commitment to looking after your health, if you want to enjoy your life that is. So what’s yours? 

Think about ageing in place

We all need to more actively strive to steer clear of aged care, both for the cost and for the unpleasant experiences involved.  There’s one way we can possibly try to do so, and that is by really putting more thought into where we live as we get older. If we want to try to prepare ourselves better than the generations before us, choose a home with no stairs, and equipped with the modifications and nearby homecare services that support growing old in the home. If you didn’t read my article last weekend, go back and have a look. 

Resolve to spend on the good bits

The government is very worried that the current generation of retirees, most of whom have been saving for retirement for 32 years, are now too afraid to spend their money on the good bits of life. So don’t forget to plan for this part. This is what I call your ‘epic retirement experiences’. You can see this as travel, family moments, passions, and things that bring you a sense of purpose. Just don’t forget to invest a little of your hard-earned money in the things you’ve always wanted to do. You can plan for it in your financial plan, and dream about it in your vision setting, just don’t forget to live it!

Feeling inspired to take control? It really is important to resist the temptation of quick fixes in retirement planning. The really good bits come from taking the time to understand your wants, fears, and dreams, learning how the systems or superannuation and the pension work, investing for the long term, and seeking really trust worthy financial advice. This gradual process leads to a future that you shape yourself with a combination of careful preparation and personal growth, not rushed decisions and quick fixes.

PS. If you need a financial adviser please don’t select them based on downloadable clickbait. Please ask the most financially secure and sensible friends you have who they use, and evaluate from there.

I’m buzzing! The first 6 week How to Have an Epic Retirement flagship course is more than a week in to the program, and it’s going swimmingly! The lessons are being voraciously consumed by the hundreds of participants. The Community Zone is a hotbed of conversation and the live Q&A last Thursday was terrific. Everyone got into the question-asking, and the wonderful Mark Lapedus from Allianz Retire Plus did a great job of answering them. Many thanks Mark!

I’ve resolved to launch another 6 week program in May (Dates TBC) for completion in May-June. You can express your interest here for the earlybird price release and download a brochure.

As you might have seen, last week we did a deep-dive into the recommendations of the Aged Care Taskforce last week on the Prime Time podcast, learning from William Burkitt the CEO of Care & Living with Mercer about how the cost of aged care and home care might change. It’s clear we are all going to have to plan for the cost of aged care and home care when we plan for retirement. But there’s one other thing I want you to know - and that’s how you can minimise your risk or time spent in aged care by making better housing decisions. Have a listen and a read.

PODCAST: “The real cost of care and how it might change with William Burkitt”

ARTICLE IN THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD/THE AGE: “Why you must now plan for aged care during retirement”

Don’t forget, this week I’m off to the Central Coast of NSW for an event for the 2024 Seniors Festival Community Book Talk. It’s on Friday 22nd March 2024 10.30-12 at Brentwood Village. More info and register to attend here. If you’re in the region, come along. We’ve got Bookface there selling books too - so I can sign them!

Now please, get on over and do the survey, if you haven’t already! I’ll be really grateful.

Many thanks! Bec Wilson

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

In case you haven’t got a copy yet - you can buy How to Have an Epic Retirement, the book on Amazon and Booktopia and in many of the major bookstores.

Hi Bec,

Thank you for your wonderful book. I purchased it following your interview with Virginia Trioli on radio Melbourne last year. I have since recommended it to everyone I know over 50 !

I have a question regarding a point in your book. On page 33, you mention that a single person requires $595,000 in savings for a comfortable retirement, along with additional funds for one-off purchases and epic endeavors, totaling $675,000. However, I'm concerned that having $675,000 in savings would exclude me from receiving a part pension. Am I correct in this understanding?

I am interested in attending your epic retirement course; however I work Monday evenings. Are the sessions recorded for later viewing?

Many thanks Bec, love your work and your passion

Kind regards, Trish

Hi Trish

Lovely to hear you are so interested in your own retirement situation. And thanks for recommending my book 😊. While I can't offer personal financial advice as I'm not a financial advisor, I can provide general insights into how the age pension works.

As you can see on Services Australia’s website here the assets test for the pension has a cutoff of $667,500 for a part pension.  https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/assets-test-for-age-pension?context=22526

The average person with assets of about $675,000 spending $51,000 per year which is what ASFA deems is a comfortable retirement, may be eligible to access the pension in the first or second year of retirement, provided they fall below the assets test threshold and do not go over the income test triggers. Over time, people evaluating how to navigate the age pension and income from superannuation might like to explore finding the ‘sweet spot’ where the age pension and income from your superannuation are more carefully balanced. Ask your super fund or financial advisers to help you understand your own personal situation better. These strategy decisions are important to understand and get advice on, and take time to consider the impacts of on your financial circumstances throughout your years ahead.

Regarding the course. It kicked off last Monday - but the actual program is watched in your own time. It is all pre-recorded. The only activities that you need to do together are the live Q&As which in this program are being held on Thursday nights at 6pm Sydney time. It’s really flexible.

There will be another one in a few months - it will kickoff in May/June. You can register to find out more here.

Hope that helps! Have a lovely week. Cheers Bec

Now for a poll… I know you love them!