Superannuation education

[Gar]

The oldies are getting closer to retirement these days and I'd like to help them put some money aside each week so the transition isn't so rough.

They've never been very financially minded and dont really have anything set aside for the future, I've told them to book an appointment with a financial adviser asap but in the mean time I was wondering if anybody has read any good books on the subject or knows of any good websites.

any help would be great :bier:

 

[grumpee boi]

Some stuff on superannuation here.
But a lot of the rules will be changing coming end of financial year 07. This is evident in the pdf's under the left hand menu simple super legislative changes. New articles to come later in the year.

smith and koken have some superannuation and retirement books but once again these will become somewhat redundant when the new rules take effect.

Adam

 

[Julia]

My suggestion would be for them to talk to three different financial planners.
Most will offer an initial free consultation.
If all three make similar recommendations, then you can have some confidence in following that advice.
If you only go to one, you could strike one of the many who are frankly hopeless.
Let us know how they get on. There are wonderful opportunities in Super coming up. If they have more than $1M to invest, get the advice before
the end of the financial year.

 

[macca]

Hi Gar,

Would help if we knew how old they are.

Do they both work ?

Do they own their own home ?

Any other assets ?

 

[Gar]

cheers guys

Would help if we knew how old they are.

they are 58 and 56

Do they both work

My old man runs a small business and my mother doesn't work

Do they own their own home

Just about, I think they have something like 2400 left to be paid on a house worth around 450,000ish

Any other assets

Nothing major really, just whats in the house and business

 

[ghotib]

Be helpful to know how far ahead THEY feel retirement is and what it means to them. If your parents aren't financially-minded and aren't already wondering about life outside the paid workforce, then I think a financial planner might as well be a flying purple people-eater as far as communication goes. Money matters are only simple AFTER you've been thinking about them for a while, which is why many people hand their thinking over to "advisers". And those mandatory questions about financial goals and "how much do you think you'll need to live on" just sound silly to people who've housed, fed, clothed and loved a family (well at least one child ) by adapting to the changes in income as they happened.

I've really turned my head around about financial matters over the last 10 years or so. I'm now 57 and sort of retired (casual work in music which I'm trying to build up because I love it, but living mainly on savings and not yet drawing on superannuation), so maybe some factors in my mind shift will be relevant to your parents. Not necessarily in order:

1. Major maintenance issues with my house. I had to extend the mortgage to do underpinning and drainage replacement, so I was back to spagh bol at a stage when I'd started to think about overseas holidays. That was a fright, because I knew I was at peak earnings from my day job.

2. Two layoffs, the second deep into the tech wreck with little prospect of another job in the same field. By that time I was very fed up with the IT industry anyway, something I still find hard to believe and would never have imagined possible.

3. Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad/Poor Dad books, mainly the first 3. I'm sorry I can't remember how I got onto these or what made me pick the first one up; I'm sure that at one time I would have hated them and him. I still don't like him much, but his 4 quadrant analysis of ways to generate income and his way of looking at accounting, especially what's an asset and what's a liability, made a heap of sense to me. They gave me a language for thinking about my finances and a framework for making financial decisions, and they enabled me for the first time in my life to connect my finances with my real life - you know: family, friends, books, music, good food, tennis, smelling the roses... I began to understand that accumulating assets could support the work I really want to do.

4. At age 50, marrying a spouse with an utterly different attitude to money. You probably don't particularly want your parents to marry again at this stage , but our way of dealing with our differences might give you some ideas. I'd always assumed that I'd be able to find some kind of work to support myself the mortgage, and the bankcard (I did). My husband always assumed that he might be out of work for months (he never was) at any time and he hated all debt.

We spend a lot of time with a whiteboard in the dining room, talking through ideas about things like where to live, building a garage, study, jobs, unpaid work we might do etc etc, and fitting them all together with the finances. Because our attitudes and experiences are so different, we've sometimes taken days to get to a common understanding and we've found many different ways of looking at money and the future. When we go to financial planners together, we invariably come away with different ideas of what to do and we invariably find that we've remembered different parts of the discussion. Again, putting our heads together on the whiteboard (so to speak) gets us to something different from where either of us started. And because it's our own language and our own understanding, we have good fun with it. I never imagined talking finance could be a good night's entertainment, but it is.

I think the bit about "a good night's entertainment" is the closest I can come to advice for you. You obviously care a lot about your parents, and chances are that they care a lot about you. That doesn't necessarily mean you can listen to each other very well on all subjects, or that you'll come to the same conclusions about how to run your financial lives. But of you can all laugh about the misunderstandings and continue to respect your differences - that's the way your post reads to me - and if you can accept that changes come slowly, I think you might all be surprised to realise how much you've changed your thinking and your behaviour in 10 years time.

Best wishes

Ghoti

 

[Pat]

My suggestion would be for them to talk to three different financial planners.
Most will offer an initial free consultation.
If all three make similar recommendations, then you can have some confidence in following that advice.
If you only go to one, you could strike one of the many who are frankly hopeless.
Let us know how they get on. There are wonderful opportunities in Super coming up. If they have more than $1M to invest, get the advice before
the end of the financial year.

Couldn't agree more Julia,
MOST financial planners/advisers are hopeless. Not due to their knowledge but due to the lack of service. I hear many people saying they haven't heard from their adviser scince they signed up for insurance or super etc. Money and anything similar must be managed.

Definately see several advisers and scrutinise the products they sell. Call the company that provides these products and suss them out. Most companys provide similar performance but service is everthing especially to the older generation.

Your parents have to question themselves on retirement even if they don't want to, because a financial planner will, all they do is organise the answers.

 

[macca]

Hi Gar,

There has been a fair bit of info in the press about how much money you need to live on after retirement, most free bank advisers would be able to give that info.

Then talk with your folks about, "well here is where you are, where do you want to be and how are you going to get there ? "

If your Dad's business is "saleable" then they would be able to roll that into super and pay minimal CG tax when he wishes to retire.

Is Mum well enough to work somewhere, when it is all cream, they can save quite a bit over the 7 years before your Dad retires.

If they own their home and car when they retire and live a modest lifestyle, they won't need that much more than the pension.

It is good that you are helping them look NOW rather than in 7 years, good luck

 

[Gar]

cheers guys, I think a few good sit downs is in order