Retirement Planning & Experiences

[Pushka]

Updating wills is very important , our wills were well organised at the time but no longer meet our needs.
The situation of our children has evolved and the feds keep changing the rules so we are waiting for it all to settle.

Found out son and DIL didn't have wills. Two kids. Mortgage yada yada. That was last week. This week son has acted and this will happen next week. They are now divorced so have suggested he gently (shoves) his ex to getting hers done. She's very clever and incredible financial management. But pulls out stuff like this. We are his Executors until we reach a stage where we can't be. But if we can make it to grandkids adulthood then it's much easier.

 

[Pushka]

Another big vote on getting financial advice. MrsK and I paid for it in 2016 to check predictions on when I could hope to retire. We are a 'special' case, as MrsK is in the PSS scheme, while I had my own SMSF, and we're both second-timers, starting from scratch etc. In late 2019 we had the financial advice updated as MrsK was going through a horrendous time at work, and it came back that she could retire then, moving to a PSS pension payment without any impact, and me when I turned 67.

We then engaged another financial planning company in Canberra, as suggested by a friend who is the grumpiest person I know, so I thought if he thought well of them that was a good recommendation. After meeting with them twice to understand what they could do, their advice and fees, level of comfort on how well they engaged with us, we signed up with them. We started the transition to me fully retiring at the end of last year, so we had six months to pay off the remaining mortgage, payments from my SMSF account, into another account and back to reduce liabilities around estate tax etc. They understand all of the ins and outs of super, taxation, age pensions, which is invaluable. I then retired at end of June.

We also updated our wills, and have our oldest children set up as our joint executors.

MrP is supposed to be retired by now. But he just keeps winning work that he's etremely interested in. He knocks back a lot as well. Well over retirement age . But keeps him out of my hair