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22 December 2024
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The Government has finally released the Aged Care Taskforce Report which contains 23 recommendations to reform home care and residential aged care. The report pinpoints who should pay for the increasing cost of aged care.
It’s great to see the age pension increase recently, but there are now additional challenges and opportunities. One is a change in aged care costs, and another is what the pension rise means for your own situation.
The festive season is often the time that families notice Mum or Dad or both might need some extra care. Here are tips to navigate difficult conversations around aged care and how to best prepare for the transition.
Whether you are an investor or borrower you will know that rates are rising. The aged care interest rate recently jumped by close to 1%. Take a deep dive into the impacts on residents of aged care homes.
The costs of aged care will only continue to increase as the Baby Boomer generation moves into their frailty years, increasing not only the demand for services but also higher consumer expectations around the quality of service.
Older Australians saw the largest increase in their age pension payments in almost a decade last month. But pensioners receiving aged care will only see $4 of the $20 pension increase.
Whether you choose to sell your home to pay for aged care is your decision. With many special concessions, why are people quick to sell the family home? The calculations can be tricky and circumstances are different.
Despite the maturing of the super system, 70% of retirees rely in part or full on the age pension. Access to pensions will become more restrictive and fewer people will have options such as a reverse mortgage.
To support a better aged care system appropriate to the needs of all Australians, critical changes are needed including a new financing approach. The current system has failed seniors, carers and providers for years.
When someone moves into residential aged care, they are assessed based on their assets and income. An important change is coming on 1 July 2020 that clients and their advisers should understand.
As the population ages and property prices rise rise, equity in owner homes has more potential as a significant source of 'retirement income'. But an ASIC report highlights complexities in reverse mortgages not well understood.
Home Care Packages have undergone significant reforms recently, and the waiting list for such packages is growing. Advisers and their clients need to keep abreast of what those changes mean for them.
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.