How many of us are retired or semi retired

[GeoffW1 (Geoff)]

Originally Posted by Barrykgerdes

I am now retired with a lovely indexed pension paid for by all you lucky tax payers!

Barry

Sickening

[David Niven (David Niven)]

Like most peoples, my super lost more then a hundred grands in the 2008 GFC and the fund manager shamelessly keep deducting their fee, comes rain or shine, with no apology!The government should legislate to make the fee payable, as a proportion of the profit or growth and not as a percentage of your fund amount.No wonder the fund managers and the banks are laughing all the way.....
Come to think of it, I could have filled every room in my house with the latest, respectable branded telescopes.
And you get tormented every night on the telly by advertisement like how the fund managers are BUILDING YOUR WEALTH THROUGH YOUR SUPER!
Perhaps, the Office of Fair Trading should look into these shameless adverts that are no where near the truth.
Wealth Destruction is certainly the order of the day when you invest more in your super.

[bojan]

Yes.. it is a problem.
However, we also have to be realistic here and look at the super from another angle.

For example, 10 years ago, super that was imposed on us from our employer had 3 options: conservative, moderate and aggressive - and this was pretty much all in our control.
I opted for moderate strategy, while some other chose aggressive.
After some time (a year), the result was that I was loosing 2% per year, but others were loosing 7% or even 10% per year (despite regular contributions).
In hindsight, I should have been even less greedy and opted for conservative option - and my super would have grown by 1.5% instead.

In 2008, my super (again the same one) lost quite a bit but it could have been much much worse if I had aggressive strategy in place.


I am not saying that we are to blame for our losses (because the system wasn't and still isn't good - as someone mentioned earlier, super managers should loose or get their commission in parallel with us customers) but I am just trying to point out that those ads are actually playing the notes that resonate with greed in their customers, and unfortunately they are getting away with it.

[Barrykgerdes]

The whole issue of compulsory superanuation is an open invitation for rorts. Luckily I do not have to be a part of it. The managers make a good living out of it but I don't think the contributors get much.

The first thing shown in the TV adds is the comparasin of the amount of money you can expect from various managers.

If you think $500000 is enough to survive on in retirement do your sums. I admit I live quite comfortably on my super but it would be different if I needed to start out again by myself and my super is worth about $1.5m in real terms.

If you own your own house a single person can live on about $15000 P/A.
With the common inflation rate that seems to average around 3% your investments need to increase by that much each year before you can take a dividend. This means that your $500000 must have a nett earning of 6% Just to break even. I don't think there are many super funds that have averaged this sort of a dividend over the last 5 years.

If you want to live well in retirement run your own "super fund" by investing at least as much of your salary (eg 9%) in guilt edge securities and compound the interest.

Barry

[bojan]

Originally Posted by Barrykgerdes

If you want to live ... in retirement run your own "super fund" by investing at least as much of your salary (eg 9%) in guilt edge securities and compound the interest.
Barry

I do.. and my contribution is maximum I can legally put into it. but I am still far away from your figures. However, it will last long enough... I don't intend to leave what's left after me to anyone anyway. The last resort will be Dr Nitschke's phone number...

[Barrykgerdes]

Originally Posted by bojan

I don't intend to leave what will be left after me to anyone anyway. The last resort will Dr Nitschke's phone number...

Maybe you can make a commission from being his agent.

Barry

[GraemeT (Graeme)]

One week to go!

[jjjnettie (Jeanette)]

Enforced retirement.
Haven't worked for 2 years and I'm so envious of you people who have super and savings to fall back on.
Government benefits of $380 (I got a little extra because I have kids under 16yrs part time) a week isn't easy to live on, especially when most of that goes on rent. Have recently been put on disability, which is a blessing, yay!
Keep putting as much money aside as you can towards your retirement.
You want to spend your retirement "Living" not "Surviving"

[TrevorW]

JJ, I was because my wife has MS and to receive a Health Care Card I had to earn under a certain amount but no point now as the govt still considers it income, so I end up taking time off without pay to reduce my income.

With the HCC she pays around $30 a month instead of $200 a month for her medicines plus other savings

I'd have to earn at least another $10000 a year to make it worth her not having the HCC and then I wouldn't be able to have time off when she needs me too

Bit of a catch 22 situation, the Govt says we should invest more in super yet penalise the lower end of the pay scale because the upper end were taking advantage of the system salary sacrificing thousands into super to reduce their annual tax bill

[Gem (Grant)]

Originally Posted by jjjnettie

Enforced retirement.
Haven't worked for 2 years and I'm so envious of you people who have super and savings to fall back on.
Government benefits of $380 (I got a little extra because I have kids under 16yrs part time) a week isn't easy to live on, especially when most of that goes on rent. Have recently been put on disability, which is a blessing, yay!
Keep putting as much money aside as you can towards your retirement.
You want to spend your retirement "Living" not "Surviving"

Sorry to hear it hasn't been easy... hope it picks up!

[OneOfOne (Trevor)]

I consider myself "underemployed" at the moment. The company I worked for during the last 11 years were doing a development project for a new product (which would have been the best in the world by far) but because of changes beyond our control (manufacturers ceasing manufacture of the micro chip we had done 3 months development, third party in development agreement changing their protocol etc). Eventually the parent company pulled the pin and we were all out of a job (April 1st actually). Since then I have been doing casual programming for a company who manufactures scoreboards for football, cricket, golf, rugby etc. Really interesting work, but some weeks are less than 10 hours.

Still looking for full time work, but not successful, not sure if age is a factor....I can remember when they landed on the Moon!

[avandonk]

After two divorces and paying for my house about three times over I am OK.
I worked for about forty years in top end science. The last thirty at CSIRO. I resigned at 54.9 years of age as your pension under the old scheme is calculated differently after 55 years of age. This scheme was superseded by the 'new' scheme which is no longer available. They did their best to convince everyone to go to the new scheme. I did the calculations in my head and smelled a very big rat. In my case resign at 54.9 years pension $39,000 fully indexed at 55! Resign or retire after 55 by one week pension about $22,000! What would you do!
I resigned at 54.9 years. I walked away with $220,000 cash as well as the pension which is now about $43,000 and for life and indexed!.
I still had a lot of work to do but I did not trust the assurances I got from my superiors. I had some personality differences with one superior. To put it simply he was an idiot.

On balance though my contribution to Australia in sheer dollar terms is in the many millions for the work we did and the revenue it generates.

I realize now I should have used my mathematical brain in fudging finance and be paid millions for shunting bits of paper! Not very rewarding intellectually at all.

This is why I can afford and do to help others.

See I am not such a good bloke after all. I am sixty two now and if I marry my new wife will get about 70% of my pension again indexed for life if I die. Sorry girls my GF is first in line and if she wasn't she would kill me. So I have nothing to lose or gain!

Bert

[OneOfOne (Trevor)]

I used to work at Telstra and one of the guys was hanging out for 54.99, he basically wanted to leave just a couple of days before his birthday so he could get a bit extra pay. Problem was, the person who had authority to sign off went on leave at the crucial time! He had to get several people to go through hoops just to help him out....most of us just thought "karma"! At times he was very annoying and arrogant so when he started complaining about how we was going to miss out, it was pretty hard to find someone who cared He had done all of his calculations and I remember him saying at one time "now with my cash I can put that into some sort of bank deposit, I can easily get 10%, current rates are 13% or more" (back when interest rates were that high, wonder how many people today could survive 18% on their house). He could see that all of his calculations did not take into account things like "but what if the person signing is not there?"

Many people left Telstra at that time under the same circumstances. I stayed in the old scheme too, but when I left at 42 I was a long way off a pension and a percentage of what I was on back then would not have made a great income stream so I took out what cash I could (paid off the house) and transferred to a "normal" scheme. In hindsight, had I put all of my remaining super into cash, I would be light years ahead of where I am now 11 years later Wouldn't we all

[rogerg (Roger)]

Full time (5 day) work and small business on the side. Wishing for 4 days work. At crossroads with my career due to redundancies and the like, not sure where the next 5 years will leave me and how I'm going to earn enough money to be as comfortable in 40 years as I am now.

Retirement 35+ years away.

[Stardrifter_WA]

Like Avandonk, after two divorces I was left with little to build on for retirement. I still have 8 or 9 years to go, although I am sort of semi retired. I work part time, 3 days a week, and it is good, but at this rate will have to work until I drop, but having said that my new job is really rewarding, so that wouldn't be that bad. Fortunately, I own my house and have no debt, so I guess I am luckier than most, so not complaining

As long as my eyesight holds out and there are clear skies, I will have a happy life.

I am putting up my Sirius observatory at the moment and am looking forward to just being able to go out without having to lug all the gear out. I have been very lucky here, I had the electricity company cover the street light, yes they actually did it, and my neighbours are very cooperative. I would love to move to the country for darker skies, but I guess we just can't have everything.