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24 December 2024
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Australian retail investors remain wary of the rising stock market. In fact, they are more defensively positioned than at the height of the Covid crisis, crowding primarily into domestic large cap companies.
The Australian retirement funding system relies on three pillars: the age pension, superannuation and voluntary savings. Most retirees have their wealth tied up in the family home, so what role does it play?
Risk isn’t something to be avoided altogether. To achieve returns beyond the government bond rate, some level of risk must be accepted. Assessing which risks to take and calibrating them is the investor's challenge.
Super is reducing reliance on the age pension for the majority of people entering retirement. Most newly-retired Australians are not accessing the age pension at all, and only 25% of 66-year-olds are drawing a full age pension.
Many SMSF trustees rely heavily on the Top 10 stocks on the ASX for income including franking, but the capital preservation has not been good. The franking debate was a good reminder to reconsider the asset allocation.
Watch the exact timing of super contributions to create a tax deduction, especially this year, and anyone with a pension that reverts to another person on death has particular timing issues to address.
What do many of Australia’s top experts in superannuation and retirement planning think the government should focus its policies on? A long article but with many interesting ideas.
Three weeks to go before the EOFY is still enough time to comply with the rules and make the most of superannuation and income tax opportunities. Here's a quick checklist.
With more people living longer, retirement expectations are being reshaped and redefined. Now is the time to consider the financial and cultural solutions for making the most out of the gift of a longer life.
To avoid retreating from making investment decisions during uncertainty, investors are compelled to rely on 'rules of thumb' to guide them in decision-making. Here are many of the more popular commonly-used rules.
This analysis suggests that Australian investors who lose franking credit refunds under the Labor proposal should significantly increase holdings of global equities to meet an efficient investment frontier.
Rarely do we go into an election with such contrasting policies from the major parties, and no more so than in superannuation. The nation's decision on 18 May will have a big impact on retirement savings.
It’s with heavy hearts that we announce Firstlinks’ co-founder and former Managing Editor, Graham Hand, has died aged 66. Graham was a legendary figure in the finance industry and here are three tributes to him.
Last year, I wrote an article suggesting returns from ASX stocks would trample those from housing over the next decade. One year later, this is an update on how that forecast is going and what's changed since.
Australia is in the early throes of an intergenerational wealth transfer worth an estimated $3.5 trillion. Here's a case study highlighting some of the challenges with transferring wealth between generations.
The Future Fund's original purpose was to meet the unfunded liabilities of Commonwealth defined benefit schemes. These liabilities have ballooned to an estimated $290 billion and taxpayers continue to be treated like fools.
ASFA provides a key guide for how much you will need to live on in retirement. Unfortunately it has many deficiencies, and the averages don't tell the full story of the growing gender superannuation gap.
The Big Four banks have had an extraordinary run and it’s left income investors with a conundrum: to stick with them even though they now offer relatively low dividend yields and limited growth prospects or to look elsewhere.