Articles

Realise Your Dream

The Realise Your Dream blogs are written by Peter Kelly and Mark Teale.

Peter provides technical advice to financial advisers and accountants on superannuation, retirement planning and estate planning. He also has extensive knowledge in all aspects of self-managed superannuation funds and is a regular presenter at conferences, seminars and workshops. He is Manager; Technical Advice with Centrepoint Alliance Limited.

Mark has a great deal of experience, having worked for the Department of Social Security and Centrelink as a Financial Information Service Officer and Regional Manager for close to 25 years and for the last 15 years, he has worked for Centrepoint Alliance as Research, Paraplanning and Product Manager. He now works alongside PK as a Manager; Technical Advice part of the Centrepoint Technical team.

Naturally, his specialties lay in the areas of Aged Care, Centrelink and Veteran's Affairs and pushing people to realise that you are never too old to set yourself a challenge yourself.

18 September, 2019

When is the best time to start planning for retirement?

Hardly a day goes by without either Mark or me receiving a call from a financial adviser who has a client on the threshold of retirement. Often the inquiry we receive goes something like this – “I am working with a client that has come to see me about their retirement....

11 September, 2019

My two cents to stay Motivated!

Motivation – according to the Oxford dictionary it is a reason or reasons for acting or behaving in a particular way or more importantly a desire or willingness to do something; enthusiasm. Motivation is very important, it is the driver that gets me out of bed in the morning, go...

04 September, 2019

Lost and Found – Where is your super?

The Australian Taxation Office ATO) administers lost and unclaimed superannuation. As of 30 June 2018, the ATO were sitting on around $17.5 billion of lost and unclaimed superannuation. When a member of a superannuation fund becomes “lost”, or their super benefits are “unclaimed”, the money is transferred to the ATO....

28 August, 2019

Commonwealth Seniors Health Card – Am I eligible?

We are aware that for a person to be eligible for the age pension, their assets and income need to be below the relevant thresholds and of course they need to reach the required age. I often talk to people who enquire about their entitlement to the age pension, who...

21 August, 2019

What’s happening to your super?

It has now been some months since the Coalition was returned to Government following the May Federal Election so perhaps it is timely to have a closer look at what has been happening to our super in Canberra’s corridors of power. A significant amount of superannuation legislation had been tabled...

13 August, 2019

Age Pension Update - July 2019

On the 1st of July the age pension asset and income thresholds increased, in addition to the increase in these thresholds the levels at which the deeming rates of interest are applied also increased. Two weeks after this date the government announced that the deeming interest rates would be reduced. The...