Conversations you should have about retirement over the Christmas season
And in this weekend's newspapers 'Learning how to use the Epic Retirement Tick the way it was designed'
In this edition
Feature: Learning how to use the Epic Retirement Tick the way it was designed
From Bec’s Desk: Week three of Epic Retirement Month
SMH/TheAge: Conversations to have about retirement over the Christmas season
Prime Time: Two shows: The Epic Retirement Tick: What’s changed and Introducing, the new edition of How to Have an Epic Retirement
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Learning how to use the Epic Retirement Tick the way it was designed
Now that the dust has settled on the Epic Retirement Tick and the excitement has eased into real curiosity, I’ve noticed the same question popping up everywhere: How am I actually meant to use the Epic Retirement Tick to assess my fund?
It’s a great question. And now is the perfect time to answer it properly, because the Tick was never designed to be a trophy or a “best fund” award. It’s a retirement-quality service assessment — developed in partnership with leading superannuation research house, Chantwest — and it sits on top of a very clear framework that tells you whether a fund is genuinely set up to support you in retirement, not just during your working years.
When we launched the Tick back in early October, there was a wave of media coverage, a lot of healthy discussion, and, pleasingly, broad agreement that the criteria we’re using are the right ones. Almost everyone accepted that the industry needs to lift its game in the retirement phase.
In fact, many of the funds that didn’t receive the Tick reached out straight away and asked to be reviewed against the criteria again. Ian Fryer from Chantwest met with each of them, walked them through their assessment in detail, and, to their credit, every fund acknowledged the areas where they need to improve. We were hoping some would move quickly and close the gaps before our late-November review deadline for 2025 eligibility. A few came close — genuinely close — but not close enough for us to add them this year.
So today, just six funds receive the Epic Retirement Tick.
This tells us two things: first, the bar is appropriately high. And second, the industry still has a long way to go before most Australians can feel genuinely supported in the retirement phase.
Because this is the first time we’ve had a single benchmark for retirement-phase quality, I’ve put a short video lesson on the website explaining how the Tick works and how to use it. It comes straight from the Epic Retirement Course, and it walks you through the criteria in a very practical, no-nonsense way. If you’re curious about how to use it, go and watch that — it’s now unlocked and on the Epic Retirement Tick page.
Here’s the quick overview.
The Tick is built around six big areas: whether the fund has retirement-ready investment options, whether it offers strong income-stream products, the quality of its drawdown support, the usefulness and clarity of its education, the accessibility of advice, and the lived experience retirees have when they try to use the fund. These aren’t vague ideas. They’re 18 clear, assessed criteria that Chantwest scores against.
When a fund earns the Tick, it means it has met a genuinely high standard across all six areas. That’s the baseline.
So how do you use it? You use the Tick to understand the foundation of your fund’s retirement offering, and then use the underlying criteria as a lens to assess which of the criteria are important to you and whether you think your fund is keeping up enough. It doesn’t tell you to switch funds. It doesn’t tell you that a fund is “good” or “bad”. What it gives you is a structured way to check whether your fund is actually built for the 25–35-year phase of life where you’ll be drawing down your money and making the financial decisions that matter most.
Some people will look at the Tick and feel reassured. Others will find a few questions they want to take back to their fund. And that’s exactly the point. The aim here is to help you ask for clarity, not to drive panic. Super is a long term investment - you want to make considered choices.
If you want the full explanation, not just the headlines, but how the Tick fits into your actual retirement planning — the video lesson on the website is the best place to start. It’s short, practical, and it makes all of this feel a lot more manageable.
Week two of Epic Retirement Month is now behind us, and so is my last work trip for the year. Phew. It’s been genuinely lovely to spend most of the week tucked away in my home office making lessons, articles, and reels for Epic Retirement Month.
We kicked things off with our Week 3 session of the How to Have an Epic Retirement Flagship Course, with the wonderful David Lane joining us for the live Q&A. Then it was off to Sydney early Tuesday morning to present to the Aware Super board about the Epic Retirement Tick. As I said, that was the final work trip for the year. It felt very good to land back home knowing I can go just a little bit slower as we head into the end of 2025.
But we’re not winding down just yet.
In the week ahead we launch the UK hardcover edition of How to Have an Epic Retirement (yes - in the UK!). I’ve completely rewritten the book and we have a top-tier UK publisher taking it to market! It lands on Thursday 11 December. EEEK
So then we will have released THREE books in 2025!
Next Tuesday is the Brighter Super Retirement Event, and more than 1,000 people have already registered. How exciting is that? If you’re a Brighter Super member and haven’t spotted it in your emails, go and have a look.
And before the year wraps up, we’ll be opening registrations for the next How to Have an Epic Retirement Flagship Course, kicking off in February. If you want to pop your name down early as an expression of interest, you can do that here.
The HESTA Epic Retirement Course will also run again in February. If you’re a HESTA member, you can register your interest through their website — it’s exclusively for HESTA members.
If you haven’t grabbed the Epic Retirement Starter kit yet, this is a great moment. We’re now into Week Three of Epic Retirement Month, and the toolkit is designed to give you a simple, practical foundation for everything we’re covering. It’s free, it’s easy to read, and it’s on the website waiting for you.
And don’t forget - I’ve really stepped up my game on Facebook and Instagram. Come along and learn with me.
Facebook: facebook.com/becwilsonepic
Insta: instagram.com/epicretirement
Have a lovely Sunday!
Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker
Extract of of my weekly column in The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, Brisbane Times, WA Today.
The big conversations about retirement that you need to have over Christmas
My final Sydney Morning Herald and The Age column for the year is out this weekend... And it’s some instructions for you - whether you’re ready to talk about retirement or not. (And I’m not publishing an extract this week - just click through and read it all! It’s not behind a paywall.)
Christmas and the weeks around it are one of the only times of year when life slows down enough to have the conversations that actually shape (and allow you to negotiate) your retirement vision for the future.
And I don’t mean the spreadsheets or the forms.
Or even the “how much do I need?” panic.
This is about real conversations.
About how you want to live.
How you want to work.
Where you want to be.
And who is bloody important to be near and prioritise
My latest column breaks down the exact conversations worth having over Christmas - in order - the ones that make the financial work so much easier later. From talking timing and lifestyle, to facing the realities of ageing parents, nearly-adult kids, your future work life, and yes… your home and your money.
If you want to start 2026 with a clearer head and a stronger sense of where you’re heading and what you need to do, this is the nudge you need. Have a read, have a chat, and let Christmas do what it does best: give you space to think about your life.
And thank you for a wonderful year of column-reading!
This article is published in The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, Brisbane Times and WA Today. It is free to read - you may have to sign up, but there’s no paywall on my articles.
This week, as part of Epic Retirement Month, we’ve dropped not one but two shows for you.
First up, we’re taking a fresh look at the Epic Retirement Tick ten weeks on and talking about how the industry reacted, what shifted and how you should evaluate your fund now that the dust has settled. More on this show below.
The second episode is a conversation with my publisher about the brand-new edition of How to Have an Epic Retirement, which hits stores this week. We dive into the updates, why they matter, and what’s new for readers. More on this show here
As part of Epic Retirement Month, I’ve invited Ian Fryer from Chant West back to the show to unpack how the industry reacted when we launched the tick; and then we walk through how to evaluate your super fund as you head toward retirement — using the same behind-the-scenes criteria that helped us build the Epic Retirement Tick in the first place.
The six-area framework for the Tick (investment options, income streams, drawdown support, education, advice access, lived experience) fills a gap that's been obvious for years but nobody systematized properly. Using Christmas as the trigger for those non-financial retirement conversations is tactical, since most people avoid these topics until they're forced into decisions under presure. The timing question (when to retire) genuinly needs to come before the money question, otherwise you're optimizing for the wrong target.