Retirement affordability?

We had all better prepare for the times when our
income stops. We need to plan for where we're going
to live, how we are going to travel, where medical
and other services are accessible (and how we're
going to pay for them). How we're going to cope with
any physical disabilities. In other words planning
our own future where we don't rely on other people
to bail us out in times of difficulty is crucial.

People who don't plan are either selfish or not prepared
to save thinking - "she'll be right." Someone will bail
them out.
But often that just doesn't happen.

Rent a bedroom? To whom, the town bike, town drunk, neighborhood drug dealer, or an antisocial psychotic?

The last time I lived in shared accommodation was the last time I lived in shared accommodation! And as an early riser starting work at 4am, did not appreciate the drunken debauchery of next door neighbor in an adjoining room nor the guitar and loud raucous singing that only ceased at 2-3am!

I've scratched saved and sacrificed for thirty some years to own my own home! And because I understand arriving at retirement at the mercy of landlords is a virtual guarantee of poverty, but particularly for women!

I value my independence and freedom! Renting a room could see my humble hovel reduced to little more than a halfway-house for former inmates, and although everyone deserves a second chance, not inside a trashed home I've worked and sacrificed decades for!

Unlike some folk, didn't inherit it from somebody else.

It'd be great to be able bodied and paid a handsome retainer for fostering your own grandkids. And have a garden and chooks to help with that?

But a very different kettle of fish for an elderly pensioner, in say Sydney, where family and friends reside and where the cost of a single bedsit can be more than a single pension!

I'm tired of listening to an old self opinionated, derisory know it all, who needs to walk a mile or two in other folks shoes before rushing to judgement or unsolicited condemnation!
Alan B.

What utter rot. I have been retired now for 12 years, living a very enjoyable life on the pension. I don't have much money, but retired with a lot of stuff. My home, cars, tools, equipment & machinery, enough for my requirements. Much of it is old, & a bit tired, like me, but also like me, it works. With this buffer I am covered for the first 20 years of retirement at least.

I look on it as my camels hump. With the hump filled with everything you really need, you can cross a lot of deserts, before you have to fill up again.

Unless you are a bureaucrat, with our incredibly generous bureaucrats pension, the most important thing for a comfortable retirement is to own your own home. If you can't do that in a capital city, move to somewhere cheap. Places like Lithgow, or Jandowae offer great places to retire, at a budget house price.

Town councils with their ridiculous rate increases, tipple inflation or more are trying to ruin it, but we will win.

Retirees need to totally ignore the advice of all the financial hawks, out to rip a fortune off them. Get that little bit of real estate to call home, free & clear, & the rest is not too hard.

Good to see that there are still people who will not be brow-beaten by the likes of Ross Elliott into thinking that they are hard up. What a miserable, existence Ross must have, too concerned with money to be happy.

The baby boomer bubble, on which most current grey-tsunami fears are based (and distorted) - will have subsided by 2030.

The long-term concern is to reform the superannuation system. We need to get rid of the current income-linked government subsidy, which only benefits the permanently employed rich, who do not need government assistance to fund their retirement. The considerable savings generated can then be used to pull those currently outside the superannuation system - non-permanent employees, carers, self-employed, long-term unemployed and low wage earners - into a pension fund to assist their retirement. The latter would be based on the tax returns of those whose incomes are below a certain minimum level.

In addition, there is no government policy or political will to recognise catastrophic events that greatly reduce a person's ability to fund their retirement, despite their efforts over the best part of 40 years to play by the rules. Among these are bankruptcy and finding oneself unemployed at an age at which ageism renders them no longer employable - but because the minimum age-pension requirement is being continually raised, they are forced to live off their savings.

I continue to be baffled and amazed at the complete political indifference shown those who fall through the comfortable retirement cracks - but then again, I do, because politicians live in a totally separate retirement universe. Instead, government policy is to simply focus on rearranging the deck chairs on the sinking ship of a grossly unequal superannuation system.

Frankly, I'd prefer a return to the former system before compulsory superannuation. It was much more efficient, all-inclusive and much less costly to the taxpayer purse. But, of course, that system did not provide the finance industry with the enormous cash cow that it currently enjoys.

Incompetent Governance of Australia, lies at the bottom of this problem. To this problem there is no solution outside of revolt and revolution....Won't happen.

It is in the best interest of the wealthy to have the poor paying rent and living in unaffordable accommodation. The poor create wealth!

What is needed then, is a large base of the poor. Changing nothing will ensure this, and is the more likely scenario to occur with Government policy.