Scott Francis

Cash Rates: The Big Story

IMPORTANT: This information is general financial product advice only and you should consider the relevant Product Disclosure Statement (PDS), Financial Services Guide (FSG), Target Market Determination (TMD) or seek professional advice before making…

Super vs Non-Super: A Balancing Act

IMPORTANT: This information is general financial product advice only and you should consider the relevant Product Disclosure Statement (PDS), Financial Services Guide (FSG), Target Market Determination (TMD) or seek professional advice before making…

Shipping Containers: A Place in Your Portfolio?

As investments markets experience rocky patches, they often see investors become dissatisfied with traditional asset classes and more willing to consider investment opportunities outside of the usual core portfolio holdings of equities, property,…

Back to Work: The Options for Those Over 60

There has been significant recent discussion about changing the rules around income tests for pension access to encourage greater workforce participation amongst those past retirement age. The thinking is that if people were not having their age…

The Unwitting Components in an End-Year Distribution

The start of a new financial year is always an important time for investors in managed investments including managed funds and ETFs – it begins with the payment of the previous year’s end of year distributions. There can be some surprises with these…

Dividends - Reinvest or Take the Cash?

IMPORTANT: This information is general financial product advice only and you should consider the relevant Product Disclosure Statement (PDS), Financial Services Guide (FSG), Target Market Determination (TMD) or seek professional advice before making…

Weighing Up the Latest on What's Needed for Retirement

There are fewer more important questions around the financial planning process than deciding how much is needed to fund your retirement. The Association of Super Funds Australia (ASFA) has for some time produced a standard designed to give people…

Why the ATO's Interested in Wash Sales All Year Round

With a hint of humour not always associated with the Australian Tax Office, the ATO put out a press release on 27 June titled ‘Wash Sales: The ATO is Cleaning up Dirty Laundry’. In the press release the ATO reminds investors not to be involved in…

The Age Pension Piece of the Retirement Puzzle

In A Bespoke Approach to Calculating Your Superannuation we looked at how to build a more personalised model to forecast superannuation accumulation at retirement. Today, we consider the three factors that contribute to an estimate of how much income…

Five Portfolio Strategies to Ride Out the Market Downturn

Warren Buffett hints at the opportunity in a downturn when he encourages us to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful”. In the face of falling share prices and negative economic headlines being greedy is not as easy as…

A Bespoke Approach to Calculating Your Superannuation

IMPORTANT: This information is general financial product advice only and you should consider the relevant Product Disclosure Statement (PDS), Financial Services Guide (FSG), Target Market Determination (TMD) or seek professional advice before making…

What's the Home Buyer Scheme Mean for Super Balances?

Scott Francis crunches the numbers on the proposal to let first homebuyers access their superannuation savings to get into the property market. The recent experience of budgets and election promises has been rather mundane – most initiatives are…

Taking Stock of Your Opinions: Minimum Super Withdrawals

My most recent article proposed that the temporary halving of minimum superannuation pension withdrawals be made permanent. It created some interesting discussion and is worth revisiting to include those thoughts. To recap the rules – many retirees…

Time to Change the Super Pension Drawdown Rules

In the recent Federal budget, the ability for retirees to draw half of the usual minimum superannuation pension was extended for another year. This has been done in response to the challenges faced by retirees over the period of the COVID-19…

Why Growth is Good, Even in Crisis

Last month we looked at the question of whether recent investment experiences have been able to support what is usually considered a reasonable estimate of portfolio withdrawal rates, a 4.5 per cent annual portfolio withdrawal, increasing with…

Can Retirement Portfolios Sustain a 4.5% Withdrawal Rate?

IMPORTANT: This information is general financial product advice only and you should consider the relevant Product Disclosure Statement (PDS), Financial Services Guide (FSG), Target Market Determination (TMD) or seek professional advice before making…

Dealing with a Market Downturn

Warren Buffett says the “stock market is a device that transfers money from the impatient to the patient” – a mindset that puts a premium on patience. The concept of ‘mindset’ seems to be one that has entered the world of high-performance tasks –…

Going Global in Australian Portfolios

We have lived in something of an investment nirvana here in Australia. We have a share market that has provided above average investment returns over long periods of time, the tax advantages of franking credits and an average dividend yield of about…

What's in Store for Stocks?

Every new year sees investors totting up the year gone by and speculating on what the new year can bring. Let’s look at what the previous year’s performance might mean for asset allocation for investors and whether it might help us make a forecast…

Three Christmas Wishes for Retirees Ahead of an Election

For all the uncertainty as we look ahead to 2022, from Omicron to when the RBA might raise interest rates, we know one thing: next year will see a federal election. For those who enjoy the rough-and-tumble of politics, the election promises to be…