Finance is personal. I LOL at their comfortable retirement which includes an overseas holiday “every seven years” when my priorities say I could do multiple months every year for a fair bit less than that.
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No more retirement planning, I’ve hit the button and I am officially done, as of today.
Feels good so far.
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I managed to do it for one day @Hoffy. Silly bugger that I am, I had already volunteered again to go around for another 7 months, so now have to wait until Jan to join the leisure brigade. As the boss said the other day though, my initials are now RDP (run down period).
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What do you base income from super on?
Congratulations mate. Outstanding career - your commitment to public service was exemplary.
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In my 40s and just starting to think about my future retirement.
Anyone got any general advice that they would go back and tell their 40 year old self?
Don’t follow Essendon?
This is the best advice I can give………
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I would tell my 40 year old self to buy Apple shares, and watch out for when Nvidia and Netflix float.
The best advice is probably the most obvious. Talk to a financial advisor. If you do that in your 40’s, you’re probably ahead of most.
The only caveat is if they’re advising something ‘out of the ordinary’, maybe get a second opinion. e.g. the recent new articles about 2 rogue Super Funds that were paying huge incentives to financial advisors to get customers, and new housing project developers who also pay huge incentives to intermediary people to get others to buy new properties ‘off the plan’.
If they’re telling you to salary sacrifice with your current Super, or to switch to an Industry Super, and how that works best for tax post retirement, etc. I’d say that’s ordinary advice. If they’re telling you to switch to a specific Super that has amazing returns, or why some new housing development is the best - anything that sounds like a sales pitch, that’s a red flag.
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The number of times I have been advised to put money into super because you only pay 15% tax is astounding. I pay about 9% tax and would rather keep whatever I get to spend how I see fit. Is there a compelling reason to put more into super?
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Pretty much on the money, the lack of access/difficulty accessing money in super if required means I’m reluctant to put any exra money in there as I want access to funds in case of emergency.
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Please share said article. I was just told Hesta had put a six month freeze on people accessing super while they changed systems. I havent investigated yet but I trust the person telling me. Find it really hard to believe though as surely they must be breaking some rule in doing so.
Me too! Just four weeks to go on LSL and on with the next phase of life. 
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I made a chunk of a contribution recently to move me down a tax bracket. I balanced the amount so I wasn’t out of pocket per se, and work for myself so had my tax sitting there, not locked up as payg.
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Anybody got their super tied up with First Guardian or their affiliated companies might be in trouble. Lot of money gone missing.
Just reading about this now. What an absolute clusterfark, I think regulators really dropped the ball on this one and let members down.
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Sorry, that was not well explained by me. By that comment, I meant that my super “pension” doesn’t quite give me a pension of $74k per annum.
My super fund is a combination of accumulation fund and defined benefit. When I am finally able to draw on my super, I will receive a lump sum from my accumulation side based on my 5-10% contributions over my career, a lump sum from the defined benefit and a “pension” from the defined benefit, indexed for life. These figures are fixed when I make my election on retirement. I can elect to take all of my defined benefits as a lump sum and receive no pension or take anywhere from 1-100% as a pension. If I elect to take 100% as a pension, I still receive two seperate lump sums albiet significantly smaller in the case of the defined benefit one. Mine is a lot lower than it could have been as I prioritised family over career, impacting my income and promotion.
If I pass away before my wife, she will continue to receive 60% of my pension until she passes away. (We joke at work that if we were to outlive our partners, we could go out and find a young 20 y.o. on the promise that, they would receive that pension at 60% for the rest of their lives after we finally cark it. 
)
My super is extremely generous, but the flip side is that it has a maximum benefit limit meaning that you can’t for example walk out with a million dollar a year pension. Unfortunately for anyone deciding to follow my career path, this super fund has been retired and replaced with one that while still generous, is not as good as the one it replaces.
I don’t know if that helps explain your question or not.
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Great.
So not only do I have to save a ■■■■ tonne of money, I have to retire with the body (my own) of a 25 year old.
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Doing ‘nothing’ is much more risky than doing ‘something’. You are young enough to take on greater risk than you will be able to in 20 years.
And marry into a wealthy family, with a holiday house or two.
Correct