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22 December 2024
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By 2028, all Baby Boomers will be eligible for retirement and the Baby Boomer bubble will have all but deflated. Where will this generation's money end up, and what are the implications for the wealth management industry?
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.
Retirement is the new black and super funds are seemingly expected to do all things for all retirees. Do we need to better apportion the different responsibilities to create a world class retirement income system?
Australia should change its retirement system so people can easily access targeted support to plan their futures and fund their lifestyles by having greater work flexibility and access to equity in their homes.
Platforms are an integral part of the financial advice process, delivering efficiencies to advisers and allowing them to cover more clients. But one platform will never be the holy grail as every client is different.
The financial advice sector is experiencing a form of market failure where demand for the type of advice now favoured by the industry is limited by the cost of supplying it. Here's how the industry can best move forward.
The number of financial advisers in Australia has almost halved at a time of greater need than ever. What has happened to the industry and its clients as yet another Quality of Advice Review takes place?
While the gender pay gap is slowly improving in the workplace, ATO data shows Australian men aged 55-59 average $50,000 more in super than women of the same age. Financial advisers have a role to play.
Many financial advisers have left the industry because it costs more to produce advice than is charged as an up-front fee. Advisers are valued by those who use them while the unadvised don’t see the need to pay.
Financial advisers must convince regulators and clients that advice to ‘do nothing’ or maintain a current position is indeed valuable advice, and often more valuable than activity buying or selling shares.
Seeking financial advice can be a daunting task and over 80% of Australians do not have a financial adviser. Here are the steps involved in understanding the advice process to encourage more people to jump in.
Categorising post-retirement needs – living, lifestyle, legacy and contingency – creates a framework for retirees. Advisers can translate these needs into investment goals and portfolios.
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.