Feature: Mortgage or Super? Where should your next $500 go?

From Bec’s Desk: On the Ghan…

The Age and Sydney Morning Herald: Why your bank might be overcharging you interest – and how to check

Prime Time: ASIC warning: your offset account might not be offsetting at all

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The Epic Retirement Flagship Course starts on 13 August. The earlybird 25% off deal closes Monday!

If you’re within ten years of retirement - or already retired - and want more confidence about what’s next, I’d love you to join us.

Over six weeks we’ll explore the six pillars of an epic retirement, learning the financial, lifestyle and health decisions that shape your years ahead. You’ll work through 15 comprehensive modules, a printed/digital workbook, weekly live Q&A sessions with me and some of the country’s leading retirement experts, plus the support of a community going through the journey together.

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Mortgage or Super? Where should your next $500 go?

One of the nicest financial problems you can have is finding yourself with money left over at the end of the month - especially as you’re approaching retirement.

For years, it probably didn’t feel like that was ever going to happen. There was always something demanding your attention - the mortgage, school fees, the savings account funding the family holiday, replacing the car or paying for unexpected repairs at home. Life has a habit of soaking up whatever money we earn.

Then, quite often, in the run up to retirement, something changes.

The mortgage becomes a little smaller than it used to be. The children become more independent and start carrying themselves forward. Your income is often the highest it’s ever been. And retirement, which once felt a long way away, suddenly feels close enough to reach out and touch.

It’s often around this point that people ask me a question that sounds incredibly simple.

“I’ve got an extra $500 a month. Where should it go? Mortgage or Super?”

At first glance, it’s a series of question about investments and returns. Should I pay down the mortgage? Should I contribute more to super? Should I invest outside super?

But I don’t think that’s actually what people are trying to work out. In fact, I think they’re trying to answer a much bigger question.

‘How do I give myself the most choices over the next ten years?’

Because that’s really what retirement planning is about. It’s not really about accumulating the biggest possible super balance or dying with the smallest mortgage. It’s not even about squeezing every last tax benefit out of the government.

It’s really about creating choices - so that when you hit the crossroads of life, you have options, and you’re not forced down a path that you’re unhappy with.

The interesting thing is that each of those three options buys you something different.

Paying down your mortgage buys certainty of your housing, your local community and your cost of living.

Contributing to super buys tax efficient savings, a good record of getting investment returns and, potentially, building of more wealth.

Investing outside super buys you flexibility and potentially the ability to step away from working full time before you reach the age when you can access your superannuation.

None of those things is automatically better than the others. Their value depends entirely on what you’re trying to achieve.

Imagine two people, both aged 57, both with an extra $500 a month to save.

The first wants nothing more than to own their home outright before they retire. They’ve never liked debt at all. The idea of entering retirement with a mortgage keeps them awake at night. For them, directing every spare dollar to the mortgage might be exactly the right decision. Every repayment reduces the interest they pay, shortens the loan and gives them a little more confidence about their future.

The second person has a different goal. They’re planning to retire at 62 and still have plenty of room to contribute to super in their concessional contributions cap each year. Rather than paying the mortgage down immediately, they decide to salary sacrifice into super while they’re still working. Thanks to the tax concessions available inside super, they accumulate more than they would have by investing the same amount after tax. When they retire, they use part of their super to clear the remaining mortgage.

Neither strategy is right and neither strategy is wrong. They’re simply solving different problems.

Then there’s a third person. She’s 56 and dreams of finishing work at 58. She knows she won’t be able to access her super for a couple of years, so paying extra into super doesn’t help her immediate goal of funding her pre-retirement years. What she needs is money she can actually use between the day she finishes work and the day she can access her super.

For her, investing outside super isn’t the most tax-effective choice. It’s the most useful choice - for her goals.

That’s why I’ve become increasingly uncomfortable with the idea that there’s a universal answer to this question that is driven by investment returns alone. I think the better question is:

‘What job does my next $500 need to do?’

Let's see what happens to the same $500 a month under each strategy so your choice can be anchored in good financial sense too.

A reminder before you read on: I’m not going to tell you where your next $500 should go.

What I will do is explain how each option works, who it tends to suit, and the trade-offs involved. Good retirement planning isn’t about finding the “best” strategy - it’s about finding the strategy that’s best for you.

Strategy One: Reduce your mortgage

Suppose you have a mortgage charging 6.5% interest and decide to direct your extra $500 a month towards it.

Over the next five years you’ll contribute $30,000 of your own money. Assuming interest rates stay around today’s levels, you’ll also avoid paying roughly another $5,000 in interest. In total, you’ll reduce your mortgage by around $35,000. There’s no market risk of getting that outcome because it is just capital plus interest.

There’s another benefit that’s harder to measure here. Every extra repayment reduces your future commitments to pay for housing. If your circumstances change or you decide to retire earlier than expected, a smaller mortgage gives you more breathing room.

This is why many Australians love paying down their mortgage first. The return is predictable, the risk is low and the emotional reward of watching your mortgage shrink shouldn’t be underestimated.

Strategy Two: Build your super first

Now let’s use exactly the same $500 differently. Instead of making extra mortgage repayments, suppose you salary sacrifice enough into super so your take-home pay still only falls by about $500 a month.

If you’re earning around $100,000 a year, that means around $735 is contributed into super before tax each month. After the 15% contributions tax, about $625 is invested.

Assuming those contributions earn an average return of 7% a year over the next five years, you’d finish with around $45,000 in super. That’s roughly $10,000 more than directing the same $500 to your mortgage.

So why the difference? It isn’t because super somehow earns better investment returns than your mortgage saves you. It’s chiefly because the tax system is helping you save more.

By contributing before tax through salary sacrifice, the same reduction in your take-home pay allows you to invest around 25% more money each month than if you were investing after tax. Even after contributions tax is deducted, you’re still investing more than you could outside super. Those larger contributions then have five years to grow.

Of course, nothing comes for free. Unlike extra mortgage repayments, your super balance will rise and fall with investment markets. And unless you’ve met a condition of release, you can’t simply access the money if your plans change.

That’s why this strategy tends to suit people who are only a few years away from retirement and are confident they won’t need the money beforehand.

It also raises an interesting question that many Australians never ask.

‘Could I use super later to help pay off my mortgage, rather than paying off my mortgage before building my super?’

For the right person, the answer may well be ‘yes’.

Strategy Three: Buy yourself flexibility

Not everyone is trying to maximise their retirement savings. For some people, the priority is having money they can access before or during retirement if life doesn’t quite go to plan.

Perhaps you’d like the option of reducing your working hours a little earlier than expected. Perhaps you want to help your children financially, renovate your home before retirement, care for ageing parents, or simply know there’s a pool of money available if something unexpected happens.

Whatever the reason, that changes the job your next 500 dollars needs to do. In this situation, investing outside super might make a lot more sense.

Assuming the same $500 a month is invested and earns an average return of 7% a year, you’d accumulate around $36,000 over five years before tax, investment fees and any capital gains tax that may eventually apply.

That’s certainly less than the super strategy. But it buys you something neither your mortgage nor your super can - access to the money earlier to fund your lifestyle. Your money isn’t locked away. So, if your plans change, your savings can change with them.

Will you probably pay more tax than if you’d invested through super? Yes.

Will you potentially end up with a smaller investment balance? Probably.

But that’s because you aren’t trying to maximise tax efficiency. You’re choosing flexibility and sometimes that’s exactly the right trade-off.

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Want to read more, I have two books - How to Have an Epic Retirement and if you’re not ready for retirement, Prime Time: 27 Lessons for the New Midlife.

I’m writing this on the plane home from Adelaide, having just done the 4 day, 3 night journey from Darwin to Adelaide on The Ghan Expedition.

My daughter Paris and I were guests of Journey Beyond, and I have to say, it was a remarkable experience. Four days and three nights sleeping in a lovely cabin on the train, eating chef-prepared meals that rivalled many top tier restaurants, enjoying a glass (or two) of South Australian wine as the Australian landscape rolled by, and stepping off each day to explore parts of the outback that most Australians never get to see.

But what surprised me most wasn’t the the food or the train - it was the people and the sense of camraderie on our journey.

There’s something about spending four days together that breaks down barriers and makes us friends. By the second day, complete strangers were sharing breakfast, swapping travel stories over dinner and sitting together over a drink at the end of the day. We met people from all walks of life. Most were Australians taking the trip they’d been talking about for years, or pairs and groups of long-time friends travelling together. A couple of mother-daughters and a couple of families - but mainly Prime Timers and Epic Retirees.

As someone who spends a lot of time thinking and writing about retirement, I couldn’t help but notice something else …

Many of the conversations eventually drifted to life after work and the lives people were building or had built. People talked about why they’d chosen to take the trip now before retiting, or what they’d learnt since retiring, and the adventures they hoped to have next. Almost without exception, they said some version of the same thing - it was awesome - and they are so glad they got out there and did it. 😉. I’ll be doing a full episode on the adventure in the Prime Time podcast in the next couple of weeks - keep an eye out.

In other stuff worth talking about:

It’s week 2 of the HESTA 6-Week Epic Retirement course and it’s going well. Our first live Q&A event is just days away - always the most fun part.

And our earlybird deal for the How to Have an Epic Retirement Flagship Course will close on Monday - so get your booking in, because tickets will jump from $390 to $525 when they do. More than 300 people have already booked - so you’re in great company.

Learn more about the course

And lastly, this week I was privelidged to interview Sarah Court, the new ASIC Chair to discuss the issues with offset accounts that ASIC is warning consumers to look for. Have a listen to the podcast or read about it in my newspaper column.

And that’s it - have a ripper Sunday!

Cheers - Bec

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

Why your bank might be overcharging you interest – and how to check

Have you got an offset account, and if so, have you ever checked it’s working properly to reduce the interest paid on your home loan? Sounds like something most people would assume the bank knows how to get right, right?

Well, according to a report by ASIC that was published this week, it’s now something we should all be worrying about, and checking on promptly.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has reviewed the practices of eight banks, looking at more than 200,000 individual home loans to check whether the offset accounts in place were delivering the savings that were promised, and the commission has been unimpressed by the mess.

Its report shows that, in the period from September 2023 to August 2025, banks paid out compensation of more than $55 million to customers for cases where offset accounts were not offsetting correctly – and that was chiefly only to people who discovered a problem and asked about it.

Fifty-five million dollars in compensation is what banks have so far admitted to getting wrong – but ASIC says the real number could be a lot bigger. Several banks couldn’t even reliably tell them who had asked for an offset account in the first place, let alone who had lost money on one that hadn’t been set up or linked correctly, or even set up at all.

This article continues… It is published in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday 1st Aug 2026. Read the whole article here, without a paywall.

ASIC warning: your offset account might not be offsetting at all

Offset accounts are supposed to be one of the simplest products in banking. Put money in, link it to your home loan and pay less interest. ASIC’s latest investigation suggests you might need to open your statements and check if your offset account is in fact working like that.

This week on the podcast I sat down with the new ASIC Chair Sarah Court to unpack one of the most significant banking reports released this year. This week, ASIC have announced that they have dived deep into how offset accounts are working, and have concern that many are not working as they are supposed to.

ASIC’s investigation found banks have already paid more than $55 million in compensation over two years after offset accounts failed to reduce customers’ home loan interest as promised. Even more concerning, the regulator says the true scale of the problem may be much larger because some banks couldn’t reliably identify customers who had requested an offset account in the first place.

We talk through how offset accounts are supposed to work, why so many failures have occurred, why they’re often difficult for customers to detect, and the simple checks every mortgage holder should make - particularly if you’ve refinanced, switched loan products or come off a fixed-rate loan in recent years (and even if you haven’t).

LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE OF THE PODCAST HERE:

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• LISTEN ON SPOTIFY

Feature: Your brain needs a retirement plan too

From Bec’s Desk: Thousands learning this week

The Age and Sydney Morning Herald: Why are so many retirees still spending like it’s 1991?

Prime Time: Everything you were too afraid to ask about EVs

Ad - Our next Epic Retirement flagship course is booking fast

The Epic Retirement Course starts 13 August - book your place

We’ve got hundreds of people booked in for The Epic Retirement Flagship Course kicking off on the 13th August. We’ve just added another allocation of earlybird seats to get us through this weekend - so dive in and take advantage of the 25% off deal before we close it off. It’s already exceeded it’s caps.

The course

• Six weeks, running 13 August to 25 September 2026

• 15 comprehensive modules covering the six pillars of an Epic Retirement, financial, health, happiness, home and beyond

• New content drops each week so you move through it together with your cohort, not alone

• 12 weeks of access to the program in total, so there’s room to revisit anything you need to

What’s included

• A 150-plus page printed and digital workbook, mailed to you before kickoff

• Weekly live Q&A sessions with me and a lineup of special guests, this round including experts from AMP, Challenger, HESTA and more.

• A cohort of fellow course participants to learn alongside

• A signed copy of How to Have an Epic Retirement, the book - mailed to you

The offer

• $525 per person, with 25 per cent off for the earlybird deal (taking it to $390 for a limited time)

• Couples can join on one ticket, with an extra workbook available after registration

If you’ve been thinking about it, don’t wait much longer, the earlybird spots won’t last.

Download the brochure or learn more

Your brain needs a retirement plan too

I don’t think enough retirement planning stops to ask what the point of it all is if your brain isn’t along for the ride. You can get the super sorted, the income streams mapped, the timing nailed, and still be missing the thing that makes all of it worth having.

The World Health Organization just released the first update to its dementia risk-reduction guidelines since 2019, and it’s worth ten minutes of your time. Not because it’s alarming. If anything, it’s the opposite. The headline finding is that up to 45% of dementia risk comes down to factors you can actually do something about. Genetics don’t get a vote in that 45%, your choices do.

That’s a bigger number than most people assume, so it’s worth being specific about what actually deserves your attention and what’s just noise.

If you had to guess the single biggest modifiable risk factor for dementia, you’d probably say diet, or exercise. The real answer, according to this review, is keeping your cholesterol in check, closely followed by managing your hearing loss. Each one accounts for around 7% of dementia cases on its own, which is more than smoking, more than diabetes, and more than physical inactivity.

Hearing loss is the real sleeper here. When your hearing declines, your brain has to work harder just to fill in the gaps in conversation, and over years that extra strain seems to take a real toll. Only around 17% of people who’d benefit from a hearing aid are actually using one. If you’ve been putting off a hearing test because you don’t feel that deaf yet, take this as your nudge. The WHO now actively recommends hearing aids as a dementia risk-reduction strategy, which is a new and fairly firm addition to this edition.

Cholesterol is less interesting to talk about but just as important to act on. If you’re in your 50s or early 60s and haven’t had it checked lately, or you know your numbers aren’t great and you’ve been meaning to deal with it, this is the moment. It sits in the same category as reviewing your insurance or updating your will: not urgent-feeling, really important, and easy to keep putting off.

Physical activity still carries the strongest evidence in the whole document. Not becoming a gym junkie, just not being sedentary. Walking regularly, gardening, golf without the cart. If you’re already doing that, you’re doing the single most evidence-backed thing available to you.

Social connection is the newest addition to the guidelines, and it matters more than it might sound. In 2019 there wasn’t enough evidence to make a call on this one either way. Now there is: staying socially active is officially linked to lower dementia risk. About one in four older adults globally report feeling isolated, and retirement is often exactly when that happens quietly, fewer work colleagues, kids who’ve moved out, a smaller circle than you had at 45. It’s worth treating with the same seriousness as diet or exercise, not as something that will sort itself out.

Then there’s what the guidelines pointedly don’t recommend, which is almost as useful to know. Vitamin B, vitamin E, omega-3 fish oil, multivitamins: the evidence review found no dementia-prevention benefit from any of them, provided you don’t have an actual diagnosed deficiency. If you’ve been taking a fish oil capsule “for your brain,” the science doesn’t back that up, and that’s money better spent on the hearing test.

The idea that a glass of red wine a night is protective doesn’t hold up either. It’s most likely a statistical illusion: people who already have health problems tend to cut back on drinking, which makes the moderate drinkers left in the data look artificially healthy by comparison. There’s no dementia-prevention case for drinking more than none.

And for women weighing up menopausal hormone therapy, the guidelines are now explicit that it shouldn’t be started or continued specifically to prevent dementia in women 65 and over. That doesn’t change the case for MHT to manage hot flushes, sleep, or bone health. Those reasons stand on their own. It just means brain protection isn’t one of them.

None of these individual actions is a magic bullet, and the guidelines are upfront about that. Managing cholesterol alone won’t dramatically cut your risk. Neither will hearing aids alone, or exercise alone. What the evidence shows most clearly is that tackling several of these together, blood pressure, hearing, activity, social connection, produces the strongest and most consistent results of anything reviewed.

Which is oddly reassuring, when you sit with it. It’s not about finding the one perfect intervention. It’s the same principle as retirement planning itself: no single decision, when you stop work, how you draw down super, when you take the pension, what you do with your time, carries all the weight on its own. It’s the combination that gets you to an epic retirement.

If you want a place to start: book the hearing test if it’s overdue, ask your GP for your cholesterol and blood pressure numbers if you don’t already know them, and take an honest look at whether your social calendar has been quietly shrinking and try fitting in a walk every day or two. None of that requires a life overhaul. It just means treating your brain with the same planning mindset you’d bring to your finances.

Source: World Health Organization, Risk reduction of cognitive decline and dementia: WHO guidelines, second edition (2026).

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Want to read more, I have two books - How to Have an Epic Retirement and if you’re not ready for retirement, Prime Time: 27 Lessons for the New Midlife.

We’ve been busy. Our next HESTA 6-Week Epic Retirement course kicked off this week with THOUSANDS of students. Very fun to see so many people in there chatting, participating and learning with so much excitement. This is what I dreamed of when I started the Epic Retirement Institute - building courses that help people and serving them up in a way that really helps. Thank you to HESTA for making that possible for their members!

Our own Epic Retirement flagship course is on track to be the biggest ever too. A frighteningly large shipment of workbooks arrived at my home office this week - a whole pallet of books I had to find space for. And that will only get us through 2-3 courses. It’s the little things that bring us joy isn’t it.

Learn more about the course

I also co-presented at the Aware Super online event for couples - with hundreds of attendees. Great fun and so much lovely feedback. Thanks for coming and learning - if you were there.

And I booked my next trip to London - for some speaking over there in October.

Our Bec’s Epic Bucket List holidays have been shortlisted to 4 trips we are refining for 2027. We’re looking at cruising Iceland/Norway; Walking in Umbria; A pre-christmas 2027 Xmas markets river cruise in Europe and we’re adding a Kimberley Cruise too - closer to home later next year. But I wont tell you much more - because we need to see if there’s availability on these bucket list trips first. Then we can get serious about it. And, once we lock those, we’ll plan early for 2028.

Also, you’ll see Paris and I have continued our work on An Epic Start. We’ve decided it needs a semi-regular newsletter (probably fortnightly initially) that parents and young adults starting out can follow for the key lessons. So we’ve started one on substack and put up a little explainer. You can follow it here. And join us on Instagram too - here.

Finally, I’ve been keeping up my new gym committments - and I’m getting stronger. Progressive lifting is my goal, and it’s a slow process of learning how to do it. But I’m committed. Gotta practice what I preach - especially when Dementia prevention gives me another reason. How are you going?

And that’s it - have a ripper Sunday!

Cheers - Bec

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

Why are so many retirees still spending like it’s 1991?

Picture someone 10 years into retirement, too afraid to draw down beyond the government minimum drawdown. Their super is well above the national average, and they own their own home.

They could be comfortable, but instead, they’re living like it’s 1991, back in the recession we had to have. They’re skipping the trip to see their grandkids overseas, patching up a car that could have been replaced years ago, and turning the heating down a notch every winter to protect a super balance they will almost certainly never spend.

That’s not a rare story. It’s happening in kitchens and living rooms all over Australia. And here’s the hard part: 33 years ago, Australia launched one of the most successful financial experiments in the world – we forced every Australian to save for retirement.

Most people don’t realise that it worked magnificently – giving everyone who has worked a bucket of savings to deploy when they retire. But we never explained that to the people living it.

In fact, the enormous success of superannuation has created a new retirement problem we don’t discuss enough – people don’t know how to manage their money so they can confidently spend.

Most people in Australia don’t think of themselves as someone who has saved for retirement. You’ve saved almost accidentally. It came out of your pay before you ever saw it, went into an account you probably didn’t check for years at a time, and it grew while you got on with living your life – just like the experiment was meant to work, but better.

We’re a nation of brilliant savers, and terrible spenders, and it’s really not our fault.

You didn’t get a financial plan, or understand what you were invested in. You just didn’t touch it, and it turns out that for most average Australians that will be enough.

Except that now, most Australians are sitting on a reasonable-sized bucket of money, and very few are actually prepared for how to spend it.

This article continues… It is published in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday 25th July 2026. Read the whole article here, without a paywall.

Everything you were too afraid to ask about EVs

I’ve been wanting to do an episode on electric vehicles for a long time. Not because I think everyone should rush out and buy one tomorrow, but because there seems to be so much confusion around them. Every time the topic comes up, there are plenty of opinions, a few myths, and surprisingly few people who’ve actually lived with one.

I’ve owned an electric car for seven years now, and while I certainly don’t claim to be an expert, I have learnt a lot along the way. And, I’m even contemplating what kind I want next.

This week I invited Sarah Aubrey from Electrify This onto Prime Time. Sarah spends her days helping everyday Australians understand electric vehicles in plain English, not through the lens of a car enthusiast, but as someone who wants practical answers.

We talk about the real costs of owning an EV, charging at home, battery life, resale values, tax incentives, and whether they’re actually a good fit for Australians in their Prime Time.

Whether you’re seriously considering an EV or simply curious about what all the fuss is about, I think you’ll come away understanding the topic far better than when you started.

LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE OF THE PODCAST HERE:

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Feature: What sort of investment returns does your retirement plan actually need?

From Bec’s Desk: On the road again.

The Age and Sydney Morning Herald: Super funds just delivered another stellar year. Is yours one of the best?

Prime Time: The retirement questions that keep Australians awake at night

Ad - Our next Epic Retirement flagship course is booking fast

The Epic Retirement Course starts 13 August - book your place

Two weeks in, and the bookings just keep coming. If you’ve been sitting on the fence, here’s everything you’re getting when you join us on The Epic Retirement Flagship Course.

The course

• Six weeks, running 13 August to 25 September 2026

• 15 comprehensive modules covering the six pillars of an Epic Retirement, financial, health, happiness, home and beyond

• New content drops each week so you move through it together with your cohort, not alone

• 12 weeks of access to the program in total, so there’s room to revisit anything you need to

What’s included

• A 150-plus page printed and digital workbook, mailed to you before kickoff

• Weekly live Q&A sessions with me and a lineup of special guests, this round including experts from AMP, Challenger, HESTA and more.

• A cohort of fellow course participants to learn alongside

• A signed copy of How to Have an Epic Retirement, the book - mailed to you

The offer

• $525 per person, with 25 per cent off for the first 200 people to book (taking it to $390 for a limited time)

• Couples can join on one ticket, with an extra workbook available after registration

• We run this course four times a year, and the Earlybird deal has sold out early every single time

If you’ve been thinking about it, don’t wait much longer, the earlybird spots won’t last.

Download the brochure or learn more

Stop chasing last year’s winners

Every July, the same thing happens. The annual super results land, someone’s fund tops the table, and half of Australia starts wondering whether they should switch. This year it’s Unisuper at the top of the table (which I announced in the Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday - see below), with a 12.3 per cent return for accumulation members and 13.1 per cent for those drawing a pension. Truly excellent numbers, and there’s real skill behind them.

But before you go chasing it, I want to make a case for looking at a different set of numbers altogether to evaluate whether your super is doing its job

One year returns do matter, to a point. A fund that keeps pace with the market each year is doing its job, and there’s nothing wrong with checking how your fund performed this year against its peers. Chant West’s data shows the median growth fund, the ones holding 61 to 80 per cent in growth assets, (not by whatever name appears in its branding, which can be a little misleading), returned 9.5 per cent for FY26. That follows 9.2 per cent in FY23, 9.1 per cent in FY24 and 10.4 per cent in FY25, which takes the cumulative return to an impressive 44 per cent over the past four years. That’s one of the best stretches super has ever had.

But there is a catch we all need to be aware of. Four years is the longest uninterrupted high performing stretch since 2002, and it last happened back in 2004 to 2007. What followed was two very negative years in a row. I’m not saying that’s about to happen again, nobody can know that, but it’s exactly why one year, or even four good years, was never designed to tell you which fund deserves your trust for the next thirty years.

I prefer you to stop and look at the ten year performance averages. What a ten year number gives you that a one year number simply can’t is a fund’s track record through an actual market cycle. It shows how the investment team handled a downturn, not just how they performed while everything was rising. Chant West’s own data backs this up. Since compulsory super began in 1992, the median growth fund has beaten its long term return objective in roughly 73 per cent of rolling ten year periods. That’s a track record Aussie super funds should be proud of.

Ultimately, it’s wise to look at both. This year’s leaders and the ten year leaders are answering two different questions. Unisuper’s result this year shows real strength right now. But the funds that have proven they can do this consistently over a full decade are Hostplus, Brighter Super and Australian Retirement Trust, (and note Unisuper also makes the top ten list over ten years) all of them delivering close to 9 per cent a year, on average, every year, for ten years straight. Both lists are worth knowing about and referring to. Neither one on its own tells you the whole story about which funds are performing well.

Part of the reason one year rankings shuffle so much comes down to what’s actually driving the number. This year, the funds that led the pack were mostly the ones with strong exposure to currency hedged international shares, since that’s where the real gains sat in FY26. A different year, with a different part of the market firing, and a different set of names ends up at the top. That’s not a knock on any fund’s skill, it’s just how markets work when different sectors take turns leading the run. A fund sitting mid-table this year isn’t necessarily doing anything wrong, it might just be holding a slightly different mix that hasn’t had its year yet.

So what do you actually do with all this? Check your fund’s ten year number, not just this year’s returns, and compare it against the median for your own risk category rather than the flashiest headline in the market.

And if you are tempted to switch based on this year’s results, factor in the fees too, and real cost of moving that might come from buy and sell spreads, and any retirement bonus that might be lost. And check the fund you’re choosing offers good retirement services with the Epic Retirement Tick.

Note: these are all accumulation numbers - I only have the top three for retirement as the data isn’t final yet. The top three growth funds (61-80% growth assets) in the retirement phase for 2025/26 are:

• Hostplus Balanced Fund 10.1%

• CSC Aggressive 9.9%

• Brighter Super Balanced Fund 9.8%

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Want to read more, I have two books - How to Have an Epic Retirement and if you’re not ready for retirement, Prime Time: 27 Lessons for the New Midlife.

Short and sweet this week. You’ve heard most of my opinions on social media - where I’ve put out quite a few reels. The biggest, a rant about the articles the media ran on the family home being about to be included in the Assets Test - that really made me mad watching the media clickbait everyone. (It’s not true BTW - it’s just a think tank’s polarising views).

Then, onto the Superfund Performance for 2025/26 which I’ve done a little series on this weekend. Head on over to Facebook where I’m about to pass through 100,000 followers (exciting moment for me!) to watch these little videos regulary - I try to do a few each week and the topics are varied. I’m also on Instagram here.

I’ve also kept going on my new gym program, progressive lifting. It hurts the first few times you try it. But that pain and the muscle growth that comes from pushing through it I’m hoping lead somewhere good.

A quick trip to Sydney and Melbourne was the big highlight of my week, speaking at the Lowe Living rightsizing events, meeting so many of our community members there too. I love that. I also dropped in on a few of the superfunds - terrific fun to find out what they are up to.

EPIC RETIREMENT COURSE - Our Epic Retirement Flagship Course is counting down to the last Earlybird spots. Then the price will go back to the RRP. The course kicks off on the 13th August - Not long now! So don’t delay - you know I want everyone to get the best deal available. Download a brochure here and book your place.

Learn more about the course

HESTA’S COURSE KICKS OFF THIS WEEK - HESTA’s Epic Retirement 6 week course has been specially built for HESTA members. This progam is enrolling now for kickoff on the 24th July (and it’s free for HESTA members). If you’re a HESTA member you can sign up, but only while places last. Check it out here.

AWARE SUPER - EVENT ONLINE - Lastly, this week I’m speaking at the Aware Super Couples Retirement event (online). If you’re an Aware member - make sure you’ve registered via their website.

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And that’s it - have a ripper Sunday!

Cheers - Bec

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

Super funds just delivered another stellar year. Is yours one of the best?

If you had a growth option sitting inside your super fund over the past four years, you’re probably pretty pleased with yourself right now. The annual performance results are coming in for growth superannuation funds in both the accumulation and pension phase for 2025-26, and it’s clear that many of our super funds have had another stellar year.

It’s the fourth in a row, and it’s been driven chiefly by international shares, particularly for those funds with solid currency hedging along the way.

The data, reported by superannuation research firm Chant West, shows that the median one-year returns from growth funds (which they classify as funds with 61 per cent to 80 per cent invested in growth assets) is 9.5 per cent for FY26 for funds in the accumulation phase and 10.8 per cent for funds in pension phase.

The gap between the returns in accumulation and retirement or pension phase isn’t a fluke. Pension fund performance is higher because superannuation in the retirement phase is tax-free. It’s one of the most generous perks in the retirement system, and yet many Australians over 60 and eligible haven’t got around to switching their account over to take advantage of it.

So who came out on top in 2025-26? The top-performing growth fund for the last year was Unisuper, across both accumulation and pension. It delivered a 12.3 per cent return on the accumulation fund, and 13.1 per cent returns on the pension fund.

They are followed closely by a tie for second spot, between NGS Super Diversified, and CFS Firstchoice Growth Fund, both with 11.5 per cent returns on accumulation and 12.4 per cent on pension.

And in third spot in accumulation funds was the Hostplus Balanced Fund, with 10.8 per cent returns in accumulation. At third spot in the retirement phase was AMP Balanced fund, with 11.9 per cent returns.

Zoom out a little further and the numbers get even more impressive. Growth funds in Australia in the accumulation phase have provided median returns of 44 per cent on a cumulative basis over the past four years, giving some of the most consistent returns in superannuation’s history.

This article continues… It is published in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday 18th July 2026. Read the whole article here, without a paywall.

The retirement questions that keep Australians awake at night

One of the things I’ve learnt after thousands of conversations with people over the years is that most Australians aren’t lying awake at night wondering whether they should have 60% or 70% invested in growth assets.

They’re asking much bigger questions: Will I have enough? When can I stop working? How much can I safely spend? What happens if markets fall? Am I making a mistake?

The problem is that most people start with their super balance and hope it’ll somehow give them the answers. But I think we should start with our life instead.

In this week’s episode of Prime Time, I work through some of the biggest retirement questions I hear every day and share the practical exercises that can help you answer them with confidence.

I’m also joined by Lisa Kay, Chief Member Officer at Brighter Super, to discuss why getting guidance doesn’t have to mean signing up for a comprehensive financial plan. Sometimes it’s simply about asking the right questions at the right time and knowing where to go for help.

Retirement isn’t one big decision. It’s a series of decisions made over many years. And the earlier you start asking the right questions, the more choices you’ll have when the time comes.

LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE OF THE PODCAST HERE:

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Feature: What sort of investment returns does your retirement plan actually need?

From Bec’s Desk: A new gym and a course that’s booking fast

The Age and Sydney Morning Herald: The budget killed my daughter’s property plan. Here’s what we’ll do instead

Prime Time: ‘Is housing still a good investment?’ with Dr Shane Oliver

Ad - Our next Epic Retirement flagship course is booking fast

The ultimate retirement planning course

It’s here! Our new Spring edition of the How to Have an Epic Retirement Flagship Course has officially gone on sale a week ago at the 25% off earlybird price. And you’ve flooded us with bookings.

It’s a six week program, designed to help you step through six weeks, 8.5 hours of retirement lessons, about everything you need to understand to navigate retirement with confidence.

It’s a course that gets rave reviews. And we only run it four times a year. Last time we completely sold out (of books and workbooks) so we had to shut the doors early!

The new program has been fully updated with all the new changes that arrived on 1 July. We’ve also launched a new website, so you can pop on over and read all about it, and book your place.

There’s a 25% off Earlybird Deal on now, for the first 200 people who book. So get in there, check out all the inclusions (it’s a huge list) and lock down your place as they sold out well and truly last time. There’s also a detailed brochure you can download.It sells out. It gets rave reviews. And it’s just been fully updated with every change that landed on July 1.

If you’ve been thinking you might - nows the day to book.

Download the brochure or learn more

What sort of investment returns does your retirement plan actually need?

The financial year just closed, and the fund-by-fund results are starting to land. AustralianSuper’s Balanced option came in at 9.7% in accumulation and 10.8% for pension accounts for the year to 30 June, up slightly from 9.5% in accumulation and 10.4% in pension the year before. Their High Growth option did 11.5% in accumulation and 12.88% in pension. AMP Super’s lifecycle funds have delivered 11.3% returns for the financial year. Unisuper’s Growth option returned 12.3%, High Growth 13.1%. HESTA’s Balanced Growth option hit 9.4% its fourth year running above 9% and High Growth 11.09%.

These really are strong numbers, especially given the year we’ve just had with an oil shock and geopolitial tension combined. But there’s one detail that the headlines are skipping over: most funds actually came in a little lower than the year before. AustralianSuper, UniSuper and Rest were among the few that improved on FY25. Everyone else eased off the peak a little, even while still posting a good year by any normal measure.

So if your balance looks better than you expected, that’s great, take the win. But it’s worth being honest about which of those two stories you’re actually in, the ones still climbing, or the ones that had a slightly softer year than last time. Either way, neither tells you much about what comes next. And that’s what I really want to get you thinking about today.

The typical long-term return objective for a growth super fund, the number the whole strategy is built around, is CPI plus 3.5%. Funds set that against the RBA’s 2 to 3% inflation target, (not whatever CPI happens to be doing this month), and worked through that way it lands at just over 6% a year. Worth knowing CPI isn’t behaving right now though. It was running at 4% for the year to May, well above target. If that sticks around, the return your fund actually needs to hit that same real objective creeps up too, closer to 7.5% than 6%. That’s also close to where the government’s own Moneysmart calculator sets its assumptions: 6.1% for Balanced, 6.4% for Growth, 6.8% for High Growth, after fees and tax, numbers that only really hold if inflation behaves the way the long-term target assumes it will. Since compulsory super started in 1992, the median growth fund has actually averaged closer to 8% a year, but that includes the GFC, when growth funds lost around 26% over sixteen brutal months. The good years and the bad years average out to 8%. Most plans are only built to need 6% - unless you’ve overridden the numbers with higher expectations.

Most of you who read this newsletter regularly, would already be aware that the Association of Superfunds, ASFA moved their headline ‘how much do you need to retire in comfort’ numbers for the first time in three years just recently. A single homeowner now needs $630,000 at 67 for a comfortable retirement, up from $595,000. A couple needs $730,000, up from $690,000. Their reasoning was straightforward: living costs have outpaced what the Age Pension covers, so more of the job falls back on your own super. It’s got an important job to do - but where do we think super returns are heading, and should they really be expected to last at these high levels?

I wanted a second opinion on where returns actually go from here, and what we really should be planning for, particularly if the world stopped delivering near-double-figure returns, so I looked at what the big global investment houses are forecasting, and they don’t agree with each other at all. Vanguard reckons US shares, which make up a big slice of most growth options, will only manage 4 to 5% a year over the next five to ten years, on the view that tech valuations have run ahead of themselves. J.P. Morgan, looking at the same market, forecasts 6.7% for US large companies over ten to fifteen years, arguing strong earnings and buybacks can keep offsetting high prices even as the froth comes off.

These are two of the best resourced research teams in the world, who use the same data, yet they are more than two points apart. Closer to home, SuperRatings has already flagged this coming year as likely to be tougher, pointing to rising geopolitical tension and an inflation picture that isn’t giving much room for local rate relief.

Of course, none of this is a reason to change anything about your super today. It’s a reason to check what you’re actually banking on the markets and your fund returning you versus what the reality could be. The last four years have been a terrific run for funds. And while they are worth enjoying, it might not be smart to build your retirement decisions around returns like this holding up.

This is exactly why I like the idea of guardrails in how we plan for spending in retirement, rather than picking one return number and hoping it holds. Think of it a bit like a road trip where you have a rough budget in mind. If you have a great year and come in under budget, you top up the holiday fund or treat yourself a bit more. If a year’s tighter than expected, you already know beforehand what you’ll wind back on discretionary spending, rather than working it out in a panic halfway through. Nobody can tell you in advance whether the next stretch looks like 6% or 9%, not even the people paid quite a lot to guess. What you can do is build a plan with a bit of give in it either way, so a good year feels like a bonus and a bad year still turns out okay.

So ask yourself this week: does your plan actually have guardrails - a target return and spending number that’s achieveable - or just a single number you’re hoping stays true? You don’t need the answer today - just think about the returns you’re relying on, and make sure your plan still holds up if markets don’t return high single figures or even double digits every year.

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Want to read more, I have two books - How to Have an Epic Retirement and if you’re not ready for retirement, Prime Time: 27 Lessons for the New Midlife.

This week I started at a new gym. Yep, I’ve stepped up to small group training and I can now officially feel every muscle in my body - out loud. I hunted around to find a gym where I can be supervised and coached as I do progressive lifting, something the science says is important as we age. I’ll report back on the process. But week 1 = good! Any of you done the same? I was encouraged by my interview with Van Marinos on the podcast a few weeks ago.

Prime Time

The crucial health step most of us are missing out on

One of the things I talk about a lot is that we’re all planning for longer lives…

Read more

a month ago · 14 likes · 1 comment · Bec Wilson

THE EPIC RETIREMENT COURSE

Outside of this, on the work front, we’ve been overwhelmed by your bookings of the upcoming Epic Retirement course. There’s still a few seats left on our Earlybird deal which has 200 places. Then the price will go back to the RRP. So don’t delay - you know I want everyone to get the best deal available. Download a brochure here and book your place.

Learn more about the course

MELBOURNE RIGHTSIZING!

I’m heading to Sydney and Melbourne this week, just briefly. In Melbourne I’ll be presenting at a really interesting event on downsizing into luxury apartments. I’m excited. The event is being held by Lowe Living. If it interests you - click here to learn more and register your place. I’m speaking with the property economics gurus from Urbis.

HESTA’S EPIC RETIREMENT COURSE

We’re launching a new Epic Retirement program for HESTA members in the next couple of days. So if you’re a HESTA member - check it out here. It’s a great course. You need to be a member of HESTA to access it. And there’s limited places - so don’t dilly dally!

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And Bec’s Epic Bucket List Holidays

Nearly 1000 of you registered your interest for my Epic Bucket List Trips. That’s blown me away. These are going to be our commmunity trips to real bucket list destinations. And now, we’re surveying on the potential destinations for year 1 and getting a feel for what is of real interest. Fiona Dalton, the Epic travel guru is leading the way on this, picking the adventures to ask you about.

I mean real handpicked bucket list stuff. Active and experience-first. And never the same destination twice. If you’re on the EOI list, we’ll be emailing you a wish list to explore what you’d want to do out of our ideas in the week ahead. And if you haven’t put your name on the list yet - Express your interest here - no obligation. Then you can do the survey after.

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

The budget killed my daughter’s property plan. Here’s what we’ll do instead

When the budget hit in May, I was starting a book and a social media series with my 22-year-old daughter on how we can give our adult kids an epic start in life without just handing them a wad of cash.

She’s been learning the foundations of budgeting, saving and investing across the kitchen table with me since she returned from her gap year last year. And she’s been studying, working and saving hard for her next meaty goal – buying her first home.

We’d done the maths, and she was fairly confident that when she graduated from university next year, that she’d be able to use a couple of years’ living in our family home well, saving a healthy deposit, investing it diligently, and be prepared for her first foray into property within a year or two of graduating.

She had a plan to get on to the housing ladder by about 25 years old, albeit in an investment property because buying a unit she could afford the mortgage on while living in it as a single person, on a graduate teacher’s wage, was nigh on impossible.

She was then going to take her time living at home to see if she could build some equity in that investment property that could be used later to buy her first real home.

When the federal budget came, that strategy became completely unviable.

This article continues… It is published in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday 11th July 2026. Read the whole article here, without a paywall.

‘Is housing still a good investment?’ with Dr Shane Oliver

There is so much uncertainty since the budget, and we’re starting to see and feel the economic fallout.

People are asking whether they should still invest in property? Whether the share market will continue to perform? Or whether they should simply sit on cash and wait for things to settle down.

We’re in a very different investment environment from the one we’ve become used to over the past decade. And so this week, I invited one of Australia’s most respected economists, Dr Shane Oliver, back to Prime Time to help us make sense of it all.

Together, we unpack what the budget changes are already starting to mean for property investors, first home buyers and anyone trying to build wealth for retirement.

We also discuss Australia’s productivity problem, where interest rates are heading, how the share market is likely to respond and why Shane believes it’s important not to lose sight of the long-term picture.

So, whether you’re still building wealth or preparing to retire, this is one of those conversations that helps separate the headlines from what’s actually happening in the economy.

LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE OF THE PODCAST HERE:

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Feature: All the things that changed on 1 July (and what it means for you)

From Bec’s Desk: A long list of cool stuff going on

The Age and Sydney Morning Herald: Our super system has a new blind spot, and it could cost you thousands

Prime Time: Protecting your retirement savings: an important warning

Ad - Right on time - our next Epic Retirement flagship course has gone on sale

Retirement doesn’t come with a manual.

But it does come with an 8.5-hour course, with 15 modules, 6 live Q&As with some of Australia’s sharpest retirement minds, a 150-page workbook mailed to your door, and a cohort of people doing it exactly alongside you.

The Spring edition of the How to Have an Epic Retirement Flagship Course kicks off 13 August and the 25% earlybird deal is on now, for the first 200 people.

It sells out. It gets rave reviews. And it’s just been fully updated with every change that landed on July 1.

If you’ve been thinking you might - nows the day to book.

Download the brochure or learn more

All the things that changed on 1 July (and what it means for you)

1 July is an important day in the retirement financial calendar. There’s always lots of changes to superannuation contribution caps, age pension caps, and this year we got a tax cut too. And some people got a big tax hike. So today I want to run through all the things that changed on 1 July in the retirement rulebook. Let’s go.

The contribution caps got bigger

The before-tax (concessional) cap has moved from $30,000 to $32,500. The after-tax (non-concessional) cap goes from $120,000 to $130,000. And the three-year bring-forward maximum is now $390,000, up from $360,000.

These are small shifts, but if you’re in a position to top up super before you retire, this financial year gives you a little more room to do it.

The transfer balance cap is now $2.1 million

This is the lifetime limit on how much super you can move into a tax-free retirement pension. It’s gone up by $100,000. If you haven’t yet started a retirement pension, you now have slightly more room in the tax-free zone. If you’ve already used your full cap, this increase generally won’t apply to you.

Payday super is now law

From July 1, employers must pay your super at the same time as your wages - not quarterly. Contributions need to land at your fund within seven business days of each payday.

This one matters more than it sounds. Money sitting with an employer for up to three months was money not compounding for you. And shortfalls are now visible immediately rather than months later. If you’re still working, it’s worth checking your super transactions more regularly from now on and admiring how much more they grow.

The age pension thresholds have risen

The full pension asset threshold for a homeowner single is now $333,000, with the part pension cutting out at $733,500. For homeowner couples, those figures are $499,000 and $1,102,500.

The income-free area - how much you can earn before your pension starts reducing - is a little higher at $226 per fortnight for singles and $396 combined for couples.

The pension payment rates themselves ($1,200.90 per fortnight for singles, $1,810.40 combined for couples) don’t change again until 20 September.

A small tax cut

The marginal rate on income between $18,201 and $45,000 has dropped from 16% to 15%. That’s real! Probably won’t make up for bracket creep, but we’ll take it.

And for those with larger balances - Division 296 has landed

If your total super balance exceeds $3 million, a new tax on investment earnings above that threshold now applies. Earnings between $3 million and $10 million attract an additional 15%, making the effective rate 30% on that slice. Above $10 million, the additional rate is 25%, making it 40%.

The vast majority of Australians won’t be affected. But if you’re in that territory, the clock started July 1 - and the first assessments land after June 30, 2027. This financial year is the year to get advice.

Leave a comment

Want to read more, I have two books - How to Have an Epic Retirement and if you’re not ready for retirement, Prime Time: 27 Lessons for the New Midlife.

Hey there! So many little titbits this week I’m going to break things up with a few headings to make sure I share all the good bits. And make sure you read my Sydney Morning Herald article and listen to the podcast - I had the ASIC Commissioner Simone Constant on to talk about platforms, and the holes that need plugging in their oversight of advisers. This stuff is important. I’ve tried to make it easy to grasp.

Now - onto the action-face.

The Spring Program has launched

It’s here! Our new Spring edition of the How to Have an Epic Retirement Flagship Course has officially gone on sale at the 25% off earlybird price.

It’s a six week program, designed to help you step through 8.5 hours of retirement lessons, about everything you need to understand to navigate retirement with confidence.

It’s a course that gets rave reviews. And we only run it four times a year. And last time we completely sold out (of books and workbooks) so we had to shut the doors early!

The new program has been fully updated with all the new changes that arrived this week. We’ve also launched a new website, so you can pop on over and read all about it, and book your place.

There’s a 25% off Earlybird Deal on now, for the first 200 people who book. So get in there, check out all the inclusions (it’s a huge list) and lock down your place as they sold out well and truly last time. There’s also a detailed brochure you can download.

Learn more about the course

HESTA Epic Retirement Program

We’re launching a new Epic Retirement program for HESTA members in the next week or so. So if you’re a HESTA member - keep your eyes peeled on their member emails to you. It’s a great course. You need to be a member of HESTA to access it. And there’s limited places - so don’t dilly dally!

Melbourne rightsizing event

I’ll be heading to Melbourne next week for a really interesting event on downsizing into luxury apartments. I’m excited. The event is being held by Lowe Living. If it interests you - click here to learn more and register your place. I’m speaking with the property economics gurus from Urbis.

Aware Super couples event

I’ve got a fun event coming up in three weeks time - all about planning for retirement as a couple. If you’re an Aware Super member - make sure you keep an eye out for it and register your place.

An Epic Start

Many of you will have seen that my daughter Paris and I have started something new together.

It’s called An Epic Start, and it’s a social media channel where we talk through the financial basics that young adults actually need to know. Banking. Super. The First Home Super Saver Scheme. Home deposits. How to think about buying a home. Basic investing. The rules of money that nobody teaches you at school - and that most parents aren’t sure how to explain.

Paris is 22. She lives in the real world, works three part time jobs while studying at uni, and has real questions. She’s been backpacking - and she’s home, ready to start her life, maximising her opportunities. And the content space aimed at people her age is - to put it plainly - a mess. Finfluencers flogging ETF platforms. Mortgage brokers collecting referral fees. People making money look easy in ways that aren’t always honest.

That’s not what we’re doing.

An Epic Start is facts. How things actually work. What you need to know. No products to sell, no affiliate links, no agenda beyond giving young people a genuinely epic start.

If you have adult kids or grandkids navigating this stuff, send them our way. We’re on Instagram at instagram.com/an.epic.start and TikTok at tiktok.com/@an.epic.start. (We’re on Facebook too here).

Paris and I are having the best time building this together. Some things are worth doing just because they matter.

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And the Epic Bucket List Holidays (see that - I renamed them)

Last week I shared a long dream about taking commmunity trips to bucket list destinations, and I invited you to express your interest. Well hundreds of you did! And now, we’re working on the potential destinations for year 1. Fiona Dalton, the Epic travel guru is leading the way on this, picking the best adventures.

I mean real handpicked bucket list stuff. Active and experience-first. And never the same destination twice. If you’re on the EOI list, we’ll be emailing you a wish list to explore what you’d want to do out of our ideas, in the week ahead. And if you haven’t put your name on the list yet - Express your interest here - no obligation.

Now I’m taking a few days off. Shhh - hope you don’t notice. Until next week - make it epic! Cheers Bec xx

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

Our super system has a new blind spot, and it could cost you thousands

If you have a financial adviser and your superannuation investments are being managed on something called a platform, there are some important things to look at this week.

Australia’s financial regulator, ASIC has just released a report that found some serious gaps in the way our major platforms are safeguarding members’ money. The findings are concerning enough that ASIC brought them to me to explain to you simply, so you’re more aware of them.

Basically, investment platforms are meant to have processes, monitoring and caps in place to stop shonky advisers or dodgy investment businesses from taking advantage of unknowing consumers. ASIC has repeatedly asked the platforms to take their responsibilities as trustees seriously, driving for three big obligations.

Firstly, to keep Australian superannuation money invested in their platform safe, especially from bad conduct. This means platforms need to carefully vet the investments they offer and ensure no bad actors can use them as a vehicle to take advantage of members.

Secondly, to make sure that Australians are getting genuine value for money for the services being paid for out of their super and that members actually understand what those services are. And finally, to deliver investment, member and retirement services that sit at the heart of what a superannuation trustee is to provide.

Those three obligations sound pretty reasonable when you say them out loud. They’re not complicated or tricky. But when ASIC reviewed six of Australia’s largest platform trustees recently, organisations that are responsible for safeguarding $400 billion of retirement savings, across all three of those expectations there were serious and persistent failings.

This article continues… It is published in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday 4th July 2026. Read the whole article here, without a paywall.

This week, I sit down with ASIC Commissioner Simone Constant to unpack a deeply concerning new report exposing major flaws in the safety nets legally required to protect Australians’ retirement savings.

ASIC reviewed six platform trustees responsible for more than $300 billion in retirement savings and found persistent failures in areas such as monitoring advice fees, unusual investment patterns, and high-risk super switching. The regulator has made it clear: trustees need to do better, and quickly.

If you have your super managed by a financial adviser through a platform product, this is an important conversation. We discuss what the report found, why it matters, the responsibilities trustees have to protect your money, and the exact questions you should be asking your adviser today.

Your super is likely to be one of the biggest assets you’ll ever own. Understanding where it is, why it’s there and how it’s being protected has never been more important.

You can find the report from ASIC here and I’ll be doing a deep dive in this weekend’s newspapers.

LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE OF THE PODCAST HERE:

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• LISTEN ON SPOTIFY

Feature: The thing the financial advice industry doesn’t talk about

From Bec’s Desk: Make sure you read about my bucket list trips - I need your input

The Age and Sydney Morning Herald: AI could revolutionise your retirement. But don’t fall for this trap

Prime Time: The crucial health step most of us are missing out on

Ad - Before we start — a big thanks to our newsletter sponsor this week, Lowe Living

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• Keynote speaker: Bec Wilson

• Panel discussion: Bec Wilson, Urbis Associate Director, Harry Scott, and Lowe Living Co-Founder and Managing Director Tim Lowe.

Discover how rightsizing can create greater freedom and give you the confidence to shape your future.

DATE: Tuesday, 14 July
SESSION TIMES: 1.30pm – 3.30pm or 5.00pm – 7.00pm
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The thing the financial advice industry doesn’t talk about

I talk to people in the superannuation and financial advice industry almost daily. And there’s a widespread understanding amongst them about how people get advice and invest for retirement. What there isn’t, is much appetite to talk about how that’s changing - because I’m not sure everyone wants you to understand it.

But it is changing. Largely without the people it affects most, everyday superannuation holders, knowing much about it. But I think it’s time we talked about it all a lot more openly, and without bias.

Here’s what most people think happens when they go to see a financial adviser. They think they’ll pay a one-off fee and someone will look over their whole financial situation, consider how their super is currently invested, and explore whether their existing fund is working well for them. That the adviser will know all about the different super funds on offer, which ones perform best and which ones have good services, and and give them an honest view of whether they're in the right one, move them to another if the one they are in isn’t good. They’ll look at all their other investments, review the mix and suggest any rebalancing required, then contemplate how to set up the strategy most efficiently for their needs, and help them make the changes.

Increasingly, though, that’s not always where the conversation ends. Sure, there’s a full review of what you hold, and a strategy, absolutely. Most don’t go real deep on superannuation funds though, unless your fund referred you in.

They’re not required to. They’re legally required to:

• Collect detailed information about your financial situation — assets, liabilities, income, expenses, insurance, super, other investments

• Understand your goals and objectives

• Assess your risk tolerance

• Consider your relevant circumstances before making any recommendation

• Provide a Statement of Advice documenting all of this

What they’re NOT required to do is benchmark your existing super fund against alternatives, or tell you your current fund is performing well and you should stay. They have to consider your situation, but the scope of the advice is usually agreed at the beginning of the engagement.

In fact, one senior executive from a large super fund told me this week that, in his view, eight or nine in ten people who go to see a financial adviser of their own accord end up with their super rolled out of their existing fund and onto an investment platform. I can’t independently verify that figure, but after years of talking to people across the industry, it’s certainly consistent with the direction the market appears to be heading. For many it could provide a decent, if not always meaningfully different, financial outcome. But the question worth asking is whether it’s always driven purely by what’s best for the client, or whether the overriding business model plays a bigger role than most people realise - and whether people truly understand that a platform isn't just an investment recommendation. It's a different structure entirely, replacing their super fund with something that looks similar but works very differently and creates an ongoing advice relationship with their adviser.

To be fair, there are good reasons many advisers recommend this approach. Platforms can make it easier for the adviser to manage retirement income, rebalance investments over time, access a broader range of investments and review your strategy as your circumstances change. For people with more complex financial affairs, tax planning opportunities, or who genuinely want ongoing investment management, they can be an excellent solution.

The important thing is understanding that’s the service you’re choosing. You’re not simply receiving retirement advice. You’re choosing an ongoing investment management relationship, and that’s a different proposition altogether.

And it's not hard to see why this model has become so common.

When an adviser moves your super onto a platform and manages it on an ongoing basis, they generate a recurring revenue stream for themselves, some advisers have shareholder-level financial links to the asset management businesses that invest for them too (it’s not wrong - they just have to disclose them if they do). Typically the ongoing advice fee is around one per cent of your balance per year, often more when you layer in the platform fees and asset management costs, on top. Think of it like a subscription - except most people don’t realise they are signing up for it forever as a permanent replacement for their super fund. That’s how most advice businesses are built today. And it means the adviser who keeps you in your existing super fund and sends you home with a solid one-off strategy is, financially speaking, probably worse off than the one who moves you onto an investment management platform and guides you through the years ahead.

That doesn't mean it's the wrong recommendation. But it does raise an important question.

Now, platforms aren’t bad or the wrong answer for everyone. For people with genuine complexity, interest in picking or more deeply understanding their investment mix, or who can benefit from the tax opportunities - including retaining franking credits for their own use - a platform can be worth every dollar.

But for a lot of people approaching retirement, already inside a large, low-fee super fund that’s performing well, the honest answer might be: you don’t need to move. You might just need to understand the competitive landscape and alternatives on offer more directly. That means assessing what you’re invested in, put in place an income stream, set up a bucket strategy and review your situation each year. You could get one off retirement advice from your superfund to do this, if you wanted, for a smaller fee. Most funds offer that. Most advisers, unless working with the fund more strategically, probably won’t recommend it.

The tradeoff really is this: you’re walking away from a company with hundreds of people on their investment team, to be managed by a small operator who is often using external model portfolios to tailor an investment mix for you.

My biggest concern is that someone who wants real retirement advice - without a move to a platform - is increasingly hamstrung. If you walk into an adviser’s office wanting to stay in your existing fund or choose a better one for retirement, you’d probably need to specifically say so and underline it upfront and ask if they will provide you a service anyway. Because the default, the path of least resistance, and the most financially rewarding path for the adviser is the platform.

So I just want you to know this, and walk into an advisers office with your eyes wide open, knowing your options, how to evaluate them, and how to advocate for yourself clearly. Ask them:

• What will happen to my super - and what will it cost, in total, compared to what I’m paying now?

• What would a plan look like if I stayed in my existing fund?

• Do I actually need ongoing investment management, or do I need a strategy?

• How do you select, review and govern my investment mix if I move to a platform?

• And will you be better off if I move - and more importantly, will I? Show me…

Good advisers will answer all five without flinching. And there are genuinely good advisers out there - lots of them, and good platforms too. But walking in knowing that ongoing platform management is now the dominant service on offer from advice makes all the difference. Advice is a service business - and increasingly it’s tied to investment management as a service. Know what you're buying - and know that a simple one-off strategy may not even be what's on the menu.

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Want to read more, I have two books - How to Have an Epic Retirement and if you’re not ready for retirement, Prime Time: 27 Lessons for the New Midlife.

Courses update!

This week we hit the end of the Winter Aussie Epic Retirement Course. Nearly 400 more graduates are now much more confident, and know their stuff. And they’ve left us some amazing reviews. In the week ahead we’ll launch our Spring Program 25% off deal. We’re just putting the finishing touches on the new platform - yes we’ve completely re-platformed the course, improving the experience again. (It was already great - we just want to make it even better and more scalable). The course kicks off on the 23rd August. Register your interest for the earlybird deal here.

We’re also launching a new Epic Retirement program for HESTA members in the next week or so. So if you’re a HESTA member - keep your eyes peeled on their member emails to you. It’s a great course.

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Melbourne rightsizing event

I’ll be heading to Melbourne in two weeks for a really cool event on luxury rightsizing into glam apartments with Lowe Living. If it interests you - register your place. Should be super-interesting as I’m speaking alongside property economics experts from Urbis.

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Bucket list holidays - read this!

OK, I have an exciting project in the wings that we HAVE to talk about! What if we developed a few community bucket list holidays a year - guided by me, Fiona Dalton our Epic travel guru, and maybe one or two other really travel (and life) experienced Prime Timers - to the true dream locations we all want to go - that are active and experience oriented?

I mean real handpicked bucket list stuff. Active and experience-first. And never the same destination twice. If you’re keen, Fiona and I think we can work with the best operators for each place - and set up amazing experiences suited to active 50 and 60-somethings. Interested? On my bucket list for this is:

• Patagonia to see the end of the earth, big skies, Torres del Paine, and do the kind of hiking that makes you feel like you’re really alive.

• Iceland / Viking Territory to see the midnight sun, and the volcanic landscapes, Norse history, and silence you can’t find anywhere else. Could even extend into the Norwegian fjords.

• An active European River journey (not a quiet one) cycling between villages, eating well, sleeping on the water. Somewhere in France, Germany, Austria, or Portugal. Slow, foodie, wine-loving and never boring.

• Vietnam riding motorbikes, eating in the markets, mountains, river towns, the best food in the world, and enough history to fill a book. Who knows where we’d go - we have to decide. Its all magnificent.

• An African Safari - one that stops you in your tracks with camera in hand. The real thing, not the resort version, with Mike Chesworth and photography part of the journey maybe - learning about it, doing it with a passionate Prime Timer.

• Walking Umbria through hill towns, olive groves, truffles, with Renaissance art around every corner. Slow, beautiful, restorative.

• Seeing the stately homes of Ireland enjoying history, landscape, characters and craic. The Ireland most tourists never find.

• A Christmas Markets River Cruise think Glühwein, cathedrals, snow, and the Danube at its most magical. Active on shore, magical on the water.

I’m not sure what we’ll do first.

But, I’m taking expressions of interest. Put your name on this list to tell me you might be curious. We’d be travelling in a group, maybe up to 20 or 40 spots on the bucket list trips - and they’d be all organised for us by true professionals! There will of course be some solo rooms available - we’ll make sure of it. Express your interest here - no obligation.

And that’s got me excited. It’s a passion project - not about making money or building a travel business (I’ve done that before - it’s hard work). It’s just about us all having some bloody good fun in our midlife, together, proactively, with like-minded people and living the dream.

Until next week - make it epic! Cheers Bec xx

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

AI could revolutionise your retirement. But don’t fall for this trap

Retirement planning is undergoing a powerful revolution driven by AI, and not just in the office of financial advisers, who are adopting it to speed up their businesses and improve their margins. It’s happening around the kitchen table, on the couch late at night, and in bed too.

More than 65 per cent of retirees in my community admitted this week to using it to ask questions, and 38 per cent admit they’ve used it to ask questions and run calculations.

Those two numbers tell us all something important: that people are hungry for accessible, affordable and helpful answers, and they’re going to find ways to get them with or without the industry’s blessing.

The financial services industry has not entirely welcomed this shift. If you’ve spent any time in adviser circles, you’ll sense why: for the first time, the knowledge gap that made professional advice feel essential for people with relatively straightforward situations is starting to close.

AI is, in my opinion, the best thing to happen to retirement planning in 20 years. It’s the only tool I’ve ever seen that has managed to engage everyday people to explore their money keenly, in an easy-to-use, curious manner.

So I’m going to say what many won’t – and that is every Australian heading toward retirement should have AI open on their phone right now, asking it the questions that the system has made it too expensive, too scary and too difficult to answer.

This article continues… It is published in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday 27th June 2026. Read the whole article here, without a paywall.

The crucial health step most of us are missing out on

One of the things I talk about a lot is that we’re all planning for longer lives.

We’re working longer, retiring later and, for many of us, spending 30 or 40 years in the semi-retirement and retirement phase of our second half of life. But while we spend a lot of time thinking about the financial side of that equation, we don’t always spend enough time thinking about the physical and social side.

How strong do we want to be? How mobile do we want to be? And who are we going to spend all those extra years with?

In this week’s episode of Prime Time, I sit down with Van Marinos. He is an Accredited Exercise Scientist, a physical educator, and the founder of Community Moves - an organisation dedicated to functional fitness for older adults. He’s also the author of Strong & Social, a new book built around a simple idea: staying fit in our prime years isn’t just about the physical heavy lifting. It’s also about the community we build along the way that makes it enjoyable.

We discuss why it’s never too late to start exercising, the role strength training plays in healthy ageing, and why finding your tribe may be just as important as finding the right workout.

LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE OF THE PODCAST HERE:

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Feature: The retirement tool the industry doesn’t want you using (but you already are)

From Bec’s Desk: A new project I am curious about your interest in

The Age and Sydney Morning Herald: Not ready to stop work or retire? You’re not alone

Prime Time: Finding meaning outside of work

The retirement tool the industry doesn’t want you using (but you already are)

Something is happening at kitchen tables across Australia, and the financial advice industry is losing its mind, loudly, about it.

People are asking AI about their retirement. How much money they need, and how to invest, and how to plan for it. They’re even asking Claude to build Excel-style financial models, and it can do that straight from the ordinary chat window, no special setup needed.

They’re not asking their adviser first, or their superfund hotline, or even their brother-in-law who works in finance and holds court at Christmas. They’re opening up ChatGPT or Claude on their phone and typing the questions they’ve been too embarrassed to ask anyone: What does concessional mean? Is my super actually being invested well? If I retire at 62, will I run out of money?

Let’s face it - that last question matters and there’s a particular kind of shame that comes with not understanding your own financial situation in your 50s, when you feel like you should have it sorted by now. AI gives people a judgment-free place to start asking questions and building understanding.

And here’s where I part ways with most of the financial industry on this. I love it. The agency it gives you to be curious and consider things from different perspectives is powerful. The fact it can build you a genuinely useful spreadsheet, one you can fill in with your own numbers and take straight to your adviser, is nothing short of fabulous.

The standard adviser response to AI is some version of “be careful, it gets things wrong, come and see a professional instead.” And yes - AI does get things wrong. I catch it out all the time. It uses old data, leaves a critical number like inflation out of a calculation or a spreadsheet, or simply doesn’t grasp the interplay between the age pension and super - unless you prompt it to. I push back, ask it to check things, or feed it the correct facts straight from Centrelink, and you need to be aware of those limitations if you use it.

There’s lots of studies being done on this. In one study, it gave incorrect or incomplete answers to about a third of the financial questions it was asked. Worth knowing as you go in.

So let me be clear. It probably doesn’t know your full picture. And without it, it can’t model your real tax situation, and even with it - I’d be worried you left something out. It has blind spots around things like sequencing risk and aged care costs that could actually hurt you if you act on its answers without understanding what’s missing.

But the solution to that isn’t to avoid AI. It’s to know enough that you’re not dangerous when you use it.

Here’s what I mean by that. If you ask AI “will I have enough to retire?” and you don’t know what questions to follow up with - about drawdown rates, about inflation, about what happens if markets fall in your first few years of retirement - you’ll get a confident-sounding answer that might be wrong in ways you won’t spot. AI doesn’t volunteer what it left out. It answers what you asked. If it was a simple question you might get an overly simplified answer.

But if you understand the basics? Suddenly you’re having a completely different conversation. You’re the one steering. You’re asking better questions, pushing back when something doesn’t add up, and using AI the way it’s actually meant to be used - as a thinking partner, not an oracle.

That’s always been the whole point of what we do here with education. Not to replace professional advice, but to give you enough understanding to be a smart consumer of every resource available to you. So that when you talk to your super fund, you know what to ask. When you see a financial adviser, you understand what they’re telling you. And yes - when you open up Claude at 11pm with a question you’ve been sitting on for months, you know how to make that conversation count.

So use the tools and ask the questions you’ve been too embarrassed to ask. Just make sure you’re building the knowledge alongside it, so you’re the one in charge of your retirement decisions, not the AI bot. Because that could get messy.

I’m smiling ear to ear this week because the mid-course feedback rolling in on our Australian and UK Epic Retirement courses, both running right now, is just so good. I feel incredibly proud of our six-week retirement education program which just keeps getting better.

It’s the main part of what we do here at the Epic Retirement Institute: helping people understand how retirement actually works so they can make better decisions and feel more confident about the future with a 6-week course.

Humour me while I share some of the shorter comments:

“The course is fantastic: so clearly and well structured. Thank you”

“We love this course content and the structure of it - will be recommending it to others!”

“I’m really enjoying the course, I think it should be government funded for all people in Australia age 50 plus.”

“This course has changed my life!!”

“I have been enjoying this course immensely. I feel much more confident in my understanding of how this thing called retirement works!”

That's the kind of confidence I want people to have. It's the same reason we built the Epic Retirement Tick, so you can work out whether the service you're getting from your super fund is genuinely delivering on performance, fees and service, or whether it's time to start asking some tougher questions as you head for retirement, and you can download the report here: www.epicretirement.net/epictick

I’m extremely tempted to put together some kind of assessment similar to the Epic Retirement Tick to help people consider their options for and evaluate financial advice and the investment management process as they head for retirement advice - what do you think? Would that be useful?

We’re not government-funded consumer advocates or anything, just aware that there’s really no one else in the retirement space who doesn’t make money from selling you a financial product or service, and who can have your education about all the choices available to you as the priority. But we don’t want to waste time on projects you won’t use. So help us filter the ideas - please!

Now, back to your Sunday programming! Our next epic retirement course is kicking off in August - so plenty of time to talk about it next week! You can register your interest for the Earlybird 25% off deal here.

Make it epic!

Cheers - Bec Xx

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

Not ready to stop work or retire? You’re not alone

We have all inherited a traditional idea of retirement and frankly I think we need to push on its boundaries because it really was designed for a different era.

Retirement was created in the early 1900s to get old people out of the workforce where they were slowing down the factory lines. Most people who made it to retirement arrived in poor health and didn’t survive long enough to enjoy it.

Then, over the next hundred years, it morphed to become a period of life: one where we largely expected to live a more quiet existence in old age, on a pension. But even that idea has been thwarted.

Thanks to longer lives and superannuation, retirement today is a multi-stage period of life that could last 30 to 40 years. On average, just a quarter of that time will be spent in poorer health.

A 65-year-old woman today is expected to live to 90 at the median and she has a one in four chance of living to 95. A 50-year-old should expect an even bigger bounty: a median life expectancy of 91, and a one in four chance of getting to 97, which will surely expand in their lifetime. That’s not a wind-down at the end, it’s multiple phases of life where you really get to come into your own.

For a growing number of Australians this new chance for a longer life, and new financial freedom via superannuation, is reshaping how midlife and retirement years are viewed.

And superannuation arrived just at the right time to make this possible.

In fact, superannuation climbing to meaningful contribution rates is what has given us the financial means to truly change things up and actually start to choose what those extra years can look like. For the first time, reaching your sixties doesn’t have to mean the beginning of the end. It can mean the beginning of something entirely new, fresh and exciting.

This article continues. It was published in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday 20th June 2026. Read the whole article here. Note - it has a sign-up gate but no paywall.

Over the past month, we’ve talked about planning for retirement, finding purpose beyond work and creating a life you’ll actually want to wake up to.

But there is one final piece of the puzzle: how do you pay for it?

In the final episode of our New Rhythm of Retirement series with Aware Super, I’m joined once again by Peter Hogg and Lynda Cross to tackle the money mechanics of retirement.

We discuss one of the biggest psychological adjustments retirees face: moving from the predictable rhythm of a regular paycheck to funding your lifestyle from your own savings. We also explore the opportunities hidden within your biggest assets, including your super and family home, and unpack some of the strategies that can help stretch your retirement income further.

As we know, retirement isn’t just about having enough money. It’s also about having the confidence to use it.

LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE OF THE PODCAST HERE:

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Feature: Are you ready to retire? Depends which kind of ready you mean

From Bec’s Desk: Letting life happen

The Age and Sydney Morning Herald: Over 50? Use these seven ways to boost your super before July 1

Prime Time: Finding meaning outside of work

Are you ready to retire? Depends which kind of ready you mean

Type “am I ready to retire” into Google and you’ll get calculators, checklists, and articles telling you to aim for 70% of your pre-retirement income. All these tools are useful. All are focused on your money.

But that’s not really what you’re asking at 11pm on a Tuesday when you type those words, is it? What you actually want to know is: will I be okay? And that’s an entirely different question.

I’ve spoken with hundreds of people who had their finances completely sorted and still hit retirement like a concrete wall. It wasn’t the money that caught them off guard. It was the regularity of Monday morning. The empty diary and no plans, and no rhythm or social framework to slot into. That plus the odd feeling of invisibility. There’s often a realisation that most of their social life had been running through their work or at the very least, through their work networks, without them ever noticing it.

The first few weeks of retirement can feel like a holiday. Then something shifts, and suddenly “what am I actually doing today?” starts to feel like a question that needs a more valuable answer than just “whatever I want”. You’ve got skills, you’ve got a brain, you’ve got time. But you haven’t worked out how to use them differently, for the social benefits, the lifestyle moments and the pure joy of it.

This is something we call the adjustment phase. Be alert to it, even prepared for it. It’s completely normal. But most people have never heard of it and don’t talk about the tough bits, so most aren’t ready for it.

So how do you really actually know if you’re ready?

It’s not about whether you feel excited for or nervous about retirement. Most people feel both. It’s about whether you’ve thought through the things that work has been taking care of for you - the social networks, the adrenalin rushes of achievement and the feeling of having purpose.

Sit with these before you hand in your notice and think about them:

Where does your sense of self come from right now? If the honest answer is mostly your job title, worth knowing that before you walk out the door.

Who will you actually spend time with in retirement? And I don’t mean on holidays. I mean on an ordinary Wednesday. Work friends are great until they’re not your colleagues anymore. And people you do deals with might not need to take you to lunch when there’s no deals to be done.

What’s going to get you out of bed? I don’t mean a vague plan to read more or potter in the garden. Think up something specific, with enough pull to give your week some shape.

Then contemplate - if you are you running toward something, or away from something? Retiring to escape a bad job or a shitty boss is very different from retiring toward a life you’ve designed, thought through and have a vision of. The people who land well usually have the second picture sorted.

And have you actually tested any of this? Take a longer break. Spend a week without work structure. Take your long service leave - if you dare. See how it feels in real life, not just in your head.

And then remember, you don’t need to have it all figured out. Nobody does. Retirement isn’t a moment you either nail or don’t. It’s a transition, and transitions take time to find their shape. But going in knowing that the emotional side is just as real as the financial side puts you in a much stronger position than most people who only run the numbers to check if they are ready.

So yes, check your super, do the sums, make sure the money works. Then ask yourself the harder questions too. Because those are the ones that will really tell you whether you’re ready.

Cold, wet and rainy - in Queensland. Have we got the wrong weather report? I’ve been dodging downpours every morning on my walks this week. My littlest dog and I have come home a few times looking like drowned rats.

But another very entertaining week running retirement courses in two countries and writing more programs in-between for future rollouts with funds.

And this week we’re celebrating the 4th birthday of The Epic Retirement Club on Facebook! It’s the biggest retirement club or Facebook group on retirement in the world. There’s 22 moderators around the world who work together - all volunteers - keeping the club safe, free of inappropriate stuff and full of fun! A huge thanks to all those mods! And to everyone who enjoys being part of it.

This week the Epic Retirement Course in Australia has hit week 5. The money lessons are done and we’re onto health, purpose and happiness - some of my favourite topics. We welcomed David Lane for our Live Q&A on Investing your super, SMSFs and Financial Advice. And we held our first Live Q&A in the UK too - a lovely 3.30am event to keep me on my toes.

Then I closed my week in the emergency room for two days, with my son needing an emergency appendectomy (is there any other kind?) right in the middle of his senior exams. Nothing like Murphy’s law is there. But his appendix is now out and he’s doing well - lapping up all the attention with all the exams delayed.

So this weekend I’m taking a digital detox. Unusual for me. You’ll see everything is scheduled to happen just like it should - the reels, the podcasts, the newsletters and the newspapers. I will just be letting life happen, with a cup of tea, a good book and some board games in the periodically rainy queensland weather.

I hope you find time out occasionally too.

Make it epic!

Cheers - Bec Xx

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

Over 50? Use these seven ways to boost your super before July 1

The end of financial year is just two weeks away. But for everyone in a major Australian super fund, you don’t actually have the full two weeks – it’s actually closer to one week before the big super funds close off their contributions for the end of this financial year.

So snap to it! It’s time to take advantage of all the little incentives available to get ahead. Here are the things I think anyone looking into the second half of life should consider doing before the doors of this financial year close, especially if you can see retirement in your future.

1. Look for co-contribution opportunities

My first suggestion is for those who don’t have a lot of money coming in, who can take advantage of the government co-contribution that’s designed to boost the super of those who need it. Yes – you heard me right – free money from the government!

If you’re eligible, all you need to do is make a voluntary contribution to your super of $1000 and the government will top it up with up to $500, depending on your eligibility.

If you or your partner or adult children earn less than $47,488 and the account holder contributes $1000 as a personal contribution, that person will receive the full $500 bonus. It’s an amount that gradually phases out up to the top income threshold of $62,488.

If all this baffles you, and you want some help, call your super fund’s help lines.

There are some conditions, of course, to qualify. Ten per cent or more of your total income must be from working or running a business, and you must be under 71 years of age at the end of the financial year. Also, you can’t claim a tax deduction for the personal contribution.

This article continues. It was published in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday 13th June 2026. Read the whole article here. Note - it has a sign-up gate but no paywall.

In the second instalment of our New Rhythm of Retirement three-part mini series with Aware Super, we’re tackling a question that doesn’t get nearly enough attention:

What are you retiring to?

For many of us, work isn’t just how we earn a living. It’s how we spend our time, build relationships, challenge ourselves and make sense of who we are, which is why retirement can sometimes arrive with an unexpected identity crisis.

In this episode, I speak with clinical neuropsychologist Professor Nancy Pachana about finding purpose beyond your job title, overcoming the shock of the first “workless Tuesday”, and why curiosity may be one of the most important ingredients for healthy ageing.

Then I sit down with Lynda Cross from Aware Super to explore the financial side of the equation: how to build enough flexibility into your retirement plan to fund not just your lifestyle, but the passions, projects and experiences that give life meaning.

There’s more to retirement than money; it’s also about creating a life you look forward to waking up to. Don’t just retire from something, retire to something.

LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE OF THE PODCAST HERE:

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Feature: Six things to do well before 30 June

From Bec’s Desk: A much quieter week

The Age and Sydney Morning Herald: Half of us are terrified of retirement. Here’s why you might be OK

Prime Time: Two shows: Thinking about Antarctica - the things you need to know; and How to soft launch your retirement

Six things to do before 30 June

30 June might feel like it’s a few weeks away, but your super fund has other ideas. Most funds stop processing contributions a week or so before the end of the financial year - so the real deadline for all things financial is closer than the calendar suggests. If you’re somewhere between 45 and 65, the next two weeks are some of the most valuable weeks in your financial year. Worth snapping to it.

Here are six things worth doing before the financial year closes.

1. Top up your concessional contributions

The concessional contributions cap for 2025–26 is $30,000. That includes your employer’s super guarantee (currently 12% of your salary), any salary sacrifice you’ve set up, and any personal contributions you choose to make.

If your employer contributions are sitting well under that $30,000 mark, you may be able to top up the difference yourself with a ‘personal contribution’ - and claim a tax deduction for it. That means the contribution is taxed at just 15% inside super, rather than at your marginal tax rate, which for many people in this age bracket is 32.5% or higher.

To do this, you transfer money directly into your super fund (most funds accept BPAY or EFT - check your member portal for the details). It’s straightforward but you can always ring your fund’s hotline for help.

But after you move the money - there’s a step 2 that you need to take, if you put in a personal contribution… and it’s the step a lot of people miss.

2. Lodge your Notice of Intent to Claim form

Simply putting money into super doesn’t automatically make it a concessional contribution. Without one extra step, it defaults to a non-concessional contribution, and you lose the tax deduction entirely. [Trust me I have had many frustrated people write to me wishing they knew this]

That extra step is lodging a Notice of Intent to Claim a Tax Deduction - sometimes called a NOITC, or ATO form NAT 71121 - with your super fund. Most large funds let you do this online inside your member portal in a couple of minutes. Smaller funds may ask you to complete a paper form.

The form tells your fund: “I want this personal contribution treated as a concessional contribution, and I intend to claim a tax deduction for it.” Your fund will then acknowledge receipt in writing, and that acknowledgment is what you use when you lodge your tax return.

The notice must be lodged with your fund and acknowledged before you lodge your 2025–26 tax return - whichever comes first. Don’t wait until tax time and assume you can sort it then. If your return goes in first, you’ve missed the window.

No form = no deduction. It’s that simple, and that easy to get wrong, and no begging of the tax department or your super fund overturns it - even if ‘you meant to do it’.

3. Check your carry-forward contributions - you might have more room than you think

If you haven’t maxed out your concessional contributions in previous years, you may be able to contribute more than the standard $30,000 cap this year. It’s called the carry-forward rule (sometimes called catch-up contributions), and it’s frankly underused.

The rule you need to look for: if your total super balance was under $500,000 on 30 June 2025, you can carry forward any unused cap space (the $30,000 concessional caps) from the past five financial years and use it this year. So if you had years where you contributed less than the annual cap - maybe you were working part-time, taking time out, or just weren’t focused on super and didn’t top up your employer’s contributions, you may be sitting on a sizable unused allowance.

To see exactly what’s available to you, log into myGov, access the linked ATO service, and in the super menu select Information, then Carry-forward concessional contributions. This will show your unused amounts by year, and confirm whether you’re eligible based on your total super balance.

A few things to note:

• Unused cap amounts from earlier years don’t last forever - the carry-forward window is five years, after which they expire. The ATO applies the oldest available year first. In practical terms, any unused amounts from 2019–20 that weren’t used by the end of 2024–25 will have already expired, so it’s worth checking sooner rather than later.

• The $500,000 balance threshold is assessed at 30 June of the prior year (so 30 June 2025 for this financial year). If your balance has since grown above $500,000, you can still use carry-forward amounts this year, as long as you were under the threshold on that date.

• If you do make a personal contribution using carry-forward amounts and want the tax deduction, the NOITC form in step 2 still applies.

4. Check your minimum pension drawdown if you’re already retired

If you’ve moved your super into a retirement income stream (account-based pension), the government requires you to draw down a minimum amount each year. That minimum is based on your account balance and your age.

Make sure you’ve met your 2025–26 minimum pension drawdown before 30 June - and check what your 2026–27 withdrawal requirement will be, particularly if your minimum drawdown rate is increasing. Missing the minimum drawdown can have real tax consequences, so it’s worth confirming with your fund if you’re unsure.

5. Move savings into super

If you have money sitting outside super - in a savings account, offset account, or just cash - consider whether any of it could be moved in before 30 June. Non-concessional contributions (after-tax money) don't attract a tax deduction, but once inside super your earnings are taxed at just 15%, and at zero once you're drawing an income in retirement. The annual cap is $120,000 this financial year, rising to $130,000 from 1 July. That's worth knowing if you're thinking about using the bring-forward rule - because the amount you can bring forward depends on which year you trigger it, and the numbers change on 1 July. If you're considering a large lump sum contribution, it's worth getting advice before you act, because timing can affect how much you're able to put in. Your fund’s intrafund advice team can help with this.

6. Review your total super balance - the 1 July changes matter

From 1 July 2026, contribution caps are indexing upward and the transfer balance cap rises to $2.1 million. Your total super balance on 30 June 2026 determines which contribution rules and thresholds apply to you in the next financial year.

The amount you can bring forward depends on your total super balance on 30 June 2025 — the higher your balance, the less flexibility you have. If you’re thinking about a large lump sum contribution, get advice before you act, because the rules are tiered and the thresholds are changing on 1 July.

It’s also worth noting the Division 296 tax kicks off - from 1 July 2026, individuals with super balances above $3 million will face an additional tax on earnings linked to that portion of their balance. This affects a small number of people, but if you’re approaching that threshold, it’s worth getting advice before the new financial year begins.

A little note on getting help

None of the above is financial advice - it’s a prompt to act, not a prescription for what to do. How much you contribute, and which strategy makes sense for your situation, depends on your income, your balance, your age, and your broader financial picture. If you’re not sure, a financial adviser or your super fund’s helpline can walk you through it. But the window closes on 30 June - or frankly about a week before for most funds. So if any of this applies to you, now is the time to look into it.

Winter arrived this week in Queensland. Chilly, windy and sunny… delightful. It’s the sort of weather that makes you want to walk outdoors and feel the sun on your face. And so I have, every - single - day. With no travel for a few weeks, I’m delighting in getting through the workload on my desk, rebuilding my website, supporting the courses currently underway in Australia and the UK; and preparing for the launch of the next programs.

I’ve also signed my next book deal - a fun project to get started on. And this time I’ve gone with Penguin Random House as the publisher - a big change for me. When I wrote my first retirement book only one publisher was curious - all the others said there’s no market for this stuff. ☺️ Three years later I had a few wanting a piece! Must be doing something right. I’ll tell you more about the 2 book deal I’ve signed on for once the books take shape.

Our Epic Retirement Courses are going great guns. This week in Australia we held our Week 3 Live Q&A with Jen Harding from HESTA; and next week it’s Week 4 with David Lane, Senior Adviser, from Ord Minnett. And in the UK, we host our first live Q&A - cant wait to get up at 3am for that.

Feedback is rolling in from our mid-course survey - get some of these!

“This course is mind blowing!!”

“Pleased I'm doing the course as it's raising awareness of all the gaps in my knowledge. Currently know just enough to be dangerous.”

“Great content. Learning a lot. Easy to understand.”

“I'm finding the content very informative but feel that it has just highlighted my need to seek more information relative to our particular situation.”

Our next program is gearing up to begin on the 13th August - if you want to lodge an expression of interest, we’ll let you know when it goes on sale.

And now you’ve read all the EOFY stuff to the bottom - get out and enjoy some winter sun. Have a lovely long weekend - to everyone other than us Queenslanders!

Make it epic!

Cheers - Bec Xx

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

Half of us are terrified of retirement. Here’s why you might be OK

Last year I wrote a column taking a long hard look at a pattern I kept seeing in the superannuation industry: report after report measuring how anxious Australians feel about retirement, with very little action to show for it.

PR dressed up as progress, I called it, and my readers agreed loudly. We don’t need more reports, we need more action to help members navigate their retirement.

So when Colonial First State’s annual Rethinking Retirement report landed on my desk this week, I’ll admit I picked it up with a slightly raised eyebrow. But then I read it properly. And then I read it again. Because CFS has actually done a lot of work on its retirement and advice propositions this year, not just commissioned another survey.

And there was a finding buried in that report truly worth sharing and talking about today. It could be the most important thing I’ve read about retirement all year.

It concerns the amount of worry people are expending on retirement, possibly unnecessarily, and how such worry has surprisingly little to do with the money they have as they approach retirement but more to do with how proactive they are in understanding their real position.

This article continues. It was published in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday 6th June 2026. Read the whole article here. Note - it has a sign-up gate but no paywall.

For years, Antarctica has sat on many people’s bucket lists.

But unlike most holidays, it’s not the sort of trip you book on a whim. It’s expensive, remote, weather-dependent and often requires planning more than a year in advance.

So is it actually worth it?

In this week’s episode of Prime Time, I sit down with regular Prime Timer Mike Chesworth, who has just returned from Antarctica, to get the unfiltered truth about what it’s really like.

We talk about everything from choosing the right expedition, booking timelines, the level of fitness required and costs, to the wildlife, the scenery, the notorious Drake Passage and the unexpected highlights of travelling through South America along the way.

If Antarctica is on your list for 2027, 2028 or beyond, this conversation will help you understand what the experience is really like before you commit.

LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE OF THE PODCAST HERE:

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BONUS EPISODE: How to soft launch your retirement

Retirement doesn’t have to be a hard stop.

In fact, for many people, the best transition is a gradual one — reducing work, exploring new interests and creating a lifestyle that balances income, purpose and freedom.

In this special June series, I’ve teamed up with Aware Super to explore the new rhythm of retirement and what it really looks like in practice.

In this episode, I sit down with Bambi Price, founder of War On Wasted Talent, and Peter Hogg, General Manager of Guidance & Advice at Aware Super, to discuss how to “soft launch” your retirement without losing your sense of purpose, or your paycheck, overnight.

Together, we explore why more Australians are choosing a phased approach to retirement, how to stay connected to meaningful work, and the practical steps you can take now to design a transition that works for you.

LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE OF THE PODCAST HERE:

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Feature: Love, grief and the life that follows

From Bec’s Desk: A trip to the Chant West awards

The Age and Sydney Morning Herald: The hidden super tools you’re paying for – but probably ignoring

Prime Time: The EOFY checklist and what you need to think about for the year ahead

Love, grief and the life that follows

Nobody puts grief and losing their partner or a loved one on their retirement plan. But for most of us, it shows up anyway.

By the time you’re in your 50s or 60s, loss is no longer an abstract concept. It's happened to most of us. The loss of a parent, a close friend, a sibling. And for many people, eventually, a partner. The second half of life is richer in a lot of ways, but it also asks more of you than the first half did - in managing grief and moving forward anyway.

There’s a particular kind of grief that doesn’t get talked about much. And it’s not the acute, early grief - the shock and fog of loss and the casseroles on the doorstep from well-meaning friends. But the longer grief - the one that settles in after the noise dies down, when everyone else has gone back to their lives and you’re left figuring it out, with all your hopes and plans broken and sadness in your soul.

Today I’m releasing a special edition of my podcast - a conversation with former NSW Premier, the Honorable Bob Carr. He lost his wife Helena suddenly two years ago after 50 years of marriage to an aneurysm while on holiday in Vienna. And this week, when we talked, he spoke about what he called “the leftover life” and how he’s moving through his grief. He’s still here, still functioning and had to learn how to cook, clean and do his own domestic duties, after losing the love of his life. But he’s missing the person who was woven into how he thought, how he planned, and how he made sense of the world.

As someone who’s been married for 25 years, our conversation quietened me. Because it’s not something we talk about. So much so that he wrote a book about it called Bring Back Yesterday. In it he reflects on his wife, their life, grief and his future.

It’s a book about the devastation, the early days and then the path forward. How uncomfortable it was yet how he wants to talk about grief, about Helena and about how it feels - so others can remember her, and feel a little more normal as they traverse their own.

We all need to remember that a long partnership isn’t just companionship. It’s the very architecture that holds our life in a structure. This is someone who holds half your memories. Who knows your real history. Who you process things with, even the small things - what happened at dinner, what you’re worried about, what made you laugh today. When that person is gone, it’s not just their absence you feel. It’s the absence of the version of yourself that existed with them.

And then there’s the social reality of grief. Some people think you should move on, or that you should ‘get over it’. Couples drift away, not unkindly, but gradually losing interest in your sadness. You become, without meaning to, someone who makes them uncomfortable about their own happiness.

This is the part people aren’t prepared for. The loneliness isn’t just about missing one person. It’s about finding yourself on the outside of a world that assumed you’d always be paired up in.

So what actually helps?

From Bob, and from the many people I’ve spoken to who have navigated this: it’s rarely the big things. Bob shows us it’s walking. Building a new routine. Showing up to something, even when you don’t feel like it. One friend who calls regularly. A reason to get up and go somewhere in the morning and a weekend, planned ahead and filled with activities to look forward to.

It’s also, when you’re ready, allowing yourself to imagine that the life ahead can still be good - not the same, but good.

Grief in the second half of life deserves more honest conversation than it usually gets. Not clinical nor relentlessly optimistic. Just the real kind - acknowledgment that this is hard, that it changes you, and that you’re allowed to take your time finding your footing again.

If this resonates, Bob’s memoir Bring Back Yesterday is worth picking up. And our full conversation is on Prime Time today, wherever you get your podcasts.

LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE OF THE PODCAST HERE:

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This week I headed to Sydney for two days partly to interview Bob Carr in person - which was really special; and partly to attend the Chant West Superannuation Fund Awards, one of my favourite industry events of the year. Super is a relatively small sector, so it feels like a gathering of friends and colleagues. Competitive but collegiate. Everyone wants their team to win - which is a good sign that the superfunds are upping their game in 2026.

The big winners on the night were Aware Super, who picked up four of the biggest awards including Super Fund of the Year, Pension Fund of the Year, Best Fund for Member Services and Best Fund for Insurance. That is an extraordinary result that reflects a fund firing on every cylinder at once, and one that should make every other fund in the industry sit up and think hard about what they're building.

And AMP, who picked up three awards including Best Fund for Digital Advice, Best Fund for Lifetime Product and Advised Product of the Year for their MyNorth platform, a result that tells an important story about a fund that has been through significant transformation and is now competing seriously and winning in the retirement space too.

Both results are worth understanding, because they point directly to the services and products that can change your retirement outcome, most of which you're probably not using. I’ve written about this in the national newspapers this week (below).

Alongside this, this week we’ve launched our Epic Retirement Flagship Course in the UK, and we’re mid-course on our Australian Epic Retirement Flagship Course. We enjoyed our Week 2 Live Q&A with the Aussie Epic Retirement Flagship Course for Winter here, with Ashton Jones from MLC joining us. Week 3’s lessons have dropped for members doing the Aussie program. Our next program is in August - if you want to lodge an expression of interest, we’ll let you know when it goes on sale.

It’s been shocking weather in Brisbane with loads of rain and storms, and we lost the footy too. So, I’m going to be enjoying any skeric of sunshine I can get this weekend. I hope you get some too.

Make it epic!

Cheers - Bec Xx

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

The hidden super tools you’re paying for but probably ignoring

The federal budget on May 12 made superannuation the most compelling place to build wealth in Australia, and not because of anything it did to super directly. It’s what it did to everything else.

The reduction in the CGT discount on investments held outside super has fundamentally shifted the maths on wealth building. Shares, investment properties and managed funds in your own name just became considerably less tax-efficient than they were. Super has been crowned the winner.

Which makes what I’m about to tell you either really exciting or mildly embarrassing, depending on how you look at it.

Most Australians are barely using their super fund before they retire. Sure, their employer deposits the 12 per cent contribution. But after that, people largely ignore them, sitting in a default investment option they set years ago and never reviewed, paying for services they have never accessed and leaving advice on the table they’ve already paid for.

The fund is doing the work. The member is nowhere to be seen. And if they did pay attention they would realise they can squeeze more juice out.

Once a year, superannuation research firm Chant West sends its researchers into super funds and interrogates them for weeks. It’s not a tick-box survey or a marketing submission where everyone gets a ribbon, but a forensic examination of what funds are building and delivering for members across every dimension of service.

Your super fund is working hard for you. The question is whether you’re working with it.

It’s primarily an industry exercise recognising genuine excellence, but it gives the rest of us a remarkably useful window into what the leading funds are doing and, more importantly, what you should be looking for in your own fund.

I was at the awards this year, donned a frock, sat among 300 industry people and watched each winner announced to a room that really did care about the result. Here’s what the best funds are building, and what you should use.

This article continues. It was published in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday 30th May 2026. Read the whole article here. Note - it has a sign-up gate but no paywall.

The EOFY checklist and what you need to think about for the year ahead

Every year around this time, we start hearing the same things: Top up your super. Save on tax. Don’t miss the deadlines.

But this year feels a little different, especially off the back of the budget, and a lot of people in midlife are wondering: are the old strategies still worth it?

So in this week’s episode of Prime Time, we cut through the noise and put together a practical end-of-financial-year checklist for real people.

I sit down with financial planner Paul Benson to talk through the smartest EOFY moves for people in their 40s, 50s and 60s; from super contributions and tax strategies to debt, investments, insurance and the changes people should be thinking about now.

I also chat with Peter Hogg from Aware Super about the superannuation housekeeping tasks many people overlook, and why a few small actions before June 30 can make a meaningful difference to both your tax position and your long-term retirement balance.

LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE OF THE PODCAST HERE:

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Feature: Not quite retiring - it’s a thing

From Bec’s Desk: Bushwalks and awards

The Age and Sydney Morning Herald: The super shake-up that could change how you spend in retirement

Prime Time: The top-to-bottom mid-life health audit

Not quite retiring - it’s a thing

A friend of mine handed in his notice this week, three months until what he’s calling his “second retirement.” He turns 60 next year, and when he talks about it, he’s genuinely convinced this is it.

So I got him talking. And for the first ten minutes, it was all about time. How he has none of it right now. How he’s craving it in a way that feels almost physical. How he came back to the workforce after retirement number one feeling ready, energised even, and how somewhere in the past year that feeling quietly drained away and left him with a diary full of other people’s priorities and almost none of his own.

But then something shifted. As the conversation went on and I kept asking questions, his tone changed. Because when I asked him what he might actually do next, he didn’t dismiss work entirely. He paused. He knows his knowledge is valuable. He likes being useful, genuinely likes it, and he’s self-aware enough to know that the feeling of usefulness doesn’t automatically follow you into retirement just because you want it to. He’s watched it disappear once before, and he hasn’t forgotten what that felt like.

So what he actually wants isn’t quite retirement. It’s time. Space in his life. Room to think, to breathe, to decide what the next chapter looks like without the current one consuming every available hour. The problem is that in the role he’s in right now, there is no version of that on offer. So the only move he can see is to leave completely and create the vacancy himself.

I thought that was one of the more honest things I’d heard someone say about this stage of life in a while. Because I think a lot of people in their late 50s are carrying exactly that tension, not wanting to stop contributing, but not willing to keep going the way they have been. Wanting the usefulness without the exhaustion. Wanting to feel like their experience still matters, just in a different configuration, on their own terms, with some of their own time back.

It’s harder to navigate than a clean retirement, because there’s no obvious template for it. But if you’re sitting somewhere in that territory, here are the questions worth actually working through.

Is it the work itself, or the terms you’re doing it on?

This one matters more than most people realise, because the answer changes everything. A lot of people who think they want to stop working actually want to stop doing so very much of it, under these conditions, with this much pressure and this little control over their own time. That’s a different problem with different solutions. The question is whether those solutions are available to you where you are right now, or whether, like my friend, the only realistic path to the life you want runs through leaving first.

What would you actually do with the time, specifically?

Most people haven’t thought this through beyond a vague sense of relief, and the first few months of stepping back tend to feel wonderful regardless. After that, a lot of people find the days harder to fill than they expected, particularly if work has been the main source of structure, identity, and connection for the last few decades. It’s worth asking yourself honestly what a genuinely good week looks like when you’re not working full-time, and whether you have enough of the right things already in your life to fill that space well.

What would usefulness look like, redesigned?

This is really the question underneath everything else. If you know, like my friend does, that pure retirement didn’t fully work last time, then the goal isn’t to stop contributing. It’s to find a version of contributing that doesn’t cost you everything else. Consulting, a board position, mentoring, building something smaller on your own terms. These are real options worth thinking through properly, not filing away as vague possibilities to sort out later.

Have you actually modelled what stepping back costs you financially?

Not in the general sense of whether you have enough saved, but properly stress-tested. What does reducing your income cost you per year, and what does that do to your long-term position? A lot of people are more financially ready to make a move than they think, and some are less ready than they assume. Getting proper advice from someone who understands this phase of life is worth doing before anything is decided.

And have you had the real conversation with your partner?

Not just about the money, but about what the day-to-day actually looks like when one or both of you is renegotiating how you spend your time and maybe the other one is already retired. Talk about what you each need from the next chapter, and what it means for how you live together day to day. It’s one of those conversations that’s easy to keep putting off and genuinely important to have before anything is locked in.

My friend might be doing exactly the right thing. Sometimes the only way to get your time back is to clear the diary completely and start again. But the vacancy only works if you go into it with some sense of what you’re hoping will show up.

Get your copy of my books here: How to Have an Epic Retirement and if you’re not ready for retirement, Prime Time: 27 Lessons for the New Midlife.

Or explore the course here: Epicretirement.net/upcoming-courses

I’m writing this on Saturday afternoon after a day out hiking and enjoying nature in Mt Glorious. I don’t do enough of this stuff - pleasant bushwalks through countrysides within an hour from home. But this winter I’m promising myself more of it. It’s all part of my midlife health audit - which you can listen to more of on my podcast.

I’m also on the hunt for a destination multi-day hike, something enjoyable but not too punishing, to give myself a proper project to work towards. Having done the Three Capes in Tasmania in late 2024, I think it’s time to be proactive again. If you have any good suggestions for a winter or spring walk, hit reply and tell me about it. I’d love to hear what you’ve done and what you’d recommend.

Now, onto the work stuff!

This week we ran our first live event for the How to Have an Epic Retirement Flagship Course, and it’s been our biggest cohort ever, so we’ve been well and truly on our toes. We welcomed Ashton Jones, Retirement Expert and Director of Innovation at MLC, to talk about longevity, and it was the most question-packed session we’ve ever had. The curiosity in this group is something else.

In Week 2, everyone is getting into the Age Pension and building their retirement budget, and on Monday evening we have Andrew Lowe from Challenger joining us for our live session on Safe Spending. It’s shaping up to be another good one.

If you missed this round and want to be the first to know when the next course opens, you can add your name to the expression of interest list here. The next intake kicks off on 13 August.

We’re also launching our pilot program in the UK this week, which is genuinely exciting.

And I’m off to Sydney for the Chant West Superannuation Fund of the Year Awards, an industry night celebrating the super funds and the teams behind them. I have the privilege of presenting one of the awards this year, and I always love seeing who takes out Retirement Fund of the Year. I’ll report back next week!

Now - go enjoy your Sunday - but before you do, read my article in The Sydney Morning Herald. It’s on a topic I have resisted writing about despite many PR people trying to convince me to over the last couple of years. But the market and the products weren’t ready for consumers to buy them and advisers have been slow to engage with them (as I explain). That all changed this week Innovative ‘Lifetime Income Streams’ are going to be a much bigger part of the conversation from now on - and something you need to be aware of and contemplate whether you want to advocate for them being included in your mix. I explain them in my column in detail in a way I hope everyone can grasp.

Make it epic!

Cheers - Bec Xx

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

The super shake-up that could change how you spend in retirement

Many people approaching retirement feel a deep, gut-level fear about how to spend. They have spent the past decade, or maybe two, saving hard for what could be a 30-year retirement, and most have no real idea how their money will work once they get there.

Financial advice, the only industry legally able to help with that fear, has spent years rewriting its business models around managing investments for an ongoing annual fee, making it expensive and largely the domain of the wealthy.

Super funds have been left to solve the problem for everyone else, and they have been loudly encouraged by the government to step up with a combination of digital advice and lifetime income products.

This week, two announcements signal that everyday people should start getting excited about doing retirement income differently.

This article continues. It was published in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday 24th May 2026. Read the whole article here. Note - it has a sign-up gate but no paywall.

The top-to-bottom mid-life health audit

Today, I’m getting personal. Turning 50 this year has been a real wake-up call for me when it comes to my health. Not in a dramatic way, but in a very honest, “I need to start thinking differently about the next few decades” kind of way.

Because the reality is, midlife is when many of the things that weren’t really on our radar in our 30s and 40s start to show up. - in my bone health, blood pressure, muscle loss, menopause, dementia risk, balance, hearing and eye health. Even the way we think about longevity starts to shift.

So, in this episode, I wanted to take a really practical, top-to-bottom look at what we should actually be paying attention to at this stage of life and what we can still do now to dramatically improve the decades ahead.

I sit down with renowned GP Dr Ginni Mansberg to talk through the midlife health changes we should all be preparing for, the preventative tests that matter most, and why the “unsexy stuff” like sleep, movement, muscle and social connection turns out to be the stuff that really works.

Then later in the episode, I also chat with Lenette Gear from Australian Unity about health insurance - how our cover needs change as we get older, what people often misunderstand about private health, and how to think about the role it plays in supporting us through the next phase of life.

LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE OF THE PODCAST HERE:

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Feature: The case for getting more money into super - now

From Bec’s Desk: My position is simply to get proactive on the right stuff

The Age and Sydney Morning Herald: Seven money tricks that just became a whole lot better

Prime Time: Has this Federal Budget just fundamentally changed the way middle Australians build wealth?

What actually makes sense now

Four and a half days on from the budget and I’m done reacting to it. The proposed changes are real, the direction is clear, and there’s plenty of time for the politics to play out before anything actually becomes law. So let’s talk about what to actually do and shut up on the whining about what sucks.

If the budget has done anything useful, it’s simplified the question of what to do now if you’re planning for retirement. The system is increasingly rewarding two things and two things ONLY: Super and the family home. So the smartest thing most people can do right now is get more money into one or both of those as deliberately as possible. Here’s how:

Get more money into super

This is especially important if you can see the time when you’ll be able to access these funds coming up (60-65).

The concessional cap is $30,000 a year. Most people aren’t hitting it. If you’re salary sacrificing nothing beyond your employer’s super guarantee, you’re leaving a significant tax advantage on the table.

But the bigger opportunity is the carry-forward rule. If your super balance is under $500,000, you can use unused concessional caps from the last five years – potentially contributing well above $30,000 in a single year. Log into MyGov, go to the ATO section, and check your available carry-forward amount. For many people in their 50s it’s substantial.

Non-concessional contributions (after-tax money) are also worth considering if you have savings sitting outside super earning returns that will soon be taxed more heavily. You can contribute up to $120,000 per year, or $360,000 in one hit using the three-year bring-forward rule.

The goal is simple: get as much as you reasonably can into a zero-tax retirement environment before you need to draw on it. And that’s what super is AFTER retirement - a zero tax environment for funds up to the transfer balance cap which will hit $2.1M in July.

Pay down the home – or upsize or both

I can’t believe I’m now suggesting to people with excess funds to consider upsizing rather than downsizing, but that’s a sign of the times. After the budget, the family home remains the most tax-effective asset you can own. No capital gains tax when you sell, exempt from the age pension assets test, and now looking even more central to retirement planning than before.

If your mortgage isn’t paid off, paying it down faster is one of the most straightforward things you can do. Every dollar of equity in a paid-off home is a dollar sitting in a CGT-free, pension-exempt asset – growing at whatever rate property grows at in Australia from here, and that’s a genuine question mark.

But here’s the less obvious move. If you’re in your 50s and have free cash sitting outside super and want to secure some long term growth, you might find yourself thinking about upsizing to a better home, a different location, something that genuinely suits the next stage of life. Doing it now locks more of your wealth into a CGT-free asset before the rules tighten further. It feels counterintuitive. But the numbers may support it, depending on what happens to property prices from here and whether you believe they’ll continue to grow; and of course whether you need or want access to those funds.

The thread connecting all of this

None of these strategies are new. Super contributions, paying down the home, thinking carefully about your asset mix – this has always been good retirement planning. What the budget has done is make the case for doing them more deliberately, and sooner, harder to ignore. And it’s rendered all the other types of investment outside super more expensive today than they were last week.

The window for most people reading this is the next five to ten years. That’s enough time to move the dial significantly… if you start now rather than waiting for the politics to settle.

Get your copy of my books here: How to Have an Epic Retirement and if you’re not ready for retirement, Prime Time: 27 Lessons for the New Midlife.

Or explore the course here: Epicretirement.net/upcoming-courses

I won’t beat around the bush. I’m unimpressed with the budget. I love Australia’s have-a-go spirit – the slightly uneven playing field that people can learn the rules to play on. The government has decided that’s unfair, and they’ve moved to level it. I get it. But these changes make getting ahead harder for anyone who planned to self-fund and isn’t already in the right asset structures. Some serious strategies have been rendered a lot less profitable, and once you factor in higher tax and fees, some investments outside super start to look a lot less attractive than they did. Which means some people have a real rethink ahead of them.

For the average person – simple super, family home, not much else – it doesn’t change a great deal. It probably just shuts up the mate at the pub who’s been bragging about his multiple investment properties. Because unless those are inside super, that strategy is looking a lot less clever than it did a week ago even with grandfathering.

But I’ve always tried to stay out of politics and get on with the job of understanding how the system works and making the most of what’s in front of us. So that’s where my head is this weekend. I hope you’re with me.

Now onto more fun things:

The first week of our Winter How to Have an Epic Retirement Flagship Course is underway. I love the first week of a new course. There’s energy, comments, buzz and excitement. Hundreds and hundreds of people are in there starting out. They’re sharing stories and curiosity. It’s our biggest course ever. We sold OUT of workbooks it surprised us so much.

We’ve just launched our UK pilot for sale too.

And this week I did a live event online for Aware Super Members, preparing them for the End of Financial Year: For Couples. I love these events. Hundreds of curious members came along, stayed for every single minute of the event and hung around for the huge Q&A at the end too. Thanks for coming - if you were there!

And that’s it. It’s been a long week of money talking. So I’m having a quite Sunday in the garden, ignoring social media. I hope you are too.

Make it epic!

Cheers - Bec Xx

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

Seven money tricks that just became a whole lot better

Australians are a pretty resilient bunch when it comes to money. Every time the rules change, we find the new angles, the smarter structures and the opportunities still sitting in the system for us to use. And after the budget, a few specific ones come into focus.

Yes, this budget will sting for some people, particularly those with wealth sitting outside super and younger Australians still trying to build a deposit.

The government’s decision to replace the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount with an inflation-adjusted cost base indexation and a minimum 30 per cent tax on capital gains from July 1, 2027, is a significant shift. Combine that with negative gearing being limited to new builds from the same date, and the investing landscape has truly changed.

But here’s what I want you to do: instead of spending the next six months fuming about it, look for the opportunities that just got a lot more interesting – particularly if you’re a Gen X parent trying to help your adult kids get ahead while also navigating your own path toward an epic retirement.

Here are seven money moves worth paying attention to this week that might not have been as appealing before.

This article continues. It was published in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday 16th May 2026. Read the whole article here. Note - it has a sign-up gate but no paywall.

Has this Federal Budget just fundamentally changed the way middle Australians build wealth?

In this special post-budget episode of Prime Time, I sit down with Senior Financial Adviser and State Manager of Ord Minnett, David Lane, to unpack what could become one of the biggest shifts to retirement planning and investing in decades.

Thanks for reading Prime Time! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Together we break down the proposed changes to capital gains tax, negative gearing, trusts and superannuation and what they could mean for ordinary Australians in their 40s, 50s and 60s trying to build security, prepare for retirement and help their kids get into the housing market.

The conversation explores whether Australians are watching the old wealth-building playbook being rewritten in real time. From investment properties and rent-vesting to franking credits, shares, trusts and superannuation, David and I discuss the winners, losers and unintended consequences buried inside the Budget.

We also tackle the emotional tension many Gen X Australians are feeling right now: following the rules for decades, only to find the rules changing late in the game.

This is a practical, plain-English conversation about what may happen next and the decisions Australians may need to start making over the next few years.

LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE OF THE PODCAST HERE:

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Feature: The most googled retirement question in Australia... answered

From Bec’s Desk: The course is kicking off: sold out of workbooks!

The Age and Sydney Morning Herald: Didn’t retire with ‘enough’? Here’s how to make the most of it

Prime Time: How to get a handle on subscription creep

How much super do you actually need to retire?

This is the most Googled retirement question in Australia. And the answer most people get sent to is a number (usually a big one) that leaves them feeling left behind before they’ve even started. So let’s sort this out properly.

The numbers people quote most often

ASFA, the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia, publishes a quarterly Retirement Standard that most super funds and financial websites point to. Their December 2025 figures say a comfortable retirement costs $54,840 a year for a single person, and $77,375 for a couple. To fund that, they estimate you need $630,000 in super if you’re single, or $730,000 as a couple and a fully paid off home, and access to a part age pension.

Those are the numbers doing the rounds. And for a lot of people, they land like a punch in the stomach. But the headline numbers leave a lot of information out. Let’s explore what they forget to tell you:

The age pension is part of the plan

Those ASFA figures assume you’ll receive a part age pension at 67. That pension is doing a lot of the heavy lifting, and it should be, because it’s designed to. Around 62 per cent of Australians over 67 currently receive some form of it. It’s not a fallback for people who didn’t save enough. It’s a legitimate, designed-in layer of the system, and most people are entitled to at least a part pension.

The full age pension currently pays $31,223 a year for a single person and $47,070 for a couple, including supplements. When you stack that alongside even a modest super drawdown, you’re already in the ballpark of a decent lifestyle. The practical upshot: you don’t need your super to replace your entire income. You need it to work alongside the pension. That’s a very different planning problem and a much more manageable one.

The number that might actually reassure you

Research from Vanguard’s How Australia Retires 2025 report found something worth sitting with: people consistently overestimate how much they’ll spend in retirement. Couples aged 65–74 expected to need around $59,000 a year. Retired couples their age actually reported spending $55,000 on average.

Most people spend less than they expect. Especially in the middle and later years, when the urge to travel and spend big tends to quietly ease off.

What the number actually depends on

There’s no single answer to “how much do I need?” because the question has three moving parts:

What you spend. Not what you think you spend: what you actually spend. Run the real numbers and you’ll often be surprised how manageable it looks.

What your super generates. A balance of $400,000 drawing down at 6 per cent produces $24,000 a year. Add a part age pension and you’re already approaching a liveable income, especially with no mortgage, no kids to support, and super income that’s completely tax-free.

What the age pension adds at 67. Even a part pension makes a meaningful difference to how far your super needs to stretch. And for many Australians, it’s the layer that makes the whole plan work.

When you know those three numbers (your spending, your super projection, and your likely pension entitlement )you have an actual picture of what’s possible. Not uncertain anxiety - a real plan!

The thing most people forget about super income

Once your super moves into the retirement phase, the income it pays you is tax-free. That changes the comparison completely. People who’ve been living on $80,000 or $90,000 a year are often genuinely surprised by how comfortably they live on $55,000-$60,000 in retirement, because the tax that was quietly disappearing from their pay packet every fortnight is suddenly gone.

Don’t rely on a number on a website. Build yourself a picture of how your life actually works.

The Epic Retirement course and/or book walks you through exactly this process building your own retirement picture step by step, so you can move from worry to excitement about your retirement.

Get your copy of my books here: How to Have an Epic Retirement and if you’re not ready for retirement, Prime Time: 27 Lessons for the New Midlife.

Or explore the course here: Epicretirement.net/upcoming-courses

Happy Mother’s Day! I’m looking forward to being pampered today and I hope you’re already enjoying it too.

I’ve been on the road again this week for the fifth week in a row and honestly, I’m a little travel wearied. Sydney first for some podcast recordings, then up to beautiful Cairns to speak at the Financial Counselling Australia National Conference. My topic was: Epic Retirements Are Not Just for the Wealthy. Up to 900 financial counsellors in the room. It’s also the inspiration for this week’s newsletter column.

I have to say I came home genuinely moved by the people I met there.Financial counsellors are doing some of the most important, most underrecognised work in this country. They sit with people in real distress: people drowning in debt trying to find a way out, people in frightening and vulnerable situations who need someone to help them navigate through. They build financial literacy with Australians who need it most, and they do it with enormous hearts and quiet dedication.

And one thing that really stayed with me: some wonderful Indigenous educators taking that financial literacy work back to their communities – their mobs – in ways that only they can. Reaching people that no one else could reach, in language and with trust that only comes from within. That’s powerful work.

Most of their clients arrive in despair and there are no quick fixes. So if you know a financial counsellor, give them a cheer, a shout out, or just a quiet thank you. They deserve it.

—

On a less sombre note - friday we packed and sent all the Welcome Packs for the enormous How to Have an Epic Retirement Flagship Course kicking off on Thursday. The Earlybird deal is closed. You blew us away! You can still get some last minute tickets but we’ve completely sold out of printed workbooks until the next program. Sorry about that. This is the biggest flagship course we’ve ever done by 25%. The demand has been AMAZING. You can book here if you’re keen to do the program using the digital workbook (it’s good!) but don’t delay. We’ll give yo 10% off for being a community member 😉. Use the code LATE10 - It’s already applied if you click this link.

Now - back to your Mothers’ Day. Get spoiled! Think about retirement!
Big hugs to everyone who has lost their mum today too! Thinking of you! 🥰

Cheers - Bec Xx

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

Didn’t retire with ‘enough’? Here’s how to make the most of it

I spent the latter half of this week at the Financial Counselling Australia conference, and it really brought something into focus for me. Many Australians aren’t retiring in comfort.

We don’t talk nearly enough about what retirement looks like – or how to plan for it – if you don’t have a lot of money. We also don’t rave about financial counsellors enough and how they help people in tough situations, or who are deep in debt, to get back on track.

We tend to talk about retirement as if it’s something people move into by choice, confidently and with excitement. You’re expected to build up your super, pay off your home and step away from work with a fair bit of control over what comes next.

But that’s not how it’s playing out for everyone right now. In fact, close to half of Australians retiring today rely on the age pension for a significant part of their income, and only a third or so retire by choice.

So what does retirement planning look like for people who don’t have “enough”, who didn’t get the chance to plan or who step away from work because their health shifts or caring responsibilities take over?

In that world, it’s not about optimising your retirement and choosing the date. It’s about learning to live with choices that may have been forced upon you and making the best of the opportunities you do have.

Rebuilding your financial confidence is the first step, and the best way to do that is to understand how the financial systems that support retirement work, and how much money you can rely on coming in from passive income sources such as the age pension or superannuation.

This article continues. It was published in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday 9th May 2026. Read the whole article here. Note - it has a sign-up gate but no paywall.

Today’s episode is about something many of us don’t realise is happening until we stop and really look at our bank account… subscription creep.

All those streaming services, apps, software subscriptions, food boxes, memberships and cloud storage plans that quietly pile up over time. In fact, ING’s latest research found Australians are now spending a staggering $26.5 billion a year on subscriptions - and the number keeps growing.

Because most of these services are only “a few dollars a month”, they often fly under the radar, even as they slowly start taking a bigger bite out of the household budget.

So in this episode, I sit down with Matt Bowen, Head of Consumer and Market Insights at ING Australia, to talk about the huge price tag of Australia’s subscription addiction, why these business models are so effective, and the practical things we can do to get the costs back under control.

We also tackle another financial task many people avoid entirely: opening their super statement. Kate Rolfe from Aware Super joins me to explain the three key numbers everyone should be checking, why fees matter more than people realise, and the important detail too many people leave blank.

LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE OF THE PODCAST HERE:

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Feature: The two things that will shape your retirement more than money

From Bec’s Desk: Very interesting weeks

The Age and Sydney Morning Herald: The silent deadline that could make or break your retirement

Prime Time: The hidden ways you’re being nudged to spend with Chris Kohler

The two things that will shape your retirement more than money

There’s a question I get asked a lot, in various forms….

“Am I on track financially?”

It’s fair, and it matters a lot to retirement planning. But after years of working with people navigating this transition, I’ve come to believe there are two things that matter just as much as your super balance and almost nobody talks about them.

Curiosity and courage.

And, not in a motivational-poster way. In a very practical, neurological, life-outcome kind of way.

What happens to curiosity in midlife

For most of us, the years between 45 and 65 are full of work, family, ageing parents, financial pressure. And somewhere in the middle of all that busyness, curiosity quietly goes into hibernation. We stop asking “what if?” and default to the routines of life, not because we’re lazy, but because routine is efficient when life is demanding.

The problem is that retirement is precisely when curiosity becomes most important. Because retirement, at its core, isn’t a financial event, it’s an identity event. And navigating it well requires genuine openness to who you might become next. If you arrive at that transition without having exercised your curiosity, the blank page can feel terrifying and well… blank… rather than exciting.

But the science says we can get past this. And here’s how. When you become genuinely curious about something, your brain releases dopamine, a real reward hit that motivates you to keep exploring, which is why curiosity tends to build its own momentum. But it goes deeper than that. Curiosity also engages the hippocampus, the part of your brain responsible for memory and learning, which means you don’t just feel more motivated when you’re curious, you actually retain and apply what you learn better.

This matters enormously for anyone approaching retirement, because this is a period of significant learning: new financial decisions, new routines, a new relationship with time and your identity. The more curious you stay, the better equipped your brain is to process all of it. And because of neuroplasticity – or the brain’s ability to rewire itself – staying curious is also one of the best things you can do for your long-term cognitive health.

And then there’s courage

Curiosity is what opens the door. Courage is what gets you through it. Truly!

Most people misunderstand what courage actually is. It’s not the absence of fear, it’s acting in spite of it. Every time you consider doing something outside your comfort zone, the brain’s amygdala fires up a threat signal. That’s just your nervous system doing its job - like it did in caveman days when you were under threat. Courage happens when your prefrontal cortex takes the wheel anyway, weighs the actual risk, and moves forward.

Here’s the part I find genuinely encouraging: every time you act with courage – even in a small way – you’re rewiring your brain to be less reactive to that fear signal next time. You practise it, and it really does become easier.

Why does this matter? I hear you asking. The years just before retirement bring a cascade of genuinely difficult decisions: when to stop working, whether to downsize, how to align your timeline with your partner’s, what you actually want this chapter to look like. These aren’t purely financial questions. Stop and look at them! They’re all questions about identity, risk, and change. The people I see navigate them well tend to be curious about what’s possible and have enough courage to sit with uncertainty while they figure it out.

Here’s how to get started

If you’re feeling less curious and less courageous than you’d like to be, you don’t need a dramatic overhaul.

For curiosity, start with some small questions rather than grand intentions. Follow something that mildly interests you and see where it leads. Talk to people who think differently to you. Read outside your usual lane.

For courage, start with small risks and practise visualising the upside rather than fixating on what could go wrong. And be kind to yourself when it’s hard because courage means trying, not being perfect.

Retirement planning done well isn’t just about the money. It really is about having the curiosity to imagine what’s possible, and the courage to pursue it. And you’re never too old for that!

Where has your curiosity been hiding lately? Hit reply and let me know.

The Epic Retirement course and/or book walks you through exactly this process building your own retirement picture step by step, so you can move from worry to excitement about your retirement.

Get your copy of my books here: How to Have an Epic Retirement and if you’re not ready for retirement, Prime Time: 27 Lessons for the New Midlife.

Or explore the course here: Epicretirement.net/upcoming-courses

I’ve been to the other ends of the country this week - Adelaide and Perth. Both quickly, on the North platform Adviser roadshow. A fascinating room full of Advisers in each location, learning how to improve and expand their advice offerings for people over 50 (or 47.5 as I teach). I love playing my role in talking about what people approaching retirement want, need and can be doing better with the Advice industry - many of whom are focussed on retirement.

Alongside this, we’re in course preparation mode. The Epic Retirement Course is on its last weekend of promotion before Earlybird pricing (25% off) closes. It’s the biggest course ever with hundreds and hundreds of people registered. So if you’ve been on the sidelines thinking ‘I’m not sure’ - don’t delay. The price jumps from $374 to $499 next week - and I want you all to enjoy the discount.

What do you get?

1. 6 weeks of structured, well-organised education designed to walk you through the big lessons everyone needs to navigate as they approach and make decisions about retirement. (100 lessons, structured into 15 modules)

2. A 170 page print and digital workbook, mailed to you

3. A signed copy of the new edition of How to Have an Epic Retirement

4. 6 Live Q&A Events, held on Monday evenings each week with some of Australia’s most respected retirement experts

5. Challenges and quizzes to bring the program to life.

It’s a great way to really learn about all the choices you have, and to shape your plans for the future, without pressure. So - want to learn more, here’s the website. Head to www.epicretirement.net/upcoming-courses to learn more, download a brochure and book your place.

Now, the week ahead is an interesting one. I'm heading to Cairns to speak at the Financial Counselling Australia National Conference — presenting on how people who don't have a lot of money can still build an Epic Retirement. It's had me thinking deeply about what that actually looks like in practice: understanding what government support is available, yes, but more importantly, shifting the focus from money to constructing a life that genuinely brings joy. And it turns out curiosity — the very thing we've been talking about today — becomes even more important when resources are limited. Maybe that's next week's topic. Watch this space.

Anyway - have a lovely Sunday, and for Queenslanders enjoy your long weekend! I know I will.

Cheers - Bec Xx

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

The silent deadline that could make or break your retirement

I turned 50 at the start of this year, and it’s been the trigger I needed to get serious about my own retirement plan.

As the author of two bestselling books on retirement, I know exactly what to do. But there’s something very different about actually sitting down and doing it yourself, with your partner beside you, setting real goals for your super and other assets, working out how much you can both contribute and how quickly, and running the numbers on what compound investing actually does over a 10- to 15-year runway.

Goals not just to grow your money, but to one day use it. It’s made something that I teach every day feel genuinely more exciting. Because what we’re working towards isn’t just a goal number.

It’s a number that we understand, and that allows us to have choice: the choice to work after 60 because we want to, not because we have to, if life pans out according to plan.

As I’ve stepped through it, something has become obvious to me. The choices available to us right now, in our early to mid-fifties, are remarkable. But a lot of them won’t be there at 65. Some will be weaker. Some will be entirely gone. And that’s the main reason to take your super and savings seriously now, rather than later.

Let’s look at how we can make a big difference:

This article continues. It was published in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday 2nd May 2026. Read the whole article here. Note - it has a sign-up gate but no paywall.

It’s time for this month’s Prime Time Book Club episode, and this one might just change the way you look at your everyday spending.

Our April Book of the Month was How They Get You by Chris Kohler - a brilliant, slightly unsettling look at all the ways modern life quietly nudges us to spend more money. From subscriptions to loyalty programs, food delivery and even the way we pay.

These are all things we use every day… but rarely stop to question.

And what’s fascinating is, many of these systems didn’t always work the way they do now. They’ve evolved quickly, and often in ways that benefit businesses far more than consumers.

I’m joined by Chris himself to discuss how it all works; how companies get into our habits, our decisions, and ultimately… our wallets - and what you can do about it.

It’s one of those episodes where you’ll find yourself thinking, “I do that… I never realised why.”

You can find a copy of ‘How They Get You’ at all good book retailers & online here.

LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE OF THE PODCAST HERE:

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Feature: The retirement date you pick vs the one life picks for you

From Bec’s Desk: On the road again!

The Age and Sydney Morning Herald: $1 million used to be the retirement dream. Now, it might not be enough

Prime Time: Could you stop working tomorrow… and still get paid?

But first, an ad for our upcoming course…

Last chance to secure an Earlybird ticket!

Our next program kicks off on 14 May, and our Earlybird deal (25% off) is now open—but places are limited. Hundreds of people have already booked and this is on track to be the biggest Epic Retirement Course yet!

This is a six-week retirement education program designed to build your confidence and help you make sense of the many decisions ahead.

Learn more about the course here ➡️

The retirement date you pick vs the one life picks for you

Most people have a number in their head. Maybe it’s 62. Maybe 65. Maybe “when the mortgage is paid off” or “when the kids are sorted.” It’s the date you’ve been quietly working toward – the finish line you’ve drawn in pencil on the wall of your mind.

But here’s a stat that tends to stop people in their tracks: only 31% of Australians retire by choice. The rest are pushed, by redundancy, by health, by a partner’s illness, or by a workplace that quietly makes it clear their time is up.

That means roughly two in three people don’t get to retire on their own terms. Life picks the date for them. This isn’t meant to be alarming information. It’s meant to be useful.

The gap between planned and actual

There’s often a significant gap between when people expect to retire and when they actually do. And that gap almost always runs in one direction – earlier than planned. An unexpected redundancy at 58. A health scare at 61. A parent who needs care, a partner who can’t wait, a job that disappears in a restructure.

When retirement arrives ahead of schedule, people who have a plan adapt. People who were counting on “a few more years” to get ready can find themselves scrambling.

What you can control

You can’t always control when you leave work. But you can control how prepared you are when it happens. A few things worth thinking about now:

Know your numbers today, not later. What would your retirement actually look like if it started next year? Run that scenario: super balance, likely pension eligibility, expenses. Even a rough picture is better than none.

Don’t put all your preparation into the final years. It’s tempting to think “I’ll sort the finances when I’m closer.” But if those final years get cut short, you want the groundwork already done.

Think about your non-financial readiness too. Identity, purpose, routine, social connection – these things really do take time to figure out. People who’ve thought about what they’re retiring to, not just from, tend to land better when the transition comes unexpectedly.

Consider a gradual exit. Moving to part-time or consulting before you fully retire gives you a trial run and keeps income flowing longer, which buys flexibility.

The silver lining

Here’s what I’ve seen again and again: people who are nudged into retirement earlier than planned often adjust faster than they expected. The fear of it is usually worse than the reality. Especially when the basics are in place.

The goal isn’t to panic about what you can’t control. It’s to make sure that whenever that date arrives – whether chosen or not —–you’re not starting from scratch.

Plan like it could happen sooner than you think. Hope it doesn’t. Either way, you’ll be ready.

The Epic Retirement course and/or book walks you through exactly this process building your own retirement picture step by step, so you can move from worry to excitement about your retirement.

Get your copy of my books here: How to Have an Epic Retirement and if you’re not ready for retirement, Prime Time: 27 Lessons for the New Midlife.

Or explore the course here: Epicretirement.net/upcoming-courses

I’ve been on the road all week keynoting the AMP North Adviser Roadshow through its biggest cities in Sydney and Melbourne. It’s so much fun! The adrenaline is addictive. The energy is fabulous. I love it when people queue up to get a copy of the book after too. I’m talking to Advisers about how important it is help people have not just an Epic Retirement, but a Prime time too, and how that Prime Time can be structured, into a setup phase, a lifestyling phase, and a part-timing phase. Lots of nodding heads and agreement from them! Which is terrific. Next week I’m off to do it all again in Adelaide and Perth.

In other things, this week our podcast was awesome - I hope you’ve had a listen. It was two people - Xavier O’Halloran from Super Consumers Australia and Kate Rolfe from Aware Super - talking about layering your super and the age pension.

And we’ve seen the How to Have an Epic Retirement Course hit awesome new heights. This is going to be the biggest course ever. I’m holding Earlybird 25% off open for a couple more days. Don’t delay though - I have to close it very soon to place the final book orders and get them in the mail.

On the side of all my Epic Retirement work, I’ve been loving every minute of working with my daughter, Paris, on An Epic Start - helping her learn how to budget, save, and invest. We’ve each been making little videos for Instagram and Tiktok to help adult kids and their parents learn the ‘new stuff’ we all need to know (us and them) so our kids can have an epic start. So much of investing, home buying and starting out has changed since we did it. Come and follow the channel (I’m super impressed at the videos Paris is making - making it real for all the younger gen).

More here:

• Instagram.com/an.epic.start

• Tiktok.com/@an.epic.start

And if you have adult kids starting out - tell them about it please. We want to help!

Now, on with the Sunday - make it Epic!

Cheers Bec

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

$1 million used to be the retirement dream. Now, it might not be enough

For years, $1 million has been the number people carry around in their heads as the amount you need to have a good retirement. Get to that and you’ve done well in life. You’ll be comfortable, and you won’t need to worry.

Piffle.

What I’m seeing now is that more people are getting close to that figure, or even reaching it, and instead of feeling secure, they feel uncertain. They’re not stressed, and they’re not struggling, but they’re certainly not as confident as they expected to be that they have enough.

And the reason is pretty simple. The number hasn’t kept up with how retirement actually works any more.

A million dollars in super still puts you in a strong position. But when you translate it into income, it starts to look very different from the old idea of being “set for life”.

This article was published in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday 25th April 2026. Read the whole article here. Note - it has a sign-up gate but no paywall.

We spend our working lives earning an income. But at some point, the game changes completely.

The paycheck stops. And suddenly we’re not earning an income from full time work anymore, instead, we need to learn how to manage a more passive set of income streams. Super, the Age Pension, maybe a bit of work, some investments on the side. And for each layer, there’s different sources, different rules, and different timing. All of it needs to work together to replace the one simple income most people had before.

And that’s where most people get caught out. It’s not because they haven’t saved enough. It’s simply because nobody ever taught them how to actually run this thing called retirement.

This week on Prime Time, I sit down with Xavier O’Halloran from Super Consumers Australia and Kate Rolfe, Head of Retirement Strategy at Aware Super. We get into the real mechanics of layering a retirement income; what the sources are, how they shift across different phases of retirement, and how to build a picture that actually works for your life.

In this episode we also discussed the Super Consumers Australia’s Retirement Savings Targets. You can find them here.

LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE OF THE PODCAST HERE:

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Feature: Nearly half of Australians heading into retirement are worried they’ll run out of money. Are you one of them?

From Bec’s Desk: Extra seats

The Age and Sydney Morning Herald: Worried you’ll lose your job before retiring? Try these six steps

Prime Time: Are you proactive about the risk of losing your job with Jannine Fraser?

But first, an ad for our upcoming course…

Booked your place on the next Epic Retirement Flagship Course yet?

Our next program kicks off on 14 May, and our Earlybird deal (25% off) is now open—but places are limited. Hundreds of people have already booked and this is on track to be the biggest Epic Retirement Course yet!

This is a six-week retirement education program designed to build your confidence and help you make sense of the many decisions ahead.

Learn more about the course here ➡️

Nearly half of Australians heading into retirement are worried they’ll run out of money. Are you one of them?

A new study released this week by Australia’s corporate regulator, ASIC, found that nearly half of Australians aged 50–66 are worried about running out of money in retirement. Almost a third say they feel behind in their preparations. And only 18% have a clear retirement plan.

Those are striking numbers. But here’s the one that really caught my attention:

Only 26% of pre-retirees demonstrate a strong understanding of retirement finances, yet 41% say they feel confident they can manage.

Read that again. More people feel confident than actually are. And far more people feel worried than have actually done the maths.

What this tells me isn’t that Australians are bad at money. It’s that most people are operating on a vague sense of where they stand – and vague is almost always worse than the actual reality.

The problem with “I think I’m okay”

Retirement anxiety thrives in the gap between what you feel and what you know to be true. When you don’t have a clear picture of your numbers, your brain fills in the blanks (usually with the worst version of events).

The fix lies in building your own clear picture. And it doesn’t need to be complicated.

Here’s where to start.

Step 1: Know your number – what will retirement actually cost you?

Before you worry about whether you have enough, you need to work out enough for what.

Most people skip this step. They focus on the balance in their super account without ever defining the lifestyle it needs to fund. Start with a budget in today’s money. What does a good life look like for you each year? What are your non-negotiables – the trips, the weekends away, the dinners out, the golf, the grandkids?

The ASFA Retirement Standard gives you a useful benchmark: a comfortable lifestyle for a single retiree currently costs around $55,000 a year, and for a couple around $77,500. If your vision of retirement is more active or ambitious than that – and for many in the Epic community, it is, then your number will be higher.

Map that out honestly. That’s your target income.

Step 2: Know what you’ve got

This sounds obvious, but most people have a rough idea rather than a real picture. Take stock of:

• Your super balance (and what it’s invested in)

• Any other investments or savings outside super

• Whether you’re likely to qualify for a full or part Age Pension

• Any income you expect to generate – part-time work, rent, a business

Don’t forget: for most Australians, super plus a part Age Pension will form the backbone of retirement income. You don’t need to fund everything yourself from super alone. The Age Pension can be juicy in the amount of support it offers.

Step 3: Bridge the gap – or confirm there isn’t one

Once you have your target income budget and a picture of what you’ve got, you can actually do the maths. This is where a lot of people get a pleasant surprise: the gap is smaller than they feared, or maybe doesn’t exist at all.

If there is a gap, you’ve still got time to do something about it – whether that’s contributing more to super, adjusting your retirement timing, or rethinking what a great retirement actually costs.

The point is: you can’t fix a problem you haven’t defined and understood. And you can’t feel genuinely confident without actually running the numbers.

The real issue

The research found that 58% of pre-retirees want to learn more about superannuation and retirement. That’s not a lack of interest. It’s a lack of clear, practical guidance that speaks to their actual situation.

If you’ve been in that “I think I’m okay... probably” camp, this is your nudge. Not to panic – but to look. Because for most people who actually do the work, the picture is better than they expected. (Trust me - I see it all the time in my course)

And if it isn’t? Better to know now, when there’s still time to act.

The Epic Retirement course and/or book walks you through exactly this process building your own retirement picture step by step, so you can move from worry to excitement about your retirement.

Get your copy of my books here: How to Have an Epic Retirement and if you’re not ready for retirement, Prime Time: 27 Lessons for the New Midlife.

Or explore the course here: Epicretirement.net/upcoming-courses

30 degrees in Brisbane, 13 degrees in Adelaide and 5 degrees in Hobart. That was my week of weather. Next week I’ll get to see what Sydney and Melbourne weather is like, on the road again with AMP North, keynoting at their Adviser roadshow. I’m talking about the future of retirement as I travel around. It’s super-fun because I’m sharing what everyday people (YOU!) want!

This week I’ve been working on reels, and podcasts while on the road and I really need your help. I’m hoping a few of you might want to tell your story of finding your sense of purpose and trying new things on a short 3-4 ish minute audio clip. Just script out your message, record it on your phone and send it to me via messenger on FB or email by replying to this email. We want to include your stories (and your real voices) on the podcast - and think of how much fun this will be if we can get you doing it.

And in other news, my new project with my daughter, Paris is well underway designed to teach parents and kids how they can start from nothing, save, invest and build their own journey onto the housing ladder. You can find An.Epic.Start as a new handle on Instagram, Tiktok and Facebook. That’s stage one (come along and have a look - I’m very proud of the work Paris has been doing here - and her friends and our growing younger community appears to be enjoying int). Then there’s going to be a book too! It’s filling every spare crack in my brain - which is fun. I enjoy research.

And lastly, the How to Have an Epic Retirement Flagship Course kicking off in May is definitely going to be our biggest yet! Hundreds of people have registered. I’m extending the Earlybird 25% off deal through this weekend because it’s already hit its limited number of seats. Remember, you can come along as a couple and do it together. You can also ask your employer to pay for it if you want!

Now, the sun is out, it’s Sunday morning, so go enjoy the peace and tranquility.

Until next week — make it epic.

Cheers, Bec xx

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

Worried you’ll lose your job before retiring? Try these six steps

There’s a worry appearing in the minds of fifty- and sixty-somethings in Australia right now. People who’ve had long, successful careers are lying awake wondering whether their number is coming up before they’re ready.

Whether AI, a restructure, or a shifting market will cut their runway short before they’ve hit their super goal, cleared their mortgage, or got themselves thoroughly prepared.

It’s not an unreasonable fear. According to the ABS, in 2024-25 only one in three Australians retired because they actually chose to, reaching retirement age or becoming eligible for their super on their own terms.

Everyone else was pushed out by health, redundancy, caring responsibilities or circumstances well beyond their control. And that was before AI genuinely entered the workforce equation.

And there’s one thing we’re not telling ourselves loudly enough: it won’t just be one type of worker who feels this next wave. It will be anyone doing work that can be replicated faster, cheaper and more accurately by technology, and that cuts across every level of an organisation.

This article was published in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday 18th April 2026. Read the whole article here. Note - it has a sign-up gate but no paywall.

We spend so much time obsessing over our super, property and portfolios, but we often ignore our most valuable asset: our ability to earn.

Think about it… your career isn’t just a job - it’s an asset that needs constant reinvestment.

And yet, I see so many people with big, successful careers getting caught off guard by restructures, redundancies or shifts in the market, suddenly unemployed and underprepared for what comes next. So how do you protect your employability in midlife and beyond?

In this episode, I sit down with Jannine Fraser, who works right at the coalface helping people navigate career transitions when things go wrong. She’s the managing director of outplacement firm Directioneering, which means she’s the one helping people pick up the pieces and reshape what comes next.

This is an open honest conversation about what’s actually changing in the job market and what you can do now to stay relevant, ready and resilient.

LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE OF THE PODCAST HERE:

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Feature: Scientists have proven that ageing doesn’t have to mean decline

From Bec’s Desk: A quiet week

The Age and Sydney Morning Herald: How we invest our super is changing – and not necessarily for the better

Prime Time: The truth about financial advice with Paul Feeney

But first, an ad for our upcoming course…

Booked your place on the next Epic Retirement Flagship Course yet?

Our next program kicks off on 14 May, and our Earlybird deal (25% off) is now open—but places are limited.

This is a six-week retirement education program designed to build your confidence and help you make sense of the many decisions ahead.

Learn more about the course here ➡️

Scientists have proven that ageing doesn’t have to mean decline

I’m going to ask you to set aside everything you think you know about getting older for a minute. Because a study has just been published in the the journal Geriatrics, from Yale, one of the world’s most respected research institutions, that has basically torn up the standard story about ageing. And I think it deserves way more attention than it’s getting.

Here’s the headline finding: nearly half of the older adults in the study actually improved in brain function, physical capacity, or both, over a period of up to 12 years.

Not “saw their health decline more slowly” and not “held steady as they got older!” They IMPROVED!

Just soak in that for a second!

The stories of getting old we tell ourselves become our reality

We have been marinated, from childhood, from every insurance ad, from every well-meaning doctor’s appointment, in a single story about ageing. That it goes one way - downhill, in a gradual and inevitable way, universally.

And, that story has been shaping your biology all throughout your life. But now, you could choose a different story to shape yourself around. One that has scientific backing!

The Yale researchers, led by Dr Becca Levy, followed more than 11,000 people aged 65 and over for up to 12 years. When they averaged everyone’s results together, which is how most ageing studies work, they saw what you’d expect – Decline. Cognitive scores dropped and walking speed slowed.

But then they did something different. They looked at individual trajectories instead of group averages. And that’s where things got interesting.

Nearly 45% showed improvement in cognitive function, physical function, or both. Around 32% actually improved their brain scores. Around 28% were walking faster at the end of the study than they were at the start.

So what made the difference?

Here’s the part that will either make you nod and smile or make you a little uncomfortable.

The researchers tested whether what people believed about ageing – the assumptions they brought into the study – predicted what actually happened to their health over the following decade.

And it did! Significantly.

People who held more positive beliefs about ageing were measurably more likely to show improvements in both brain function and walking speed, even after you account for age, sex, education, chronic disease and depression.

Your beliefs about ageing appear to be a biological input into how your body responds. Not just a mood or attitude. Something that’s actually shaping what happens inside your body over time.

Dr Levy has a name for this: ‘stereotype embodiment theory’. The idea is that from a young age, we absorb messages about what ageing looks like from ads, media, culture, the casual way people talk about getting old. Eventually those messages stop being abstract and become deeply personal. They shift from describing other people to describing you. And at that point, they start showing up in the body.

Her earlier research linked negative age beliefs to poorer memory, slower walking speed, higher cardiovascular risk, and brain markers associated with Alzheimer’s disease. This new study adds the other side of that coin: positive age beliefs predict improvement.

I find this extraordinarily exciting.

Something important to think about

I want to flag something specific in this research that I think it’s the most important part. The researchers didn’t just look at people who were struggling and got better. They did a separate analysis on people who had normal cognitive and physical function at the start – people who were already doing fine.

Among that group? Around 28% still improved their brain function over time. Around 23% improved their walking speed.

This wasn’t recovery from illness. This was people who were already healthy getting better as they got older

The researchers call it “reserve capacity.” The idea that later life holds more potential for growth than our culture has been giving it credit for. I’ve been saying this for years, and honestly it’s kind of wonderful to see Yale prove it.

So, what do you actually believe about getting older?

I ask this genuinely because I want you to stop and think about it.

If you’ve absorbed the standard cultural story (decline is inevitable, the body just fades, the brain slips, the best years of your life are behind you), that story may be doing you real harm. Not just to your mood or your motivation. Potentially to your actual health trajectory.

The good news and I want to be clear this is genuinely good news is that the researchers say age-related beliefs are modifiable. You can change them. And because you can change them, there’s real scope for doing something about it.

That might look like this:

• Noticing the internal voice that says well, at my age... and asking whether it’s actually true

• Deliberately seeking out people who are thriving – not just surviving – in their 60s, 70s, 80s

• Pushing back when the cultural narrative around you defaults to telling you about your imminent decline

And let me be clear. None of this is about toxic positivity or pretending the challenges that come with getting older don’t exist. They do – ageing is real. But the research is telling us that the trajectory into later life is far less fixed than we’ve been led to believe – and that what we expect from life has a measurable effect on what we experience.

Maybe, if you already believe you’ll have an epic retirement, then you’re on the right path.

So here’s my challenge for you this week: Think about one story you’re telling yourself about ageing that might not actually be serving you? It might be time to rewrite it.

Source: Levy, B.R. & Slade, M.D. (2026). “Aging Redefined: Cognitive and Physical Improvement with Positive Age Beliefs.” Geriatrics, 11(2), 28.

Want to read more, I have two books - How to Have an Epic Retirement and if you’re not ready for retirement, Prime Time: 27 Lessons for the New Midlife.

I realise every day, whether I’m walking downstairs to my little home office or driving to the airport for a speaking gig, that I’m a very lucky person to love what I do so much.

This week was a full week at the desk. Articles, podcasts, newsletters, courses. No events, no travel, no distractions. I got a lot done, but it also means there’s not a huge amount to report from the road. Next week makes up for it though: Adelaide and Tassie, here I come.

On the content front, the government dropped an important consultation this week on how they plan to change the rules around financial advice – specifically around how people can pay for advice when they’re thinking about switching super funds. I wrote about it in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, so check that out if it’s relevant to your situation.

My podcast this week was a good one too. I sat down with Paul Feeney from Otivo to dig into the real challenges people face trying to get financial advice today – it’s a conversation a lot of you will relate to.

And if you haven’t caught my recent reels on social media, I’ve been doing a lot of short micro-lessons breaking down how to navigate retirement step by step. Worth a follow if you’re not already across them — link below.

• Facebook.com/becwilsonepic

• Instagram.com/epicretirement

Finally, it’s been a huge week of sales for the next 6-week course which kicks off on 14 May. The 25% Earlybird offer is available for the first 200 people to book but we’re already over 150 booked as I write this Friday afternoon! So don’t delay!

👉🏻 You can book your place here

👉🏻 Or learn more and download a brochure.

Now, have a lovely Sunday. The real, post-Easter year starts next week. I hope you’re ready!

Until next week — make it epic.

Cheers, Bec xx

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

How we invest our super is changing – and not necessarily for the better

When it comes to managing your super, especially as you get closer to retirement, you really have two broad paths to choose from. I find it helps to think of them like two different ways of eating out.

The first is a well-run large scale mass-market restaurant with a carefully standardised menu. Think of your big industry or retail super fund as exactly that. In these, big professional investment teams do the cooking.

The menu has been curated tightly, the ingredients vetted for cost and importance, and the whole thing runs at scale for millions of members. Your job is to pick what suits you from what’s on the menu, using the waiter’s help.

For most Australians building their retirement savings over a working life, this is a genuinely good option. Reliable, cost-effective, and much more sophisticated than it used to be.

The second suits people with more complex needs. Think of it as hiring a professional chef who shops at a premium wholesale supermarket on your behalf and tailors your meal plan. The chef is your financial adviser, and the supermarket is an investment platform, one that ordinary consumers can’t just walk into.

But here’s what most people don’t realise: many of these chefs work inside what are effectively chain restaurants. The franchise has already decided which products they allow their chefs to use from the supermarket and which dishes are on the approved menu.

While we are debating how to stop people being exploited when they seek advice, we have paused the reforms that would have made it that advice easier to find.

Your chef personalises your experience within that framework, and they genuinely can do a great deal for you within it. But by the time your meal arrives, quite a few hands have shaped what was possible.

This article was published in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday11th April 2026. Read the whole article here. Note - it has a sign-up gate but no paywall.

One of the biggest challenges I see for people in Prime Time isn’t a lack of money. It’s a lack of clear, trustworthy guidance.

People know they’re making big decisions. They know the stakes are high. But full financial advice can feel expensive or intimidating. Free information often comes with hidden incentives. And online tools, including AI, can leave you feeling more overwhelmed, not less - or with more questions to answer.

So, this week on Prime Time, I chat to Paul Feeney, founder and CEO of Otivo and someone who has spent years inside the advice industry in a variety of roles. It’s a refreshingly honest take on where it works, where it falls short, and what everyday Australians can do about it. The reality is that quality personalised advice has historically been more accessible to people with significant assets, leaving many everyday Australians without affordable guidance at the very moment they need it most.

We dig into the real difference between information, guidance and advice, because these words get thrown around a lot and they don’t mean the same thing. Information educates, guidance helps, and regulated advice is personalised to your exact situation.

And he’s offered everyone listening an opportunity to try out Otivo. To set up a free Otivo account you can go to www.otivo.com and use the discount code ‘Otivo4EpicRetirementor’. This coupon is only valid until 30 June 2026.

LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE OF THE PODCAST HERE:

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Feature: The ages every pre-retiree should know

From Bec’s Desk: Read the feedback!

The Age and Sydney Morning Herald: Thinking about helping your adult kids?

Prime Time: Two shows: A guide to downsizing from your family home; and Kathy Lette on the power of ‘I don’t give a shit lit’

Booked your place on the next Epic Retirement Flagship Course yet?

Our next program kicks off on 14 May, and our Earlybird deal (25% off) is now open—but places are limited.

This is a six-week retirement education program designed to build your confidence and help you make sense of the many decisions ahead.

If you’re starting to think seriously about what comes next, this is the perfect way to get prepared.

Learn more about the course here ➡️

The ages every pre-retiree should know

One of the most searched questions around retirement is simple: when can I retire?

But the real answer isn’t one age. It’s a series of ages, and each one opens up a different set of options.

What I see all the time is people anchoring to one number. Usually 60, 65 or 67, as if that’s when everything suddenly changes and the finish line appears. But the people who navigate this well don’t wait for one moment. They understand how the system works across time and use it to shape their transition.

If you’re looking towards retirement, these are the ages that actually matter.

First, there’s 55. This is when the downsizer contribution becomes available. If you’ve owned your home for ten years and lived in it for some of this time as your PPOR, you can contribute up to $300,000 per person into super from the sale of that home without it counting towards your contribution caps. It’s a powerful option if you’re thinking about moving to a lifestyle property or freeing up capital.

Then, at 60, the doors to super really start to open.

This is the age where you can access your super if you retire from a role and meet a condition of release, even if you later return to work. If you choose to keep working, you can also consider a transition to retirement income stream (TTR), which allows you to draw between 4% and 10% of your super balance each year.

From age 60, payments from super become tax-free. With a TTR, those payments are tax-free, although the earnings in the fund are still taxed until you fully retire and move into retirement phase.

Some people use a TTR to reduce their hours and ease out of full-time work while maintaining an income. For many, this is the first time work starts to feel more like a choice than a necessity.

Age 60 is also where the tax system begins to work in your favour. Once you’ve met a condition of release and moved your super into retirement phase, the income your super earns and any capital gains become tax-free. Withdrawals are also tax-free.

That’s a big shift. It opens up the ability to combine part-time work with tax-free income from super, and to make lump sum withdrawals when needed. For many people, this is the point where they can start reshaping how they work and live.

At 65, things become simpler again. Turning 65 is itself a condition of release, which means you can access your super regardless of whether you’re working. The focus shifts from eligibility to strategy, and how you structure your income and investments becomes the priority.

Then there’s age 67, which is when most people become eligible for the Age Pension.

This is the age everyone knows, but it’s often given more weight than it deserves. The Age Pension is an important safety net, but it’s not the whole plan. For those with lower balances, the focus is on how the Age Pension and super work together. For others, it plays more of a supporting role.

And then there’s age 75, which tends to fly under the radar.

At 75, a number of contribution opportunities come to an end. You generally can’t make non-concessional contributions anymore, and the bring-forward rule is no longer available. Most voluntary contributions, other than employer contributions, effectively stop at this point, with contributions only allowed up to 28 days after the end of the month you turn 75. One of the few contributions still available beyond this is the downsizer contribution.

This matters because the years leading up to 75 can be some of the most valuable for shaping your financial position. It’s often the window where people consider strategies like recontribution to reduce the taxable component of their super and improve outcomes for their beneficiaries. Miss that window, and you lose flexibility.

When you step back and look at all of this, the idea of a single retirement age doesn’t really hold up.

Retirement isn’t a switch you flick at 60 or 65. It’s a transition that unfolds over a number of years. The real opportunity is in how you use that time — easing back rather than stopping suddenly, starting to draw on your super while you’re still working, and making deliberate decisions about how you want your time and energy to be spent.

The people who get the most out of this stage aren’t waiting for a date. They’re using these ages as guideposts and adjusting along the way.

Want to read more, I have two books - How to Have an Epic Retirement and if you’re not ready for retirement, Prime Time: 27 Lessons for the New Midlife.

Happy Easter! I hope the bunny has delivered a few eggs to your house this morning.

Hard to believe it’s April, isn’t it? And fuel prices are the biggest conversation of the week (and possibly for many months in the future). Gulp. I almost don’t want to admit I’m a Tesla owner at times like this. My car, a bottom-of-the-range Model 3, is no ego-wagon. It’s seven years old, white, and has cost me a grand total of $400 in servicing over its lifetime, and one set of tyres. So it’s quietly holding up its end of a bargain I didn’t know I was making. How’s yours going?

Anyway, onto more serious things. This week was deliciously short. I keynoted two Adviser events for AMP North, one in Brisbane and one on the Gold Coast, which were both fantastic.

It also marked week 6, the final week of our Autumn How to Have an Epic Retirement Flagship Course. We held our last live session with Fiona Dalton on how to get the most out of travel, which is always a crowd favourite.

And in the HESTA Exclusive Epic Retirement Course, we wrapped up with Tania Phillips from CareAbout, who walked us through how to plan for care and how the system actually works. Such an important topic, and one most people don’t feel confident about until they’ve had it explained properly.

I genuinely love running these courses and being part of the live sessions. And I’m thrilled to say that the first round of finishers seem to be enjoying them just as much as I do. Here’s some fresh feedback that came in this week:

“I would consider this an essential course for everyone. I would recommend reading Prime Time and Epic Retirement, and unlike me at 62 years old and retired to do so earlier in life to be ready. Great coverage of lots of topics relevant to all of us. Thank you for the books and the course.”

“Feeling in a better place to handle everything now. Thank you”

“Terrific program. We loved the content and Bec’s delivery style is just so engaging. Highly recommend the course, and likewise Bec’s wonderful books “How to have and Epic Retirement” and “Prime Time”, and her podcast “Prime Time”.”

And one from the HESTA course too:

“This course has been very helpful. It has put the planning for retirement in to a structure I can follow and given me hope for an Epic Retirement. I was very anxious about my low super balance and nil savings, being divorced and having to do it all on my own. But now it feels doable. I can still do some of the travel overseas I have always dreamed of. Thanks for this opportunity to participate in this great course. Highly recommended to everyone over 50 years old.”

100% of people who finished so far said they’d recommend the course to their friends too! Honestly, what a buzz.

The next 6-week course kicks off on 14 May. It’s just opened for enrolments, and the 25% Earlybird offer is available for the first 200 people to book. We’re booking fast.

👉🏻 You can book your place here

👉🏻 Or learn more and download a brochure.

Now, that’s enough of the heavy stuff - it’s time for some chocolate.

Hope the bunny delivered, and that you’re having a lovely, family-or-friend-filled Easter. And there’s plenty of chocolate around you today.

Until next week — make it epic.

Cheers, Bec xx

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

Why a large super balance can actually reduce your retirement income

Young Australians are being locked out of the housing market, and if you’re a parent or grandparent watching it happen, it’s genuinely painful.

Home ownership for people in their 20s and 30s has been falling for years. Your children are buying later than you did, borrowing more than you ever considered, or giving up on the idea altogether, scared off by the size of the mortgage they’d have to sign on for. And, it doesn’t look like the system is going to fix this for them any time soon.

I’ve been having this conversation with my 22-year-old daughter. When you actually sit down and do the sums with them, what it costs to save a deposit in one of our capital cities, on a starting salary, with the life expenses that come with being young, it feels scary.

It’s not impossible. But it takes real discipline, real commitment, and increasingly, it depends on whether family support is sitting behind them to catch them if the economy gets tough or they lose their job.

The money exists in our economy to help. In fact, trillions of dollars will move between generations over the coming decades, from Australians in their late 80s and 90s to their children, who’ll be in their late 50s and 60s by then. By the time that inheritance lands, for many it will be too late to change very much.

This article was published in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday 4th April 2026. Read the whole article here. Note - it has a sign-up gate but no paywall.

A guide to downsizing from your family home

Downsizing the family home is one of those decisions that sits in the background for years…until suddenly, it’s right in front of you.

This week on Prime Time, I sit down with regular guest Mike Chesworth to talk about the good, the bad and the reality of downsizing after more than 30 years in the same home.

Big house. Kids grown. Life shifting. And like so many people in this stage of life, the question becomes… is it time?

In this episode, Mike shares what actually goes into making that decision, from figuring out your “why”, to navigating timing, finances, bridging loans, strata, inspections and the chaos of moving just before Christmas. Along the way, he reflects on what it means to future-proof life in your 60s, let go of the weight of a big home, and create a lifestyle that offers more freedom, flexibility, and ease.

Mike offers hard-won insights into choosing the right property, getting clear on your priorities, managing costs, and treating a move like a project rather than a challenge.

LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE OF THE PODCAST HERE:

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BOOK CLUB: The power of ‘I don’t give a sh*t lit!’ with Kathy Lette

It’s month two of the Prime Time Book Club, and this one is an absolute hoot.

This month we’re diving into The Sisterhood Rules by the one and only Kathy Lette - and yes, she’s back on the show with us for a proper book club sit-down… and the kind of girl talk we don’t have nearly enough of.

If you’ve ever read chick lit, chances are Kathy has been part of your life. From Puberty Blues to now, she’s been soundtracking the different stages of womanhood, and this latest book is firmly for us in midlife.

I’ve just finished it and I loved it. It’s sharp, funny, rebellious… and underneath all of that, it’s about something much deeper: what happens when women of a certain age stop playing by the rules and start leaning into the power of the sisterhood.

In this episode, we talk about everything from falling out with the women closest to you, to ageing, sex, reinvention… and why midlife might just be the moment you stop caring what anyone else thinks and start having a lot more fun.

You can find a copy of ‘The Sisterhood Rules’ at all good book retailers & online here.

LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE OF THE PODCAST HERE:

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Feature: Your first year of retirement: the biggest challenge might not be your money

From Bec’s Desk: I want your feedback on something

The Age and Sydney Morning Herald: ‘This mess is eating our super’: Why retirees are starting to get nervous

Prime Time: How AI will become part of the everyday lives of Prime Timers: with one of Australia’s leading futurists

Our next Epic Retirement Flagship Course is now on sale: Earlybird 25% off won’t last

We’ve launched the Winter Edition of the How to Have an Epic Retirement 6-Week Flagship Course this week. It kicks off on the 14th May.

• It’s a 6-week online program, that you can complete in your own time. (new content drips each week)

• There’s 6 live Q&As with some of the country’s leading experts in retirement

• A 170 page workbook professionally printed and mailed

• A signed copy of How to Have an Epic Retirement - the book

• The Excel budgeting tool

• And a whole heap of helpful quizzes

You can download a detailed brochure here to see what’s in store. And book your place. The first 200 people to book get our 25% off Earlybird Discount.

Find out more

Your first year of retirement: the biggest challenge might not be your money

Most people spend more time planning their retirement finances than they spend thinking about who they’ll actually be when they get there. That’s a problem, and it tends to show up about six months in.

Here’s the question I want you to sit with this week: if someone asked you to describe yourself at a dinner party the week after you retire, what would you say? For most of us, the answer has been the same for twenty or thirty years. You lead with what you do. Your job title, your industry, your company. It’s shorthand for competence, status and purpose all at once. And then one day, it’s just gone.

This isn’t a small thing. Research on retirement consistently shows that identity loss, not financial stress, is the most common cause of what people describe as a difficult first year. The people who struggle most aren’t usually the ones who ran out of money. They’re the ones who ran out of answer to the question: what do I do with myself now?

The good news is that this is entirely workable, but only if you start thinking about it before you get there, not after.

So here are three questions worth sitting with this week:

What do you do that has nothing to do with work? Not what you’d like to do in retirement, but what you actually do now, outside of your job. If the honest answer is not much, that’s important information. Retirement doesn’t conjure purpose out of thin air. It just removes the structure that was filling the space.

Who are you to the people who matter most to you? Your partner, your kids, your close friends. How do they describe you? What role do you play that has nothing to do with your career? That version of you is the foundation you’re building on.

What would you do on a Tuesday at 11am if you had no obligations and no agenda? Not a holiday Tuesday. A regular one. If you can’t answer that with something specific and genuine, it’s worth spending more time on that question than on your superannuation projections this week.

Retirement is long. For most people reading this, it’s twenty to thirty years. The financial plan gets you there. The identity work is what makes it worth arriving.

Start that work now. It’s more important than you think.

Bec Xx

I cover a lot more on this in both my books - How to Have an Epic Retirement and if you’re not ready for retirement, Prime Time: 27 Lessons for the New Midlife.

This week was a big one.

We launched the next How to Have an Epic Retirement Flagship Course, and the response has been fantastic. Truly fantastic. I have a strong feeling this will be our biggest course yet.

You can download a brochure here

Or book your place (the first 200 places get our Earlybird price which is 25% off rightnow)

There’s also been a lot of course updates happening behind the scenes. With new Age Pension caps, updated super contribution limits, and changes to deeming rates, I’ve been busy recording fresh content to make sure everything is up to date.

Make sure you listen to the podcast this week – it’s an absolute ripper. I’ve got one of Australia’s leading futurists on the show, Dr Catherine Ball, and she completely blew my mind. We talked about the kind of world Prime Timers and Epic Retirees are stepping into as AI starts to roll into everyday life and she did a lot of predicting the future - and WOW!

On top of that, I hit the road, starting in Canberra for the first of five weeks on the AMP North Adviser Roadshow as one of their keynote speakers. I’m talking about the future of retirement – a topic very close to my heart, and one I never get tired of exploring. Next week I’ll be hitting the Gold Coast and Brisbane events.

—

And finally, I’d love your thoughts on something.

I’ve started considering a new book concept with my daughter, Paris. It’s a real journey as she starts from scratch as a 22-year-old trying to get ahead. She’s learning to budget, understand super, building her savings, investing for the first time, riding bumpy markets, with the goal of working towards getting into the property market so that one day she might be able to afford a home of her own.

It’s tough out there.

And we’re very aware this is going to be a multi-step process — potentially starting with an affordable investment property before she’s in a position to buy a home to live in. (We’re at the ‘exploring her options and setting goals’ stage).

In fact, it’s a big financial literacy journey, and we’re only just at the beginning. She says her friends are interested in learning alongside her. So, I’m contemplating working with her to share the good lessons we learn, so others have a resource. (She’s also planning to start a TikTok channel so people her age can follow along, which I love.)

She’s at the centre of the story, and I’m more of a guide, helping her ask the right questions and, when we don’t know the answers or how to work it out, going out and finding them together by speaking to experts.

We’re learning a lot already… and honestly, it’s not an easy road. Working through the process with her has given me a whole new perspective on just how tough it is for young people trying to get into the property market without support.

While I’m very aware that I don’t want to shift my focus from midlife and retirement to young people. But, I do think we can create something quite useful here – a simple, practical resource that actually helps. And if you’re part of the industry, with your own kids this age and ‘get’ the problem - I’d genuinely love your input.

I’m really curious… is this something you’re navigating with your adult kids too? Or are yours already past this stage?

Now - thanks for humouring me. I’m going to be on the journey with my daughter anyway - so curious whether the lessons we learn can help others. If you have thoughts - drop me an email. Just hit reply!

Now - let’s get back to that epic retirement of yours - have an Epic Sunday and an amazing week. Don’t forget to book your course spot.

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

‘This mess is eating our super’: Why retirees are starting to get nervous

Four weeks on since the war in Iran started, and the financial pressure on retirees is real, and it’s coming from multiple directions at once.

I put the question out to the Epic Retirement community this week: how are you really faring? The responses came flooding in, and what struck me wasn’t panic. It was a level of pragmatism, tinged with genuine worry.

The big pain points for retirees and pre-retirees are different to the rest of the population, particularly if they were planning to stop work soon. If you’re still accumulating super, a market downturn is painful but recoverable.

If you’ve stopped working and are drawing down to fund your living expenses, selling assets while prices are depressed permanently impairs your balance in a way you can’t easily undo. Your income doesn’t rise with inflation. You can’t work extra hours to compensate for the money you’re spending at the fuel pump.

This article was published in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday 7th February 2026. Read the whole article here. Note - it has a sign-up gate but no paywall.

How AI will become part of the everyday lives of Prime Timers

Today on the show, I’ve got a real treat for you.

I’m talking to one of the world’s leading thinkers on the future of technology, robotics and artificial intelligence - and what that future might actually look like for us.

Dr Catherine Ball is a global expert in AI, robotics and emerging technologies. She’s worked across fields like drones, digital twins and automation, and has spent years advising governments, universities and industry on how these technologies are reshaping our world.

If you’re in mid-life or heading for retirement right now, the reality is that we’re going to see extraordinary technological change over the next 10, 20 and 30 years: AI. Robotics. Smart homes. Personalised healthcare. Maybe even robotic carers.

So what will that actually mean for us?

This is a fascinating conversation. And what I love about Catherine’s perspective is that she’s not just talking about technology for technology’s sake. She’s thinking deeply about how it changes how we live, how we age, and how we stay independent in the second half of life.

You can find out more about Catherine’s research here, and learn more about her latest book, ‘The Future of Sleep’ here.

LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE OF THE PODCAST HERE:

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Feature: What I’d actually do this weekend if I was 55 or 65 and the world felt a bit wobbly

From Bec’s Desk: Finishing early

The Age and Sydney Morning Herald: Why a large super balance can actually reduce your retirement income

Prime Time: Why FIBRE is your missing ingredient to longevity

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What I’d actually do this weekend if I was 55 or 65 and the world felt a bit wobbly

What a week. Oil hit $113 a barrel. The war in the Gulf is now in its fourth week and showing no signs of easing. Petrol prices are climbing and our grocery bills are going up again. The RBA raised rates which sounds scary until you realise it’s because nobody really knows what comes next and inflation matters here.

And if you’re in your 50s or 60s, things are feeling a little uncomfortable. You might not be panicking, necessarily, you just might have that low-level hum of worry sitting in your gut. The feeling that things you worked hard to build feel a little less certain than they did a month ago.

So let me talk to you like a friend this weekend. Because there are a few things worth doing and none of them are all that complicated.

First, take a breath and step back from the noise

Turn off the finance news for the weekend. Not because what’s happening doesn’t matter – it certainly does – but because none of the decisions you need to make right now will be improved by watching oil price tickers, hearing about the horrible fuel price or watching market updates scroll past.

The Gulf disruption, the inflation creep, the cost of living squeeze – these are all real. But they’re largely outside your control. What you can control is whether you respond thoughtfully or react out of fear. And that always starts with slowing down and really thinking things through.

Next, remind yourself what your actual timeline is

Here’s the question I’d ask you to sit with: “when do you actually need to draw on your investments for income?”

Not when you want to stop working. “When you’ll need the money to live on.

For a lot of people between 55 and 65, the honest answer is still five, eight, even ten or more years away. Markets have recovered from oil shocks before in 1973, 1990, 2008. They’ve come back from worse than this quite quickly. And, frankly, the Australian market isn’t really all that far from it’s highs right now. But acknowledging that, time is what gives your investments room to breathe.

If you’re already in drawdown, the question shifts a little bit, but the core of it is the same: do you have enough money in a more stable type of investment or is your superfund drawing from the lower risk part of your portfolio to avoid being forced into selling growth investments or shares while they’re low?

Check whether you have a buffer and be honest about it

This is the one I keep coming back to with people in this season of life.

Do you have two or three years of living expenses in something stable — a high-interest savings account, term deposits, cash or lower risk investments? Not in the sharemarket. Somewhere it just sits, keeping up with inflation ideally, but at the ready.

Because if you do, you can ride this out. You’re not forced to sell when the market is down. You have ‘choices’. That buffer isn’t dead money. It’s the thing that lets you stay calm while everyone else is pulling at their hair.

WHAT IF YOU DON’T HAVE A BUFFER RIGHT NOW

If you don’t have a buffer right now. I want to be straight with you here, because glossing over this doesn’t help anyone.

If you don’t have much set aside outside of super or your investments, this week probably felt harder than it needed to. And that’s worth acknowledging that, not as a reason to panic, but as useful information.

The question to sit with this weekend isn’t “how do I fix everything at once.” It’s simpler than that: what’s one thing I could do in the next 90 days to start building a little more breathing room?

Maybe it’s redirecting $200 a month into a savings account you don’t touch. Maybe it’s looking hard at where money is leaking out right now in your cash flow. Maybe it’s a conversation with a financial adviser or the advice team in your superfund, not to overhaul everything, just to get a clearer picture of where you actually stand. (And bear in mind when the market is down all of these people are booked ahead).

You can’t build a buffer overnight. But you can make a decision this weekend to start. That matters a lot more than people realise.

Have an honest look at your spending right now

With petrol up, groceries creeping higher and energy costs rising, your day-to-day spending has probably gone up without you even noticing. This isn’t about cutting back dramatically but it is about knowing where you stand.

Grab a coffee and spend half an hour with your last few months of bank statements. Just three questions:

• What am I actually spending each month right now?

• Has that crept up in the last three months?

• Is there anywhere I can claw back a bit of breathing room?

You’re not looking for perfection. You’re just looking for a clearer picture of your spending than you had on Friday.

Finally, think about what this stage of life is really asking of you

There’s a shift that happens for a lot of people somewhere in their 50s. It really does stop being about building alone, and starts being about protecting your assets as well – so at some point you can enjoy the life you want, make the choices you want to be able to, and feel the ense of ssecurity that lets you sleep at night.

In that context, another week of volatile markets and geopolitical noise shouldn’t be a crisis. It should be a prompt. A reminder to check in on whether your setup actually gives you flexibility and the ability to make good choices rather than being forced into bad ones.

That’s what this weekend is for. Calmly reassessing where you are, and taking control of where you want to be.

The war in the Gulf is certainly looking serious. The oil price is really high and the cost of living pressure that might come from this could be even more difficult. And none of us like looking at the price of petrol or the rise in interest rates coming through, especially if you’re already feeling stretched.

But the people who come through these periods best aren’t the ones who predicted it all or moved everything to cash in February (because they never know when to get back in). They’re the ones who had a plan they trusted, a buffer they could lean on, and the discipline not to let the noise and fear make their decisions for them.

If you’ve got the buffer then great, sit tight and trust the plan.

If you don’t, this is your weekend to decide to start building one. That decision, made over a coffee on a Saturday morning, is worth using your weekend’s spare time on.

You’ve got this. And I’ll be here with you through it all.

Bec x

Want to read more, I have two books - How to Have an Epic Retirement and if you’re not ready for retirement, Prime Time: 27 Lessons for the New Midlife.

This week I’m headed off for a local weekend away… and it’s a big one.

It’s my last ever school mums’ weekend. My youngest is in Year 12 this year, so this feels like a bit of a rite of passage for me too. I’m wrapping things up early on Friday (much earlier than I’d usually send this newsletter!) and heading to the Gold Coast for what looks like a rainy weekend of wining, dining, meditation, yoga… and celebrating with a group of women I’ve shared years of life with.

I have to admit, I’m feeling a little unsettled about what life looks like when these structures fall away. If you’re ahead of me on this path, I’d really love your advice.

On the work front, it’s been a big week.

The poddy this week was on Fibre, and for a gal that’s eating protein like it’s the only ingredient left on this earth, I found this important and timely. The role fibre plays in our health is important in so many ways - and Joanna really brought that to life. Hve a listen.

This week, we recorded the UK course in my studio. Still can’t quite believe I’m saying that. We’ll be running the Australian and UK programs side by side, just on opposite time zones. It feels like a real “pinch me” moment.

We’ve also locked in all the speakers and details for the next How to Have an Epic Retirement Flagship Course here in Australia. The Winter edition kicks off on 14 May, and we’ll be launching the earlybird offer next week. If you want first access, you can register your interest.

Inside the Autumn edition of Epic Retirement Course this week, we had a brilliant live Q&A with David Lane, Senior Financial Adviser and State Manager at Ord Minnett. He’s deep in platforms, SMSFs, equities and investing, so we threw some proper curveballs at him. The questions from this community are always next level.

Next week, we’re diving into purpose. One of my favourite topics.

And in the week ahead, I’m off to Canberra to speak at the North 26 Adviser Roadshow on the Future of Retirement – the first of nine events around the country. I’ll be talking about what everyday people actually want and need from advice today, and how retirement has fundamentally changed.

Until next week — make it epic.

Cheers,
Bec xx

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

Why a large super balance can actually reduce your retirement income

People with low to medium super balances often feel like they’re on the outer when it comes to retirement. They look at people with $1 million or more in super and assume those are the people who get to enjoy the ‘epic’ version of retirement, while everyone else just scrapes by.

But that is not how the Australian retirement system actually works.

One of the quirks of the system is that there is a sweet spot where super and the age pension combine very efficiently. In some cases, someone with a moderate level of savings can end up with almost the same income, or even more income, than someone with much higher savings, simply because they still qualify for a far more meaningful slice of the pension.

That sweet spot has shifted again from March 20 because the age pension goes up. And we are not only seeing the standard indexation of the caps, we are also seeing our second rise to the deeming rate in a year.

This article was published in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday 21st March 2026. Read the whole article here. Note - it has a sign-up gate but no paywall.

Why FIBRE is your missing ingredient to longevity

Today I want to talk about something that doesn’t get a lot of airtime, but is becoming increasingly important for your health in the second half of life…

Fibre.

For years it’s been overshadowed by protein trends, low-carb diets and the obsession with calories. But new science is revealing that fibre may be one of the most powerful ingredients for long-term health, influencing everything from gut health and weight to brain function, heart health and even our mood.

So, this week on Prime Time, I’m joined by PhD-qualified nutrition scientist, dietitian, food futurist and one of Australia’s most trusted health experts, Dr. Joanna McMillan, author of The Fibre Factor. You can find Dr. Joanna’s book at all good retailers and online here.

We unpack why many of us are living in what she calls a “fibre famine”, what fibre actually does inside the body, and how simple changes to what you eat can have surprisingly powerful effects on your long-term health.

LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE OF THE PODCAST HERE:

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