John Cameron's personal blog

Good question. When you look beneath the surface of the Account Based Pensions offered by major superannuation funds, the answer is “quite a lot”.

How well an Account Based Pension serves you depends on its returns, and the risks taken to get those returns. Any financial planner worth his or her fee can help you structure a portfolio that provides a risk/return trade-off that meets your needs, both initially and, most importantly, over the years

The major tool to manage risk is “asset allocation”. This is a simple idea, and it relates to how much you have in safe, low risk investments, such as term deposits, cash and short term Government bonds, compared with how much you have in more volatile (but potentially higher yielding) investments such as shares, and property.

Most of the principles, ideas and guidelines around how to structure retirement income, have been developed by theoreticians, and are often impractical and out of touch.

Now, a financial planner with decades of practical experience, has produced a booklet that looks at the performance of different asset classes over almost 50 years. The main conclusion   –   there is no “best” answer across all times. It depends.

To download a copy, go to: http://www.blackswanevent.com.au/landing-page-lump-sum 

The following article "Where To Look For Income In Times Of Low Interest" was written by John Cameron and appeared on pg 2 of The West Australian - Financial Planning Supplement - 21st August 2017.

The figures quoted are taken from special research into retirement incomes, undertaken by Delta Research and Advisory at John Cameron's behest.

More will follow over coming weeks.