The main role of a professional retirement planner is to solve the common problems of: Do I have enough? When can I retire? What will retirement look like for me? If your current retirement planner is just wanting to sell you another product – you are talking to the wrong people
The current age for full retirement with government support is 65 years, but this is set to increase to age 67 by 2023 and age 70 by the year 2035.
Once you are eligible for retirement, it is very important that you have spoken at length with a retirement planner that is aware of your personal financial circumstances. It is a startling fact that many retirement-age pensioners do not have enough superannuation, savings or equity in their assets to retire comfortably, when they want to.
Now we are all for working for as long as you want to or can, but for many Australians this means they are forced to work for longer than they would like because they didn’t seek professional advice and plan ahead of time. So we are not like some retirement planners who encourage older Australians to keep working as part of a ‘retirement plan’ – because quite simply – if you are still working then you haven’t retired!
The amount of money one needs to retire with depends on several factors. The first being what amount you actually need to pay your bills, make a mortgage or rental repayment, put petrol in the car and buy food. In short, these are your day-to-day living expenses. We call this Cashflow planning.
This information is of particular importance to your retirement planner. Melbourne is a city where the cost of living keeps going up, and many are feeling the strain of the fact that the amount of money needed to “just get by” is rising at a far greater rate than the average wage.
This not only causes financial stress for individuals, families and those approaching retirement, but it also makes it a challenge for a retirement planner to actually help you plan for the day when there is no consistent income coming into your bank account from a regular job.
The retirement planners at GNS Group have a wealth of knowledge and experience between them, so we are extremely well equipped to offer you the best possible advice based on your current situation and where you intend to be at the time of your retirement. It is called retirement planning for a reason – it takes careful planning and considering before you retire you ensure you can live out your twilight years in comfort without having to worry about money.
The sorts of strategies that GNS Group can, and will discuss with you are:
Cashflow planning to work out your future cost of living
Assessing the different types and sources of income you can obtain – Centrelink Pensions, Annuities, Account Based Pensions, rent, interest, dividend etc.
Risk profiling to make sure we are taking the least amount of risk in order to achieve your retirement goals.
Tax and Estate planning to make sure your assets are correctly invested and protected from others.
Although there is some “guess work” involved in planning out your retirement nest-egg, and good rule of thumb is to look at what you’re currently spending and where and determine what those expenses are likely to be as you approach retirement. If you are in your early twenties and just entering the workforce, you will be in a different financial position to a couple in their mid-thirties with a young family.
It is never too early to start planning for your retirement, and in fact, the earlier you begin to consider what you would like your financial future to look like when you leave the workforce, the better equipped you will be to meet that objective.
Whatever your situation is at present, it is never too early to book a consultation with a GNS Group retirement planner to ensure that when it is time for you to retire, you can do so without having to worry about compromising the lifestyle you’ve earned over a lifetime of hard work!
