John Cameron's personal blog

One of my favourite pastimes each Saturday is reading the weekly column by Nikki Gemmell, in The Weekend Australian magazine. She writes about life and the lives of herself, her family and people she has known, and gently draws valuable lessons from them.

Last Saturday, she wrote about 2 people who had been high profile in their day, earning big money. However, their later years were nothing like their early years. The money ran out, their health deteriorated and they spent their last days in relative poverty.

That’s a story that we are likely to hear more of, as the population ages, but it is a problem that Financial Planners are well positioned to help you avoid.

Most of us had retirement dreams, and couldn’t wait to finish work. So once retired, why haven’t we started ticking items off the bucket list? There’s no time like now for living your dreams.

When Tony and Chris retired they had grand plans involving a campervan, Kakadu and a rescue-dog. Their great Australian road-trip was happening the very next year, after they, “just got few things out of the way”.

Things like their daughter’s November wedding, then the kitchen reno in January. Kakadu wasn’t going anywhere; it would wait until July – after Chris’s knee reconstruction.

There’s a common view that as you approach retirement you should tilt your investment portfolio towards more conservative investments. This means favouring things like term deposits, annuities and cash management trusts while reducing exposure to more volatile assets such as shares and property. The thinking is that preservation of capital is key, as without an earned income it is hard to recover from any downturns in the share or property markets. 

In the days of high interest rates this might have been a good strategy, but when interest rates are low and life expectancies long, being too conservative with investment can see the money running out way too soon.

Peter plans to retire on his upcoming 63rd birthday. He has $600,000 in super and wants this to provide him with an income of $50,000 per year. If his net return is 3% pa, Peter’s nest egg will last for just over 15 years . The problem is there’s a good chance Peter will live into his late 80s or even 90s. To give his savings a chance of lasting until he is 90 (27 years), Peter will need to target a net return of 7% pa.

Retirement: you’ve made it! And one of the rewards for all your hard work is that you can now access your superannuation. Suddenly a world of opportunities opens up – a Caribbean cruise, major home renovations or maybe helping your kids reduce some of their debt.

Of course you deserve to celebrate your retirement, but bear in mind that your super might need to support you for the next 30 years or more. Eat too far into your nest egg in the early days and you significantly reduce the time that your super will last. This is particularly the case in a low interest rate environment.

Take Ron and Val. They retire with a combined super balance of $800,000. At an interest rate of 4% pa this nest egg will fund annual living expenses of $60,000 for 19.4 years[1]. If they spend $100,000 on travel and home renovations and give a further $100,000 to their children, the reduced nest egg will now only last 13 years.

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.

Retirement is one of the major lifetime events. Like lots of important events, proper planning is an important key to success. Finance is not the only area, but no doubt it is an important one.

So what should you do to prepare your finances for life after retirement? Here are 5 things to get you started.

1. PAY OFF DEBTS BEFORE YOU RETIRE.

Often when you go to a financial planner to plan your retirement, they will give you a graph to show how your capital might fare over a period.

The process is fairly simple. You start with an amount of capital, it earns interest, dividends and growth over time, and this grows the amount of capital. Deduct the amount you draw to live on, and you are left with a balance. Then, draw a graph of the balance each year, and there is your future capital mapped out.

However, this comes with at least 2 serious drawbacks.

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 

I’m going to stick my neck out just a bit and say that: “Retirees have got a raw deal over the last couple of decades”.

Nothing new there you might say. But, what I am referring to is the advice that has been available to retirees when it comes to investing their superannuation to produce an income stream.

And, no, this is not another diatribe against financial advisers, as the problem lies much deeper.

The video Securing your Future: featuring John Cameron was in the top 10 of the most viewed videos on The West Australian website Monday (12th Sept 2016).

"Different decades, different investment returns" 

You can watch it here: Securing your Future

'Securing Your Future' was the most viewed material on The West Australian’s website yesterday. It’s the online version of The West’s financial planning supplement. 

The West Australian newspaper published a financial planning supplement yesterday 'Securing Your Future' (Monday 22 August 2016). I contributed an article to the supplement and participated in a video for The West's website. You might like to read the articles online - there is some useful material. 

Click on this link to view my article and video about different investment returns in various decades: https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/32389394/sequencing-and-retirement-income/#page1 

What you need to know on Sequencing and Retirement Income - John Cameron - The West Australian on August 21, 2016, 6:00 am. Video Presentation & Article: Different decades, different investment returns.

https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/32389394/sequencing-and-retirement-income/#page1

Securing Your Future' was the most viewed material on The West Australian’s website yesterday. It’s the online version of The West’s financial planning supplement.  Read more here: http://us3.campaign-archive1.com/?u=1e6f34af574ca6cbaf30d3e8a&id=4d4b85dde5 

There. I’ve said it.

There are many reasons to criticise the superannuation changes announced in the budget (more on that next time), but retrospectivity is not one of them. Why? Because they are not retrospective.

Much of the considerable amount of criticism has been around the changes being “retrospective”. However, there is confusion between “retrospectivity” and “grandfathering”.