Greater longevity would also have made some of us more comfortable about carrying debt into older ages than in the past. Ideally, we would enter retirement with our home mortgages paid off and completely free of any other kind of debt. In theory at least, this may enable us to use our retirement savings to fully or partly finance our retirement. Yet many retirees reach common retirement ages with outstanding mortgages and other debts. This leads to the inevitable question: How is the debt to be repaid? A wide-reaching research paper*, Inquiry into housing policies, labour force participation and economic growth, […]

Have you plans to contribute more to super in 2017-18? There are powerful arguments for beginning to make extra regular super contributions from early as possible in a new financial year. The reality is that many of us wait until the final days of a financial year to decide whether to make extra concessional (before-tax) and non-concessional (after-tax) contributions. This often involves a last-minute dash to contribute by June 30 in any year. Among the most-common arguments for contributing early in a financial year is that your money is exposed to chosen investment markets for the full 12 months ahead […]