The Best SMSF Strategies for Baby Boomers

Hi, I’m Grant Abbott and I am Chairman of the Australian SMSF Members Association. Today I’m talking to all you Baby Boomers out there. That’s people like me, we were born between 1946 and also 1964. Guess what’s right in front of us at the moment? That damned thing called retirement. Who ever thought us Baby Boomers were going to retire. And I tell you what, don’t even worry about calling it retirement or taking a pension. Let’s just say that we’re growing old gracefully. God forbid, I have just seen the Beach Boys come out on an Australian tour after 50 years.

We are at the forefront here and we’ve changed history all along the way, and the big thing we need to now focus in on, and I put it to you to do your research is that at the moment there are 2.8 million of our parents or what we call the war generation or the silent generation sitting out there. But over the next five to ten to fifteen years, we’re actually going to start to hit retirement pretty hard. And the problem about that is that if you think how stretched the Australian system is at the moment with 2.8 million war generation, you know, the health care costs, the social security, the aged pension costs; if you think of how stretched it is at the moment, wait until we come on board; there’s 4.8 million of us. So once we start to go through, there’s going to need to be a doubling of heath care, there’s going to need to be a doubling of the social security or the aged pension and that’s going to be quite scary for future governments and it’s something we need to put in mind. Which means at the end of the day, we need to start to look at our investments, we need to start to look at while we’ve got a nest egg and make it last as long as possible.