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.

29 April, 2020

What is the cost of withdrawing your super early?

Some weeks ago, I wrote about changes to superannuation laws that will allow people to access up to $20,000 from super, spread over the 2019-20 and 2020-21 financial years, to help meet the financial challenges resulting from the Coronavirus pandemic. You can access the article here. People could lodge their application...

15 April, 2020

What does Coronavirus mean for my retirement savings?

If we look back over the past 30 years or so, there have been a number of occasions when the sharemarket has taken a tumble resulting in the retirement savings of many Australians looking rather shabby, at least for a while. The more notable events in recent times include Black...

08 April, 2020

What a difference a month makes...

As a regular reader you would know that at the end of February my partner and I flew to Sydney to pick up our beautiful campervan. Our plans were simple; we would continue to work and use our van to travel as often as we could get away. We had...

03 April, 2020

Coronavirus - early access to superannuation

One of the measures announced by the Government to help people affected by the current economic downturn resulting from the Coronavirus pandemic is to allow the early access to superannuation benefits. In the main, superannuation benefits are preserved. That is, they cannot be accessed until a condition of release have...

18 March, 2020

Age Pension - good news and some bad!

On the 20th of March, all age pensioners will receive a small increase in their pension payments. Please note this has nothing to do with the Government’s stimulus package in response to the Coronavirus. On the 20th of March and September every year the age pension is adjusted, based on...

12 March, 2020

If it wasn't so serious, it could be quite funny

Like many readers of this blog, I have been avidly watching the evening news for the latest information on the coronavirus COVID-19). To ensure our family is prepared for any lock down, we have stockpiled about a fortnight’s supply of food and personal items, including toilet paper! There…I admitted that...