What members wish they’d known before retirement

Shane: Hello. My name is Shane Hancock, and I am the Head of Member Products, Guidance and Advice at AustralianSuper. And welcome to our podcast, The moments that count. Before we start, it's important to note that the information discussed in this podcast is general only and doesn't take into account your needs or personal objectives. You should assess your own financial situation and needs.

Today, this podcast is being recorded at our head office on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. I and AustralianSuper acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia. We pay our respects to elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

AustralianSuper has the privilege of 3.2 million members trusting us with their retirement savings. Each of those members has their own story, and today we're going to hear one of those stories.

I have the pleasure of being joined by Warren Morrison, a member of AustralianSuper. Welcome, Warren, and thanks for joining us.

Warren: Thanks for having me.

Shane: So, Warren, before we get into super and retirement, can you tell our audience a bit about yourself?

Warren: Well, I'm 65 years old, and I had the opportunity to take early retirement, having previously worked for the state government. And they were handing out packages at the time. And I put my hand up and said, "I'll take one of those", because I think they wanted to get rid of a few oldies that were there. 

Before that, I already started preparing myself for my retirement and back in 2017, I did a course to be a celebrant, to marry people. I was always an MC. And then one of my mentors, who was marrying all these people said, you'd be great as a celebrant.

And I did my nephew's wedding. And when I saw that celebrant, I went, "Hell, yeah, I can do much better than her." Being Italian, they were all asking me in Italian, "This one, testa dura" which means she's got a hard head, this celebrant. And I'm going, "Mhm..." and they all said, "Warren how come you not do this?" 

And I went, “okay, just give me five, and we'll discuss it”. So, I went back to college, got that while I was still working full-time. And then I started doing weddings. So that was my preparation for my retirement, because I wanted something to do in my retirement.

Shane: Just taking a step back prior to the retirement package and the transition to the celebrant role. So what did you actually do? Tell us a little bit about your career.

Warren: My last position was Executive Assistant to the Executive Director of Engineering for the state government. So, I had one executive director, six directors and 210 staff that I had to look after. So it was a pretty big job. It could be stressful at times when you're looking after them and then dealing with the minister's office as well, which is more stressful, like getting your boss to get an appointment with one of them. 

And the person that I am, I would always talk to them in the lift when I worked at Spring Street, like, because I would say, "What are you having for lunch?" And it'd be Minister Win or Jacinta Allen. And they'd go, "Uh, salad sandwich." And I'd go, "Oh, good, so am I." Or once I said to them, "Have you been to the workers floor?" 

Shane: Yeah, right. 

Warren: I watched my boss just slide down the lift. She nearly hit the bottom, and they went, "What's the workers floor?" And I said, "Level 20." And they go, "Okay." So lo and behold, up they come. Not going to my boss's office, coming to me!

Shane: Well, that's your job. 

Warren: I just went, big gulp. And then they all go, "Um, yep, here we are, so take us around." So then I had to take them around. So it was good.

Shane: So, were you in government your whole career?

Warren: No, only 13 years. Before that, it was private enterprise. I worked for the Trading Post, it was called Census in those days. They owned the Trading Post Paper. And prior to that, I worked for Rupert Murdoch at the Herald Sun. So I looked after a section there. And then prior to that was Westpac for 20 years. That was my first job. 

Shane: Yeah, right. 

Warren: In Westpac.

Shane: So first job, but you were there for 20 years?

Warren: First job, yeah, straight out of school. Before that, I was doing a paper round, chemist round, I did every round, but worked in the local supermarket. And then I remember at school I was pretty good at commerce. We had a subject called commerce. It was all on banking, so I remember applying for the job, and then they're saying, "Wait till you finish your school, and if you pass, come back." And I remember that I took my mother with me. 

Shane: What did you do? 

Warren: I was very embarrassed, and she made me go and have a suit. And if you can remember, if you're this old, ‘it's a great bag of fruit, it's a Salvatech suit’. So that's where she took me. And I looked like a clown when I think about it. The lapels on the suit were bigger than, like, flaps on a plane, they were huge. And then I was in the interview, and here's all my friends in jeans and just a jumper, and here I am with this tie that nearly came right across my chest. 

And he came out and he goes, "You." My mother went in first. I trailed behind, and he said, “the rest of you can all go home”.

Shane: You made the effort.

Warren: Well, he said, "You look like a banker." 

Shane: Yeah. 

Warren: So, sitting there and I said nothing. And my mother said everything. And he did ask the question, can he speak? Because he'll need to speak for this job.

Shane: Your mum can't come to work with you.

Warren: Yes. And then he did tell me later, I think about three months into the job, he goes, "You know who got you the job?" And I went, "Who?" And he goes, "Your mother." And then he said, "We really wanted to hire you because we knew you had parental care, that they cared enough to come with you." So, thanks, Mum. She's up there doing whatever she's doing, but yeah, so that was my first job and I lasted 20 years there.

Shane: Yeah. I'm not going to tell you my full story about my first job, but there is a common theme that I couldn't go for the interview because I didn't have a shirt or pants to wear and had to wait for my mum to come home to take me shopping to buy, that was the era. So you started at Westpac... 

Warren: Yes. 

Shane: And you said it was your first job that lasted 20 years.

Warren: Yeah.

Shane: What sort of roles were you doing within that 20-year period?

Warren: Oh, I started off, as it used to be called, a batch clerk, which meant you were the slave, literally, for all the people in the bank, you had to make their tea. I had a list on the wall that Fred had white tea with a teddy bear biscuit and you had to make it. 

Then they'd give me petty cash and I'd go and buy the toilet paper. It was so embarrassing, especially with your friends walking past you, going, "Ha ha ha, you work in a bank..." And I've got toilet rolls in my arms. Or they played the jokes on you straight away, which they give you all the ledgers, in those days, no computers, so it's ledgers. 

"Warren, can you take this down to the post office and get them balanced?" And I was like, "Yeah, yeah, okay, I've got to get these balanced, got to get these balanced..." And I'd line up and they could tell straight away, people in the post office going...

Shane: Here's another one. 

Warren: Here we go. And I'd go, "I'm from the bank and I've got to get these balanced." And they'd go, "Son, son, son...." Yeah. And then I'd go back or there'd be a note on your desk, "Warren, can you ring this number really urgently, it's Mr. Lyons, as in LY." I went, so you dial it and it goes, "Good afternoon, Melbourne Zoo." 

And I did say once "Is Mr. Lyons in?" Then they went, “oh son”, and they hung up. But then I did it to all the new recruits too, after I progressed. 

Shane: Yeah, you earned your stripes. 

Warren: Because then you progress in the bank. And then I became number one teller. Cha-ching. 

Shane: Yeah, excellent. In the city where you were at?

Warren: No, I was in Toorak, in the village. I had all the fancy schmancies. I had yes, everyone, movie stars. I held Liberace's hand as he went shopping. Sir Eric Pierce, if you know him, he was lovely. So we had everybody. We had the Grosby's Footwear people, which were lovely. And I used to like petting Lillian's coat because it was full mink and we did a commercial there with John Cleese, so I met John Cleese.

Shane: And then did you continue into that branch land?

Warren: Yes, went into that, then went into PR. They sort of saw the potential in me, so I did a bit of PR and advertising for them. From there then I progressed to credit card division. In the credit cards, I was an officer that went out to all the businesses and determined in those days whether they could actually have an EFTPOS machine when it first came out. 

Shane: Okay. 

Warren: So you had to have lots of transactions before you got that for free. So I had to work out whether you could or not. I went to companies like BHP.

Shane: And they passed the muster? 

Warren: That was like back in time. They had a tea lady and she took about an hour to get us that tea. 

Shane: Yeah, okay. 

Warren: It was like Faulty Towers. But yeah, I signed them up. So you had to sign them up. And then from there, when I left there, then I went straight to the Herald Sun and looked after their classified section. 

I had a stint at Legal Aid as well, in criminal law, that's an eye-opener. So where I looked after a barrister and I had to type all the case notes for each case. So, yes, you have to type verbatim what they say... There's a few words I didn't know how to spell because the client was, they'd say this word and you'd go, how do you spell that?

Because they'd done some act and I had lots of funny, funny times there, too. I seem to find the funny things in everything.

Shane: Tell you what, just hearing this story, your career, you could write a book.

Warren: I'm planning!

Shane: There you go. 

Warren: And now with the celebrancy, I've got enough for a book of all the weddings that have gone wrong. Not on my half, but like crazy things that happen with weddings. And now I do funerals as well, there's even more crazy stuff there.

Shane: Wow. Warren's weddings and funerals for a book, nice, I like it.

Warren: Yes, it is! 

Shane: Okay, I could talk about your career forever. But anyway, so let's go back to, so you've been offered the package for retirement. So before you took the package and we'll come back to what that looked like and how that's set up your retirement. Were you thinking about retirement prior to that?

Warren: Yes, I've always thought about retirement. I didn't want to be like everybody else that I saw growing up in your family, your mum's friends or uncles and aunties and even my own father. When he retired, he just drove us to insanity. More so to my mother, because he didn't have anything to do. He'd worked worked since he was 14. And I can honestly say that I never saw my father have a day off. Never.

He was up at six and then we wouldn't see him till six. So he worked nonstop. But he didn't have anything else in his life except us and annoying us and especially annoying my mother. And my mother would ring and say, just, can you come over and talk to your father? That was after I left home. And I go, “what do you want me to say?”

I go, dad, what are you doing? And one day I was over there. She goes, "Watch, just watch your father, watch what he's doing." Out to the clothesline, I'm thinking he's bringing in everybody's clothes. He just took his own and he put his own, folded it all up. And I go, “what about Mum’s?” He goes, "She got legs." And then all of a sudden he has lunch. And my sister made this lunch for my mum. 

Meanwhile, my poor mum was going through chemo and lots of things. He sat at the table and I go, “Dad, what are you doing?” Goes, "You snooze, you lose." So he ate her lunch. 

Shane: Ate your mum's lunch? 

Warren: Yeah, literally. So I just looked at him and thought, oh, what am I going to do? I don't want to be annoying anyone. Or I mean, we did try to get him delivering the pamphlets. Disaster. He took the dog with him. The dog got off the lead, pushed him over. Pamphlets went everywhere, so everybody in the street had to come and help him, pick him up and then take him back home. So we needed an outlet for dad, so we eventually found one.

Shane: So when you were thinking about, what do I do after retirement? Pamphlet delivery wasn't one of those things?

Warren: No, no!

Shane: So sounds as though when you were thinking about retirement, you were more thinking about, how am I going to keep myself busy? What about the financial side of supporting yourself in retirement? So I'm assuming you didn't know early years that you're going to get this package. So what was your sort of plans around funding your retirement prior to that? 

Warren: I think for me, that was the fear. There's a fear factor for everyone that's getting closer to retirement is, how am I going to live? How am I going to support myself, do I still have the same lifestyle that I have? And I wanted to make sure that I did have that. So again, in 2017, when I got encouragement that I could do other things besides MC-ing functions, I started to think about in a literal way, like, how am I going to support myself?

Because I'm thinking, I'm going to be 67. I'm on the pension. So, of course, what does everybody do? You log on, you have a look, and you go, oh, that's not enough for underpants, really. So I went, what can I do? I've got to be able to do something to have that cash flow. So that was my biggest fear.

And then when the opportunity arose to take the package, I mentally worked it out straight away that I've got this amount of time before I'm 67. Because I was going to retire right on my birthday. When I turned 67 at 12 o’clock that afternoon, I was handing in every badge, every key, every computer that I had, because I had two, believe it or not, to work in the government. I was just going to hand it all over and say, “gentlemen, ladies, have a lovely time, adios amigo, I'm out of here”. Because I was not going to work one day past 67.

Because I had other colleagues that were like, 72, 75 in the government and they're still working. And I kept saying to them, why? And, I mean, everybody's got their own story. There was a lot of really sad stories, like they'd had to remortgage their home because of their children, stuff like that. And that really was very upsetting to hear. Whereas I was fortunate, I owned my own home, so I was lucky that I was able to do all that in that time. So, yeah, when that came around, I mentally did a calculation and to this day, I'm still living off my package. I haven't touched my super. 

Shane: So prior to the package and you’re thinking about retiring at 67 and you looked at what you could get off the Government Age Pension, had you taken any real interest in your superannuation, taken any action, seen a financial planner, any of those sort of things?

Warren: Yes, I saw a financial planner before I even got the package. And unfortunately, at the time, it was like a lottery. You could put your name in for the package, but it wasn't a surety that you actually got it.

Shane: So you saw the financial planner once you knew you were getting a package. But prior to that?

Warren: Even before, I said, I need to see somebody who's going to help me because I didn't know what do I do with this super and then what do I do with the package? How does that all come together? Like I said, I was with another financial institution and he advised me about AustralianSuper, that it was the best for me. And we sat down, we spoke about a lot, might have helped that I married him and his wife. 

Shane: Right. 

Warren: That was a good omen. 

Shane: You provide professional services to him and vice versa.

Warren: Correct. So he helped me out immensely. And he said, “listen, wait till you get the package. And then what we'll do is we'll amalgamate it all together, we'll put it all in AustralianSuper. I'll look at different avenues for you”. And I said, “great, that's great”. But the scary part there when you've retired is you've got all this money in super. Now I've got the package and it's adding up to a really good amount of money. 

But they wanted me to actually post it to AustralianSuper. I couldn't get him to do it. And then I got one phone call saying from this institution, apparently, that we need your bank details and blah, blah, blah.

And I said, oh, that's okay. I said, Let me open my computer. I go, I'm looking at an email from you, and it's all there. So how about you read that email back to me. And what I got back was, "I don't have to read that to you." And I go, "You know what, you do, read it back to me."

And then I hung up. Then I rang this institution and they said, no, we haven't called you, nothing. And I went, oh, my God, I could have fallen into that trap. Like these scammers who think you're 65 and you look 65 and you're not quite with it, not this black duck. I was right onto it. And then I knew that I nearly got scammed out of all that money. So for all those people out there, just be really careful. Be astute with who you're talking to. And if they can't read it back to you, then hang up. So, yeah, it's a warning to everybody.

Shane: It's a great tip not only to be aware of who you're talking to, but even with super, what we commonly see is people not understanding or taking ownership, that it's their own money. 

Warren: Yes. 

Shane: Because they haven't seen it, they might be a little bit less engaged in that conversation. So well done and it's a good tip. So you took the package just in relation to super, so you rolled your money over to AustralianSuper. So you get to that point of retirement and you've taken the package. And you mentioned a minute ago that you're still living off the package.

And so within your superannuation, with AustralianSuper, do you have it as a pension account or is it still sitting in the superannuation account where you're not drawing money from it regularly?

Warren: No, well, I'm drawing money from it because the package is in there as well, so it is practically...

Shane: So you're getting a pension account and when are you getting paid, fortnightly or monthly?

Warren: Fortnightly. And it was good because when I was talking to that previous institution, you couldn't find your money, you couldn't do anything. And as he said to me, “I've set my mother up who's older than you, and she can work it, so you should be able to work it”. And I did. And plus, the communication for me, just ringing and getting somebody on the other end to talk to me about my account never happened before. It was like, “no, you have to fill in all these forms and fill this out”.

I went, “I can't be bothered, so you don't worry about it”. But with AustralianSuper, I've spoken to them about three times, and they've reassured me, no, no, that's okay. You've done that right. And because I was petrified that they never got my money. So that was the catalyst for me to say, “wow, this is great for me”.

Shane: And so quite often, people put the money in a pension account, an account based pension, in our case, that's called the Choice Income Account. And so the amount that you chose to draw down on a monthly basis, have you altered that over the years or has it been the same amount?

Warren: I started off with a smaller amount, and then I knew that I just needed that little extra, so I just bumped it up a couple of hundred dollars and now it's perfect.

Shane: So, you're feeling comfortable that you're spending, living the life that you want to live and you mentioned that your balance has still been growing in that particular time of the drawdown?

Warren: Yeah, I still fly business class, everybody.

Shane: Good on you, good on you. We'll come back to it. We'll get back to it. Come back to any holidays you might be going, So, going back to the early conversation around when I asked you a couple of times about retirement. You didn't go down the pathway of the money side until later on when I really probed, because it seems to me you were really thinking around that next stage of your life, around what I'm going to do.

Warren: I used to be a national champion roller skater. I've come back to that as a judge. They took me off to Perth to judge nationals. And I was on the whole panel and did the big wave when they mentioned my name. And there was a couple of young skaters who wanted to learn judging, and a friend of mine was there, and they said, "Girls, you're sitting in the presence of skating royalty." 

Shane: State champion. 

Warren: And then I went, yes, ten times state champion. And I went on and they go, "That's enough, you can stop now." So I've come back to that, which is another outlet for me as a retiree. So I've got my passion back after 35 years out of the sport.

Shane: But you talked a bit about before the impact of how your dad was, retirement, and so it's that influence around your activity and focus that's played a part in your mind.

Warren: Heavily, and watching your uncles too, they worked at a job, and now I can see it doing funerals. Like, I might do a funeral for a guy that I did one not long ago. He was 62, younger than me, which really upsets me. And then they go, he never fulfilled anything in his life. He went to work and he went home, went to work, and all his plans that he had, he never did. Because, again, the financial situation, like, you have to sit back and think, well, what's more important, your life or your job? And for me, it was not the job anymore.

And also becoming a grandfather was another catalyst... to the little fella. It was a whole bunch of things, but it was mainly that I need to live my life now. And the financials, like I said before, that's the thing that gets stuck in your brain. How am I going to survive? For me and it's no shame. I was on a very good package. I mean, a good salary. I had money. But I thought, when that goes, what do I do? But then you have to prepare. So the biggest thing you can't do, well, I'm saying for myself, is retire and still have a mortgage. That's very hard. I know I watch all the commercial that say, you've got equity, you can do this, you can do that. 

But for anybody out there they really need to be able to pay that big debt, that's your biggest debt in your life. Pay that off and then you'll reap the benefits. 

Shane: And that was a focus for you in your working life, to reduce your debt? 

Warren: Get rid of this camel or whatever they call it on your back.

Shane: Yeah. So obviously you focused on paying down your house and that is a major asset. If you hadn't have received a retirement package, do you think your retirement would have been different based on living off your superannuation and the pension or do you think nothing would have changed?

Warren: Nothing would have changed because I had that focus that, come 67, that's it, that's doomsday.

Shane: And you're okay, that you think you would have been able to fund your retirement in the way that you're living?

Warren: Yeah, because I had all these other activities going on. I've even been offered to MC some shows, which I did, and also sang in them. And so there was little gigs that were coming in that I thought, wow, this is good. And the MC part, people don't realise that they do have talents, but they probably haven't tapped into it. 

I was working at Westpac and one of my colleagues said, "Warren, you're pretty good with people. Can you MC my wedding?" And I went, "You gotta be kidding me, MC your wedding, I don't think so..."

So I researched it. I thought, I can do this. So I researched it. And you know what? The first one was nerve-wracking. After that, people saw me and said, oh, so I started doing that. So that was a little bit of income on the side when I was actually working.

Shane: But was it more about the enjoyment you got from the MC at that stage. Then you worked out maybe it can be revenue stream as well?

Warren: Yeah, correct.

Shane: You referred earlier about being healthy in retirement. You look like a pretty fit guy. What sort of things do you do to keep yourself healthy now?

Warren: Well, now I've made it--

Shane: Apart from roller skating. 

Warren: No, I haven't put the skates on, because, funny thing happened, again I was thinking, what am I going to do in retirement? So I went back to ice, because I was originally an ice skater. So I bought the boots, had it fitted, sat there. And the gentleman said to me, "So, you're a bit.. umm" I said, "Old, is that what you're thinking?"

Like, this is not my first rodeo. And I said to him, "I just want to know if these boots are going to be okay, because I'm really working on a triple." And he went, "Triple?" I went, “yeah, I'm ready to go”. Because his daughter was a skater. 

Shane: Yeah, right.

Warren: And I said, no, mate, I'm hoping I can stand up and just whizz around the rink. So I started skating. Not too bad. I'm thinking the old boy is still landing a few jumps. 

Shane: Still got it. 

Warren: She saw it and high fived me and she said, do one more before the lesson. That is a big mistake in skating for me.

Shane: Yeah.

Warren: As soon as I went up in the air, I knew this was not going to land pretty. So I landed in the splits, and that was the end of my ice skating career.

Shane: Right, okay. Well, they say a man's got to know his limitations and you worked it out!

Warren: Another bit of sporting prowess in your retirement. But getting back to that, I try to swim every Tuesday and Thursdays. 

Shane: Yeah, okay. 

Warren: And walk lots.

Shane: And clearly you're active both physically and with your mind and your activities. But have you thought about what the future might look like if your health did decline or other things, how that might impact your lifestyle and how you might fund any change in lifestyle?

Warren: I think the shock for me was finding out that I was a diabetic, but it's only type two.

Shane: Is that recently?

Warren: No, I've had that for a while now. I used to stir my mother, who was a type one diabetic, and then most of the family were diabetics, but I'd escaped it right up until about three years ago, so I could have a bag of lollies in front of them and really stir them up. 

But then it happened and I got it. And now you do have to look after yourself, and you got to watch your weight, especially now with acting and going up for commercials. They ask you your pant size, your underpants, they ask you everything, shoe size...

Shane: So just to close this out, Warren and you talked about how early, I guess one of your tips was for people to try and pay off their home before they retire, where possible, but any other words of wisdom you want to leave our listeners with about preparing or living in retirement?

Warren: Yeah, in hindsight, just think about your retirement seriously. And if you haven't got anybody else to feed off, find someone and ask them the question. Or find somebody who is already on the pension and ask them how are they doing it to get some knowledge. And for me, I got lots of advice from everybody that wasn't sinking in. So what I did was I rang up Centrelink and I made an appointment. 

Shane: Yeah, great. 

Warren: I said, I need to talk to somebody because I don't know what I can do. And I sat down with one of their officers and, yeah, she set me straight, this is what's going to happen when you go on the pension. I went right. Good. Now I know. Now I'm set. So it's a matter of knowing what you can have and what you don't have, and then trying to work out what you're going to do in between. Like, we've got another friend who wants to retire, he's a builder.

And I said to him, he said to me, "What advice you got for me?" I said, "Listen, you only want to work one day, two days, ring around the nursing homes and see if they need a maintenance man." So you've got to think outside the box. The people that just become couch potatoes are really sad to me because they're the ones that I'm burying. And it's like that old adage, if you don't use it, you lose it. So you got to keep active, grab it with both hands and run with it. That's my advice to everyone. 

Shane: Yeah. And I think that word retirement for you is living quite a full life, post-work life.

Warren: Well, they all say that I'm busier now than when I was working.

Shane: And that's great. And we hear that bit, and I think just your comment or your tip about seeking information, so knowledge is king and you referenced, you know what you need to do now. And so that's really important for people to understand, is learn and understand what that means for you, because everyone's retirement and everyone's journey is very different. So, Warren, I've really enjoyed our conversation today. So, Warren, thank you so much for your time. 

Warren: Thank you for having me!

Shane: And take care. 

Warren: Thank you.

Shane: Thank you for joining us today. If you're an AustralianSuper member and you would like to join us to share your story or have a question or topic you would like us to cover, then click the link in our show notes to get in touch. If you've enjoyed this podcast, subscribe and share with your friends and family. See you next time.

 

Shane: Hello. My name is Shane Hancock, and I am the Head of Member Products, Guidance and Advice at AustralianSuper. And welcome to our podcast, The moments that count. Before we start, it's important to note that the information discussed in this podcast is general only and doesn't take into account your needs or personal objectives. You should assess your own financial situation and needs.

Today, this podcast is being recorded at our head office on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. I and AustralianSuper acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia. We pay our respects to elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

AustralianSuper has the privilege of 3.3 million members trusting us with their retirement savings. Each of those members has their own story, and today we're going to hear one of those stories.

I have the pleasure of being joined by Kiriaki Hamilton, a member of AustralianSuper. Welcome, Kiriaki, and thanks for joining me today.

Kiriaki: Hi, Shane. How are you?

Shane: I'm good, thank you.

Kiriaki: That's good.

Shane: Kiriaki, can you start off by telling our listeners a little bit about yourself?

Kiriaki: I'm three years off from turning 60, so I'll let you do the math. I'm sort of semi-retired. I wouldn't say I'm fully retired at the moment. I took a redundancy package a while back. I was a single mum for a long time, got divorced, had a three and six-year-old. And when I initially started working, I did a lot of casual work. So, I was a court reporter, I was an emergency teacher, all that stuff.

So, it was a lot of casual work in my younger days and prior to the girls, I really never thought about super, I knew it was going in if I earned a certain amount of money as a casual. But I never looked at preparing myself financially for once I got older and when I was thinking of retirement, I think when you're in your youth, you think you're invincible.

So the main thing was working. And then once I had the girls and got divorced, it was like, okay. I really need to start thinking about my future and the girls' future and all that stuff.

And so once I actually got an ongoing role as a teacher, a trainer and assessor, I would ask my colleagues who are accounting teachers, ‘what do you do with your super?’ And they'd go, oh, you need to salary sacrifice and blah, blah, blah. So I got all the forms at work, but I never went ahead head because I was consumed with raising...

Shane: And life.

Kiriaki: Yeah, as you do, and paying off a mortgage and all that stuff. And I know I need to go see someone to give me financial advice, but I think I've kind of managed things. But I regret not salary-sacrificing those twelve years prior to becoming redundant.

Shane: Okay, well, let's come back to that part. Let's take a step back to your early work life. So you talked a bit about a varying role. So what would a work life start out like for you?

Kiriaki: I was initially a court reporter, and so I worked around the courts, recorded the proceedings, etcetera, heard a lot of interesting cases.

Shane: I can imagine.

Kiriaki: Yes, really enjoyed the work, but that sort of dried out with the digital era, so we weren't required as much. So then I always had the teaching degree in the background, but I felt I wasn't ready or I didn't have the life experiences to do that. So, I went off prior to even the court reporting and did a lot of travelling for a year, came back and a friend said, ‘do you want this job?’

And I went, ‘oh, yeah, okay, I'll work at the courts.’ I had a legal background. Did that. And then I thought, you know what? I'm ready to teach. I think I've seen enough and got back into it, particularly after the divorce and where I really needed to earn some money again, because for the first time in my life, I had to go on Centrelink.

Shane: Yeah, right, so you were a court reporter and when you got divorced, and then you obviously thought about not only a career change, but the need to work more permanently.

Kiriaki: It wasn't so much a career change. It was, I need work because I've got two young kids and I'm a single mum now and I need to pay the bills, the mortgage. So, yeah, I started doing some emergency teaching and then did a trainer and assessor course. And started work at one of the big institutes here.

Shane: So it wasn't primary school teaching?

Kiriaki: No, I did some emergency in primary and secondary but then I found that I really enjoyed the VET sector, the adult education.

Shane: And obviously you referenced that you're a single mom and I think you said the girls were three and six. So that in itself, managing a full-time job and how did you cope with that challenge?

Kiriaki: It was really hard. The priority was of course their health and their education. I couldn't afford to send them to private schools, so they did great. One's graphic designer now for gaming and the other one's doing animation at another institute here. So they've done really well. They're fine young women.

Shane: You've obviously talked about the challenge and I shouldn't have assume, but obviously employers back then probably weren't as flexible as what employers are now. How did you find your employer helping you through that?

Kiriaki: Yeah. Look, because it was initially casual training, I had a certain amount of hours, but then they would ask me to do hours and a couple of times I refused and they weren't happy. And I thought my kids come first. And once I was made ongoing, things settled and I knew that I now had an income and I had some money I could spend on the girls or we could do extra activities or if they wanted a particular toy. Yeah.

I mean, I wasn't in dire straits, but mum and dad did assist me a lot. They'd look after the girls while I was working or pick them up after school.

Shane: So, that network was really important.

Kiriaki: Oh, yeah. Very supportive.

Shane: And so you did the teaching and assessment. How long did you do that for? Once you were permanent?

Kiriaki: I was with this institute for 12 years.

Shane: Yeah, great.

Kiriaki: So, I was training people to work in business admin office roles, especially in the legal sector. That role became redundant. I was getting a lot of mothers, single mothers coming into the course, or mums that had, their kids have sort of left home and they're like, what do I do now?

So a lot of them would come and do this course and say, I was a secretary 20 years ago and I want to have a career now. And you just see their confidence grow and that was the joy and the achievement of, ‘I can do this’, you know.

Shane: So, you were getting quite a bit of personal satisfaction out of that?

Kiriaki: Absolutely.

Shane: Yeah. And that's hugely important in a role. So, you said there was an opportunity that this team had to downsize and so then you put your hand up to be...

Kiriaki: I put my hand up. I thought, "Okay, I need a break." And I took the package. And since I took the package, I have gone overseas twice now. I just got back from a holiday in Greece, and my partner of six years now, he's like, let's just enjoy, let's just go away once a year. We're getting older and let's do it before our hips go or legs go, you know what I mean?

Shane: Yeah, absolutely.

Kiriaki: Because we like walking around and he goes, I don't want to be pushing you in a wheelchair, et cetera, especially Greece.

Shane: Yeah, no.

Kiriaki: So, that's what we've been doing. And I did pick up a day working as a casual trainer and assessor with Indian students who were trying to get their permanent residency here. And I was just told three days after I got back that they were merging classes and they no longer required me. And this is the thing with casual work. You're disposable. But that's okay. I'm fine with it. Because I thought, okay, whatever, I'll find something else.

Shane: Just roll with it. And so the package you took was a redundancy package. And so you then received that. And did you think about, "Okay, how am I going to use this package? Do I consider putting it in super, do I consider other things?" Did you seek financial advice around what to do with it?

Kiriaki: No, I have put aside some savings anyway, so the redundancy was this extra money that it was now my time and my time with my partner, because the girls had gotten to an age. They're mature young ladies. So, now it was, okay, you've worked hard. Now go have a break. And it's done me wonders.

Shane: So, taking a step back, obviously, you talked about the focus in life was to provide for your daughters and be available. So, obviously, savings and particularly superannuation might have been something you're aware of, but it may not have been a priority. Would that be right?

Kiriaki: That's correct. My priority was to get the wage in and to have enough to pay the bills so I'd budget it for everything. So that was a priority. So, usually there was nothing left over to, even if I wanted to. And I remember at one time when I was on Centrelink, they had sent me that the government would contribute to your super. So I did that.

Shane: But when you obviously started working full-time, you’re getting superannuation paid by your employer. How much interest did you take in your super then and notice that sort of growth?

Kiriaki: Every time I got my statement from AustralianSuper, I've gone, oh, it's gone up. Okay. And I haven't taken risks with my super. I've got a conservative little plan, and it's fine, the money's building up, but I was just saving on the side and budgeting. So, it's only now that I'm sort of thinking, okay, if I really want to fully retire, I really need to go see someone.

Shane: Yeah, yeah. And the fact that you're now enjoying your life. You had to do it hard there for a while, and it's great that you've got the opportunity to do the travel. And you're still young. You still got...

Kiriaki: I know, but you just don't know what's around the corner.

Shane: Yeah, that's true.

Kiriaki: And as you get older, your body changes. You want to really enjoy life, and you want to have that money to enjoy it. And I'm not saying I'd go on a luxury cruise or whatever people want to do, but for me, it's just travel. I've always wanted to travel. I was fortunate to go to India.

One of my Indian students said, would you like to come to my wedding? So I said, where's the wedding? And he said, Delhi. And I went, and I just enjoyed it so much. It was such a great experience. And if I hadn't picked up that job just that one Saturday, I wouldn't have met these students. And I really didn't know much about the Indian culture, and I learned so much from these guys. It was amazing. And I love teaching there. I love the students, put it that way.

Shane: But it just shows that obviously there was a two way connection there. If the students asked you to their wedding.

Kiriaki: And the parents kept calling me, ‘oh, you're the professor’. And I'm thinking, I don't have a master's degree, but I'll take it, I'll take it!

Shane: Just roll with it, just roll with it.

Kiriaki: Yeah.

Shane: So, obviously, you seem like you're in a really good spot at the moment, enjoying life. Now, you just said at the beginning that you're thinking about permanently retiring. And that's something, to be honest, that we kind of see less of, people are stage-gating retirement, they might not work for a while and then they do a bit of work. So at this stage, are you still in limbo around what the next few years will look like?

Kiriaki: I still want to work, Shane. I kind of get bored at home. So, one to two days, but I'm not sure if I want to continue the teaching. It's quite stressful because you're dealing with people and every student's different. Everyone's got needs, so you take on a lot of their energy. So, you go home and you just talk about, "Oh, this happened today..." I just sometimes think I'll go do a barista course and just become a waitress.

And then my girl said, nah, mum, no, no, you'll be standing all day. Then I think Bunnings. I love gardening. Maybe I'll work in the garden centre. So, these are the things I'm thinking about, because it's not about ambition now, for me now it's about relaxing, having an income coming in, seeing a financial adviser, getting that advice. What should I do now to get me through until I can't travel anymore and I'm at home watching the Real Housewives or something.

I'm not sure. All I know is I want to continue travelling with my partner. I'd love to take my girls to Greece. I think the pinnacle for me would be to take them to Greece and revisit the culture. Because now they're getting into, ‘oh, we're Greek and we've got this heritage’, yeah.

Shane: I think, you know, what I'm hearing also is that work at one age of your life, particularly when the girls were young, was a means to an end. And now it is about personal fulfilment, a little bit about how you can fulfil a lifestyle. But even the idea of Bunnings or a barista is about personal satisfaction as much as anything else. And would that be right?

Kiriaki: Yeah. I think once you see your kids are in a good space and they're travelling on their own path, you think, okay, I've done that job. They'll always be your children. I mean, one's 23, one's 20, but they're still my babies. And I think all parents out there know that you still support them, you still love them, you care for them, but they're on their own journey now and they're like, "Mum, have a great time when you're in Greece and what are you going to get me?" sort of thing. But it's my turn now. I have worked hard and I want to enjoy however long I've got on this Earth.

Shane: It's so great to hear you did the hard yards and with a single focus. And I think there's an element of what I'm hearing is you've got a plan without having a plan. So, you've got what you want to fulfil in the time that you believe you can physically do it. So when we think about the next few years, are you going to proactively look for this job at Bunnings or elsewhere?

Kiriaki: I do shop at Bunnings. I do go and spend a lot of time in their garden section.

Shane: Why don't you rock up on one of those green bibs...

Kiriaki: I should, I should. Look, the work stuff, yeah, look, I'm always on SEEK and I'm sort of checking stuff out, but I think I'm in kind of limbo.

Shane: Yeah. So when it comes to your super, so regular contributions from your full-time employer, what sort of tracking and interest do you have in your super at the moment?

Kiriaki: I've just looked at the last statement and this is why I thought, ‘okay, I've got no gig now, let's go see a financial planner’. And it makes more sense to me to see someone that could do something or give me that advice moving on so I can continue to enjoy my life now and not worry. And be able to, if I just want to work two days a week, I can do that. Why should I go and work three days and even just casual gigs. I might go do the waitressing. I might want to do the Bunnings. I might do both. I don't know. I was even thinking of doing a barber course. I could do that. I could shave heads and talk to people.

Shane: That's a big part of the job, talking to people.

Kiriaki: It is, yeah. And again, my daughter said, mum, you'll be standing all day. That's okay. I was standing for twelve years.

Shane: Yeah. So when you think about going to see a financial adviser or seeking some guidance on your retirement, what are the things that you're thinking about you want help with? Because when you go and see them, they'll say, "Okay, Kiriaki, what's your goals, what's your objective, what's the things that are worrying you?" What are the things that you think about there?

Kiriaki: For me, look, it's more about having a bit of that nest egg and asking them if I was to live to this age, how much would I need to have a decent lifestyle, something that would pay my bills. I've paid off my mortgage, so I don't have to worry about that anymore. So for me, it'd be essentially paying the bills and having enough money to go overseas.

If my daughters need to buy a car or... I know that they're going to have certain needs. I mean, I'm sure if they get married and if it's a Greek bloke, I'm going to have to fork out a lot of money for a big, fat Greek wedding, you know what I'm saying?

Look, it's more about having enough, saying to the financial planner, how much do I need to live comfortably and how much would I need if I was sick? And then it's also talking about those issues. If something was to unexpectedly happened to me, do I have to take out certain insurances, etcetera, to protect my home, which will go to my daughters. I don't want to see that go because I get sick or something happens.

Shane: Yeah. And I think you've made a really good point. So when I asked you that question, I didn't know how you would answer it. But you've really made a strong point for our listeners here is when people are thinking about getting help or financial advice, the main thing that a good financial planner will do is help you understand how you'll achieve your objectives, no matter what they are.

And everyone's objectives are different in pre-retirement, post-retirement, it's clear for you, it's about how do you fund a certain lifestyle and how do you provide for your girls that you've worked hard doing for forever. And so for other people, it will be different. And that's the sort of starting point for a financial planner to sort of understand what your objectives are and then work backwards from there and tell you is that achievable for one. And then secondly, to achieve that you need to do X, Y and Z, whether that be other sacrifices of other things.

Or in your case there's a chance they may say, ‘Well, you'll look like this with your continued process’ or ‘You are still young, you could still continue to work part-time.’ So I think it's a really good example of providing a planner with your goals. And it sounds like you've got a pretty good handle on what you want to achieve. And you touched on a minute ago too, which some people don't think about is what about when I'm not healthy and what that looks like and am I not going to be a burden on my family and other things? And that's something to factor in as well.

Kiriaki: I think absolutely, because we're all getting old. And sure, my heart says you're still 21 and you can still party. I found out I couldn't party in Greece.

Shane: Too many hills to walk up.

Kiriaki: After two gin and tonics, I was like, ‘oh, God, do we have to walk up that hill to the hotel?’ But look, it's just looking after my family. And when I get old that I'm not that burden and until I'm still able to walk, it's about heading off overseas and having experiences, and that's what drives me, because now it's my time. The girls know I love them, but, yeah, it's time for me. And they say, "It's your turn, mum."

Shane: They sound they're supportive.

Kiriaki: Oh, absolutely!

Shane: Yeah. And so when you think about all the things that you've experienced and you got a long way ahead and you got a plan to have a plan, which is great. Any sort of words of wisdom you want to leave our listeners with any sort of lessons that you've learned over the time about setting yourself up and getting through life?

Kiriaki: I think if you are receiving contributions into your super, my biggest regret is not doing the salary sacrificing because there are those benefits and people can look into that. That's my biggest regret, because if I'd done that, the total amount would have been larger, like I said it's about having that nest egg for the things, the unexpected things that happen in life and they do happen, there are good times, bad times but I think people struggle when they get ill or anything that happens in life that's kind of negative when you don't have that money to be able to go see a good doctor or to visit your kids or whatever it is...

Go get some financial advice, because I'm going to be doing that. And for the next chapter of my life, I guess life is like chapters, you raise your kids, they move on, and as a woman I'm like now, ‘what do I do with my life?’ And I've always been funny with money because for me I didn't have it for a long time and it went elsewhere and it went to the girls growing up and education and all that stuff.

Shane: But that were the things that were rightly important and I think even your comment around, you know, regret not making salary sacrifice, at the time you weren't in a position. So, I think it's an understanding, and really, when you talk about chapters, even when we talk about members of AustralianSuper, we know there are different segments in people's lives where super has a different role to play, whether it be savings or safety nets.

And then getting into pre-retirement is when they get really engaged. So, for you to be three years off 60 is generally where people are starting to seek advice. So, you haven't really missed the boat there.

Kiriaki: Oh, good!

Shane: But I think the point that's really relevant is in hindsight, you look back, but realistically, was it possible? And you look at everything you've achieved with your girls and the position you are with holidays and so on, well, things may not have changed. And so seeking advice, I think, is a really good tip. Whether it be full financial advice or reaching out to your super fund or others about certain guidance is really important because there's different things in your life that may not even be a major financial contribution that you need to do, but taking interest in your super, whether it be investments or you talked about the insurance that you have, is really important.

So I think that's a really good tip. So, Kiriaki, I've really enjoyed our conversation today. I'm a bit jealous about all the holidays that you're going on.

Kiriaki: You'll get there, Shane!

Shane: Yeah, maybe, my kids are a bit younger.

Kiriaki: So, you get it.

Shane: I'm at that stage, but yeah, anyway, we'll work through that. So, thank you for joining me today. No doubt that you'll make every post a winner because you've done that so far. So, thanks again and enjoy the next stage.

Kiriaki: Pleasure. Thank you, Shane.

Shane: Thank you.

Thank you for joining us today. If you're an AustralianSuper member and you would like to join us to share your story or have a question or topic you would like us to cover, then click the link in our show notes to get in touch. If you've enjoyed this podcast, subscribe and share with your friends and family. See you next time.

Shane: Hello. My name is Shane Hancock, and I am the Head of Member Products, Guidance and Advice at AustralianSuper. And welcome to our podcast, The moments that count. Before we start, it's important to note that the information discussed in this podcast is general only and doesn't take into account your needs or personal objectives.

You should assess your own financial situation and needs. Today, this podcast is being recorded at our head office on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. I and AustralianSuper acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia. We pay our respects to elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

AustralianSuper has the privilege of 3 million members trusting us with their retirement savings. Each of those members has their own story, and today we're going to hear one of those stories. I have the pleasure of being joined by Eric F, a member of AustralianSuper. Welcome, Eric, and thanks for joining me today.

Eric: Good afternoon, Shane. How are you?

Shane: I'm good, thank you. So tell us a little bit about yourself, Eric.

Eric: Okay. I'm 64 years of age, was in the superannuation industry as my bread and butter, got made redundant when I was the age of 56.

So obviously a little bit too young to retire. I was lucky enough that I got back into the industry by a little Tasmanian superannuation fund, and it was on a part-time basis. It was meant to be for a three-month project.

It ended up turning into a three days for about four years and then got made redundant again. So the bell rang to say, I think that the game's over. So after my second redundancy, I actually retired at the age of 60.

Shane: Okay. There's a lot in there. Now, coming from the superannuation industry. you just reminded me to watch myself here. You might be ready to take over as host of the podcast, so we'll see how we go. So tell us a bit more about that career in super. You were telling me beforehand there was quite an extensive 30-year career, I think, in super.

Eric: So, yeah, it was a 30-year career. I was in charge of the member relationships and employer relationships. So it was quite good for me because what I would end up doing was talking to a lot of members about their retirement and how they're going about retirement. And so I was actually getting a lot of information just for myself to work out now, when's the right time?

What do you need to do and what do you need to look out for? So that was very good for me and basically I enjoyed that for 30-odd years. And then when I got made redundant, I went back a role and just became a member service person.

So I was just servicing members and telling them a little bit about superannuation and how to grow their wealth.

Shane: So, working in the industry, you hear a lot of comments about the plumber's the one with the leaky pipes. How much did you think about your own superannuation retirement when you were in the industry?

Eric: Great question, because I wanted to make sure that I was not going to be the builder that didn't have the finished house or the mechanic with the worst car in the street sort of thing.

So now I was very conscious of super in the way of the compounding interest. I understood all the theory about superannuation, so I did it quite early, where I was sacrificing quite a large portion of my salary.

My wife was doing absolutely nothing towards superannuation. She did not believe in super. So at her middle age, I finally coached her into saying, look, we've got to start putting some money away for yourself.

And now that we're both retired, she's basically patted me on the back, saying it's the best advice she's ever had. But she started off late, but she made up for it at the end.

Shane:  It's really interesting, isn't it, that you've worked in the industry all your life and we talk about the requirements and importance of engaging people early in super, and your own wife was struggling with that message.

So that can tell you the challenges that we have as an industry to get people to understand the importance of superannuation and you've experienced it in your own household.

Eric:  Without a doubt. But I've always said it's hard for the younger people to understand superannuation because there's too much life in front of us.

It's when that certain age bracket and I think it's the late 30s, early 40s that you finally start to realise what's coming next in my life. You've bought the house, you've had the kids, but they're off to school, so you've got a bit more time on your hands.

Hopefully, the mortgage is under control. So we were always taught that once the mortgage is under control, start pumping some money into superannuation. So that's what we did in our household and we reeked the benefits.

Shane:  So you mentioned earlier when you were talking about your career, about redundancy at 56, I think you said you were. So obviously you had a plan in place. You were thinking about that, now that obviously deviated a little bit.

So tell us how you felt at that time, both from okay, you said, made the point around maybe I'm a bit too early to retire. So what you're thinking around your career because you had quite a senior role, and then also, how much is this taking us off our track for retirement?

Eric:  Yeah, another good question about retiring. So at age 56, I said to myself, look, it is a bit too young to retire, and I probably didn't have quite the funding behind me. But the one thing it did do for me, it actually set my retirement date, because I didn't know when to actually retire and what date to retire and what age to retire.

So getting made redundant the first time said, hey, the end is getting near. So I had enough finance behind me to say, hey, I don't need to work five days a week. As I said, I was fortunate enough to get a role that only needed three days a week.

So I was transitioning, without even knowing I was transitioning. So again, I was helped by the redundancy, but when I got to the second redundancy, I said, this is definitely it. You're now age 60. Times are moving on, so let's think about retirement.

So we went through all the calculators, found out what's the comfortable retirement, we're all well above the comfortable retirement bracket. So we both said, let's give it a go, and we both retired at the same time.

Shane: Excellent. So one of the big elements of anything is how you feel, confidence-wise, being made redundant at 56, so you've talked about the plan you've put in place, but how did you feel about that at the time?

Eric: Yeah, I was shocked, I'll be very honest. Once you've been made redundant and you're no longer needed, you do lose a bit of esteem saying, what the hell has happened to me? You're not a major cog in any organisation.

So that took me six months once I got the part-time role, but it took me six months, once I was fully retired, to say, hey, this is it, what are we going to do next? And I was really lucky that I started doing a lot more golf.

I became a golf caddy at Royal Melbourne. I made a TV ad for an organisation called AustralianSuper and I started working for a friend on his farm. So all of a sudden, my retirement did a 360 where I was doing a lot of things that I've never dreamt of doing before.

And I loved my golf. So caddying was absolutely fantastic. Doing a TV ad was just a fluke, and getting a job working two days on a farm was absolutely better than being in a collar and tie. Here I am getting my hands dirty.

So it was completely different and it fulfilled those little gaps in my retirement. So it made retirement a hell of a lot easy. But the first six months were very difficult.

Shane: Yeah, obviously. I'm assuming you didn't just take up golf when you retired, you were into it prior.

Eric: Correct.

Shane: So there was probably a little bit of a plan that you might play a bit more golf.

Eric: Exactly. It was good to finally be a full member seven days a week and not only playing on a Saturday afternoon. And now I could play three days a week, which was really good.

Shane: How's the handicap looking?

Eric: It's come down. It has come down. So I was sort of in the mid, the mid nineteens. And now I'm down to the sort of just on the ten handicap.

Shane: Impressive. So, just going back to the time of the first redundancy at 56, I think it's a really relevant point you make about that confidence hit around, I guess, where you stand in a certain organisation and your focus.

So you were lucky to get back into that part-time work. But when it first happened, were you thinking, I need to get back in at full-time work, part-time work, how do I explore this? Am I willing to go back to something a little bit more less stressful, more junior? What was sort of your mindset?

Eric: Probably all of the above. You sit back and you sort of say, okay, yes, it was nice to get a redundancy payout. So all of a sudden, the finance wasn't a major factor. But then you start saying to yourself, do I want to go back full-time, part-time? Do you want that stressful role? Do you want to just maybe come back a notch?

I was even looking at things like, do I just go do water meter reading just for something that's sort of out of the ordinary, but fulfils your day? So because of the financial background that we had and the financial backing that we had, I could look at all those options. Whatever came up, I think I registered with Seek on a number of different job levels, from executive down to the sweeper. I didn't really care as long as I got something. And that's where the other role came up, it was just a fluke.

Shane: So you felt clearly the redundancy payout would have assisted, but you felt financially okay at 56 and retiring a little bit earlier, but the real driver for you was about keeping your mind active, your body active.

Eric: Correct, yeah. Could I afford to retire at the age of 56? The answer is yes. Did I want to? The answer is no. But I didn't quite know do I go full-time, part-time, or something in between. Whatever came up, I was going to analyze and say, okay, let's give it a go for now.

And as I said, the three-day-a-week role came up. And then again, when the next organisation merged and another redundancy came up, I said, okay, we're now age 60. Let's now start playing a lot more golf.

Shane: Excellent. So, when you moved into the second role, the three-day-a-week role, you said you moved into a role which was actually dealing directly with members.

Eric: Yeah. So I was going back to what my staff were actually doing, and there was a bit of a funny story because what it was, there was the Tasmanian Superannuation Fund had all the flower industry here in Victoria, so they had no representation. And they needed to sort of get someone involved to say, hey, how do we help our employers and help our members?

So I was actually conducting member and employer sort of seminars in cowsheds and all of a sudden a cow would appear, which is completely different to walking into an office and someone else appears.

I've got cows and animals appearing. So it was completely different. And which made it exciting as well, because it was back to the bare roots of talking to members and employees about the basics of superannuation.

They didn't understand they had compliance issues, they didn't understand they had commitments and all those sorts of things. But the problem was with that industry, most of the people and their staff were non-English speaking people.

So it was very hard to communicate about you should sacrifice, you should try and put more money away, you should look at your insurances, et cetera. They didn't quite understand that. They just wanted to know, was the employer putting in the right amount of money to my super? And as far as that was concerned, they were happy with that.

Shane: And the fact that you'd been through what you went through previously in being made redundant and at an age where you still wanted to work, how much did you draw on your own personal experiences when you were talking to some of those members about the challenges and how some things don't always go to plan and that you need to be prepared?

Eric: Yeah, very much so. I could draw back on my own experiences and especially with the employers, because the employers didn't really, they looked at superannuation as an obligation and a tax at the end of the day.

But when you started talking about, hey, this will set people up for their retirement, they won't have to rely so much on the age pension, they've also got some insurances there, which means if something was to happen and that was a dangerous industry that they were in, because they were always dealing with farm equipment, et cetera.

And then the employer, once we sort of won the employers over to say, hey, super is a beneficial thing for your staff, it's not just a tax, they looked at superannuation completely differently which was which was good on my behalf and good on their behalf.

Shane: So you mentioned earlier that when you were starting to think about retirement and whether you could afford to retire, you sought out some information from calculators, education, I'm not sure if you sought advice. Tell us about that experience and one, what you're looking for, where you turned to and how you used that information.

Eric: Yeah, look, I probably attended about over a dozen retirement seminars, and they were all good because they all keep saying the same thing about having enough money and being at a comfortable level in retirement, but they never actually spoke about the emotional side of retirement.

No one had that experience about and it's all different for everybody else. Everyone's got a different attitude to retirement. I was lucky enough to speak to a lot of people who had retired, and they all came up with the same thing, initial shock, but then they wish they had done it earlier.

So once I kept hearing that, I thought to myself, it'll happen to me as well. I've got the initial shock. I'm now in retirement. I was a little bit upset about being retired, but then six months later, when all these other little things came along about the golf caddying and working on a farm, et cetera, that sort of filled some of the gaps and made retirement just a pleasure. And again, now I'm the one saying, I wish I had done it earlier.

Shane: Yeah, right. So the people you were talking to were people at seminars, friends, ex-colleagues.

Eric: Correct and especially people at seminars, potential retirees. They were about to retire in the next six months. So they looked at their finances. They were looking at what their next steps in life were. Do I purchase a caravan? Do I need a new car? Or those sorts of things.

And they were all gearing up. So I was just listening to their stories and just trying to relate what their stories are. But there was a similar pattern with everybody. They all had that thing in mind, I'm now ready to retire, but I don't know what the next step is going to be in my life. They all said the same thing.

Shane: Yeah, it's quite common. Ironically, I was listening to a podcast yesterday on another topic, and that was a very similar theme. This person had worked quite heavily for 30-odd years straight.

And yeah, that was their biggest challenge. So you're right, it's a common theme we hear from a lot of people, getting back to that financial preparation. And when you said you were looking at, again, reiterating the question around tools and calculators or advice, was that something you sought from your super fund?

I mean, obviously you're in the industry, so you sort of understand where to go. That's the first part of the question. And secondly, how did you bring your wife on that journey in sort of educating her, using some of those tools if you did?

Eric: Yeah. So the good thing was with the major industry of superannuation with ASFA, and they came up with what's a comfortable retirement and what's an affordable retirement, and they set certain thresholds, and those dollar signs were obviously indexed.

But luckily, I had a super account which met the major goal, and my wife's account also met the major goal. So I was able to convince my wife that, hey, we are more than comfortable in our retirement. So if we have to retire today or we have to retire tomorrow, we're in that financial bracket where it's going to be quite good for us to retire. No idea on life expectancy. She never even contemplated life expectancy.

And I said, look at the moment, we're expected to live into our 80s now. Have we got enough money? As long as we get X per cent earnings on our money, we're going to be more than fine. We started taking European holidays.

It was great to have an account, you got a retirement account that you take a European holiday. It made retirement very easy and comfortable to do.

Shane: And just that point, then, with the holidays and so on, were you drawing that money out of your retirement income product, or was that...

Eric: Correct. We were taking it out of our retirement income product. So basically we said, we're going to put all our money into a retirement product. We knew the rules. There was X per cent we had to take out every year.

We could take a lump sum out if we had to. And I said, let's leave it in there. It's in a good tax environment in our pension account. She said, you just deal with the finance, I'll organise the holidays and away we went to Europe.

Shane: And I've said this before in previous podcasts, but I think it's a really important point to make is that some people don't realise that putting your money in that sort of environment means you can still access it for whether it be holidays, for emergency needs or so on.

So I do like to reiterate that point, because it's really important that people have worked their whole life and saved in super and then sometimes get concerned that they're locking their money away and it's really important that they know that's not the case.

And you've just given us a good example of that. So your wife retired a bit before you is that right?

Eric: She retired probably ten years before me. She also got made redundant, so she was very clever. She organised her redundancy at about the age of 53 or 54.

We haven't got children, so we haven't got that burden of making sure there's an inheritance for the kids. So she was quite happy to retire a lot earlier because then she saw again what she had in her super account. She knew she could access it. I was still working, so we were quite okay in that regard.

Shane: And I'm assuming that was after you went through this moment of teaching her about the benefits of superannuation.

Eric: Well, no, she had to learn fast and hard. So because she wasn't putting money away into her super account, I was getting her to sacrifice over 35% of her wage, which she said, You've got to be absolutely kidding me.

Putting away 35% of my salary. She struggled because she liked buying new shoes and new clothes, et cetera, but once she got into a budget and losing 35% of her income, and then seeing what's happened over the next 15 odd years, she said, thank God she did it.

Shane: And so she retired ten years before you. You've talked about all the great things you've been doing in retirement. How did she transition to retirement and with you working as well at the same time?

Eric: She did it easy, if you ask me what does my wife do Monday to Friday? I don't know, but she's never home. She's got a good network of friends, she's a shopaholic, but she does work to a budget at the same time, so it's not as though she's just spending her money nilly-willy, but, no, she was good because I saw what she was doing and she was happy.

So when I had this bit of a downturn with my first redundancy, I could just look at her and say, well, okay, she's surviving, so if she can survive, I can definitely survive.

Shane: So you've touched on a number of times around the second redundancy, was it at 60?

Eric: At 60.

Shane: And so that was when you said, okay, I'm ready to go. The other element of that around yeah, retired at 60, so still a young man and the activities that you have just spoken about that you're doing in retirement.

So the handyman work on the farm, the golf caddying, there's an element beyond the fact that you just told me about your knee injury, there's an element of personal fitness to that. So did that leave you thinking, I'm really going to be able to do some of the things I enjoy without worrying about the sort of health issue for a while?

Eric: Correct. The thing about all those three elements of working on a farm and doing some golf caddying, that just filled in those other couple of days of the week where I didn't have to think about what am I going to do tomorrow morning?

You can only play a certain amount of golf. You can't play seven days a week, although some people think you can, but maybe two or three days a week of golf is fantastic. Something in between, which just fills in the gaps, made it even more enjoyable.

So it just made you appreciate what you've got. Where if you haven't got that financial burden of saying, where's my next income coming from, you can do anything. And I even do a lot of volunteer work as well now, so I volunteer at the golf club, so I give them a day a week as well.

So, yeah, it's a fulfilling role just to be able to do something and there's a purpose in life, rather than just sitting in the couch saying, as I'm doing now, watching Netflix, and for the next couple of weeks with my knee injury, I'd hate to be just doing that every day, just not knowing what I'm going to do tomorrow morning.

Shane: That word, purpose, that you just mentioned is so important, particularly coming from a long career where you had a purpose. And so yeah, that really resonates.

Eric: And look and it was good because, look, I was still getting phone calls from ex-staff members saying, especially over COVID, how do we deal with this situation and this, that.

So I was still mentoring people even though I wasn't working at the time. But I felt committed that if they're going to give me some calls to say, could you give me some advice, if you've got the expertise, just share your knowledge.

Shane: Because you talked earlier about when you were first made redundant about that impact on your confidence. How did that feel, getting people ringing you and saying, hey, Eric, give me some advice?

Eric: It was very pleasing.

Shane: Yeah. So obviously you've had an impact on them in your working life.

Eric: Yeah, well, I pride myself on being a people person, if there's such a thing because you got to build trust, and if you can't build trust with your own staff, how are you going to build it with an employer or a member? And that's the way my attitude was as a manager.

Shane: Spot on. So the last topic that I wanted to sort of cover is you've talked about the transition to retirement and the enjoyment you and your wife are getting from retirement and the holidays and all the things your wife does.

You're not quite sure what she's doing, but what about the next stage? How are you planning or thinking about as you're getting older and whether it be the financial burden and health? Is that something that plays in your mind and are you putting plans in place around that?

Eric: Yeah. No. They do come in stages. So now that I've got an injury, my wife's had an injury, we're sort of saying and we're about to turn 65, we're sort of saying, okay, what is next? You start, you start looking at things like reviewing your will, you start looking at things like your final plot, your resting spot.

You start talking about your final destination in a holiday. And I said, we're only 65, we're not 85. But we thinking about that next phase of getting things set up. So my wife's already gone in there and she's got a plot. We don't bring it up as conversation.

Shane: That's one thing she's doing during the day.

Eric: That's one thing, and it's right next to that. I can actually see the golf course from that plot. So she put that in mind. But no, you do go through the next stages that as we said, we're about to turn 65. We're looking at what is next in line for us. Our bodies are starting to pack up a little bit, so we got the right insurances in place, et cetera.

So you do think about those things as the next step, but at the same token, we still want to take our next vacation overseas.

Shane: Yeah. So you got the realization of what's ahead and you've got plans in place, but importantly, you're living life to the fullest by the sounds of it.

Eric: I think we've got what I think is a great retirement, because again, the biggest thing in retirement, and I've got friends that aren't as financially well off in superannuation as what we both are. If you haven't got a financial burden you can basically think of and do anything. We've just updated our cars, we've just updated our house because we can afford to and it's all through superannuation.

If we didn't have the super backing, we could and be able to do what we've just done in the last twelve months, buying a new house, buying two new cars, and now thinking about going on an overseas holiday. So it's all been fantastic for us.

Shane: You're making retirement sound very attractive, Eric.

Eric: It is an attractive option.

Shane: Just last question, is you mentioned earlier, and I've said this a few times about the comfort that you got from talking to other people around what retirement looks like.

What one or two tips would you give to anyone listening today from your own experience for things for them to think about?

Eric: Yeah, look, talk to as many people as you possibly you can, and they don't have to be in your field of work. It's just good to get other people's opinions about retirement and potential retirement and do I transition into retirement?

I have a lot of friends that can't retire because they wouldn't know what to do with themselves. So they need to work. They don't need the finance, but they just need that interaction with people and to be involved, to do something.

I, on the other hand, have a different outlook in life where I want to do other things, improve my golf as much as I can. And you can't do that if you're employed somewhere, because you've got to dedicate your life to whatever you're doing for employment. But if you're a potential retiree, definitely look at your finances to say, can I afford to retire?

If you can tick that box, then just look at your health-wise, and then after that, just say, okay, start talking to people, saying, how did you feel about retirement? Because there is an impact when you retire. It stops. You're not doing what you do, you're not driving that truck or you're not talking to that member. Things stop, and it is completely different. So you got to be ready for it.

Shane: Yeah, it's great information. I think another key theme out of what you said there and I picked up is retirement is personal.

Eric: It is very personal and it's not for everybody. You look at television, you look at people that have got all this money and wealth, but they're still going. They obviously love it, which is fantastic, but it's not built for everyone.

Some of us want to sort of sit up and put our feet up and do something a little bit different. And it is exciting doing something completely different. From working, as I said, I've been working in an office for 35 years and here I am now, mowing lawns and spraying weeds on a farm. It's just completely different.

Shane: And you look happy for it.

Eric: Thank you.

Shane: Eric, thank you so much for joining us today. I really enjoyed our chat and all the best for the trips to Europe, but also what's ahead. So thank you.

Eric: Thank you very much. Thanks for your time.

Shane: Thank you for joining us today. If you're an AustralianSuper member and you would like to join us to share your story or have a question or topic you would like us to cover, then click the link in our show notes to get in touch.

If you've enjoyed this podcast, subscribe and share with your friends and family. See you next time.

Shane: Hello. My name is Shane Hancock, and I am the Head of Member Products, Guidance and Advice at AustralianSuper. And welcome to our podcast, The moments that count. Before we start, it's important to note that the information discussed in this podcast is general only and doesn't take into account your needs or personal objectives.

You should assess your own financial situation and needs. Today, this podcast is being recorded at our head office on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. I and AustralianSuper acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia. We pay our respects to elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

AustralianSuper has the privilege of 3.3 million members trusting us with their retirement savings. Each of those members has their own story, and today we're going to hear two of those stories. I have the pleasure of being joined by Carolyn and Jeff Harris, members of Australian super. Welcome, Carolyn and Jeff. And thanks for joining me today.

Carolyn: You're very welcome.

Shane: So, you are officially our first couple on the podcast, so no pressure, but it is something we've been trying to do for a while because most financial decisions and retirement decisions are made as a couple. So it's awesome to have you both here. So, I might start with you, Carolyn, because Jeff told me that you're going to be the main spokesperson, and, Carolyn, if you could just give us a little bit of history about yourself.

Carolyn: So, I'm 68, which is a wonderful age to be at, and I have been retired for nearly ten years, which is fantastic. I started off my working career as a 16-year-old, working for Hickory Dow in Burwood. Then I went to work for the Gas and Fuel. And then I had my son, stayed home as a stay-at-home mom, which I loved. Then I went back and studied, and I became a tax agent and a teacher at TAFE, teaching accounting and tax. And then I got divorced.

And I thought, oh, I better get myself a better career, rather than the casual teaching a few days. And was a tax agent three days a week. And it was pretty hard. You have to have six-minute blocks where you charge out. And I said no. Then GST came along and I applied for a GST job with the tax office and I worked there for 14 years before they made me redundant. So that's my career. I've enjoyed super.

I've always been focused on super because my mum, she was a postal clerk back in 1930, and they had super then.

Shane: Right.

Carolyn: So my mum had always told us girls, my sister and myself, that you have to look after yourself, and if you can have super, go for it.

Shane: Jeff, can you tell me a bit about yourself?

Jeff: Yes, Shane, no problems. 8th of January 1968, I commenced my banking and finance career. And that very day, you started work at that time, one of the forms that was placed under your nose was joining a superannuation fund. So as a youngster, I was 16 years old. So right from the start, I always knew about superannuation. The banking and finance career, I had quite a lengthy one.

I ended up an internal auditor, spent 30 years, eight months and 21 days, approximately, and I was made redundant. The work was outsourced to the big four accounting firms at the time. So, unbeknownst to me what I was going to do next, I was at the stage of life where I still needed to work. I'd done a bit of contract work. I was involved in the Royal Commission into the Longford gas explosion. That gave me a bit of work, but I needed something more.

So, similar to Carolyn. I picked up the paper one day and GST was coming along. It was on the beam, everyone was talking about it. And I applied for a position in the public service with the Australian Taxation Office. Day two, I met Carolyn, and I was very lucky. Yes. I think the train trip home, Carolyn rewarded me by providing me a cheese sandwich.

Shane: Wow, treated to a cheese sandwich!

Jeff: Anyway, I was similar. I had 14 years, and we both got to mid-executive range levels in the ATO. I am 72 years of age. So I was looking and thinking about retirement. And at that stage, I went into, I investigated the transition to retirement. So that was one of the first steps I took before I was actually made redundant also in the ATO.

Shane: Right. So, am I right to say, GST brought you two together?

Carolyn: Yes.

Shane: So who says good things don't come from tax?

Carolyn: We love tax.

Shane: Well, clearly, clearly. So it's brought you two together. So, thank you both for an awesome summary. There's so many different things there we'll come back to. But I do want to go back to you, Carolyn, and talk about obviously your mum enshrined the understanding of super. But I understand when you're at the Gas and Fuel that there might have been different arrangements for men and women.

Carolyn: Absolutely. So, for a female, when you joined the Gas and Fuel, you're given the option, you could put in fifty cents a week or a dollar a week into your super and that would be matched. So if you put in fifty cents, the boss would put in fifty cents. And the man that used to work next to me, he had the opportunity to put in six and a half percent of his salary and the boss would put in 11%.

And I thought that's not fair. I want some of that. But being a female we weren't allowed to have that privilege of having a better super. So another lady in the office and myself, we hustled and we ended up, every woman in the Gas and Fuel then was offered the same opportunity.

The reason they said no was because they said women just get married and have babies and leave and they don't need super long term. But one of the things that I did from that was that when I did leave the Gas and Fuel, I had an amazing bundle of money and I should have kept it in super and I didn't. I cashed it in and paid off my home which was a good thing there. But then I had to start off again from scratch.

Shane: Which we hear a lot. We hear that is so common. My own father did that when he was made redundant in the late 80s as well. So it is very common at the time you making the decisions that are right for your family and back in those days you could take your super out.

Carolyn: Exactly, it's not easily accessible these days, of course. In a way, it probably made life a little bit easier if you didn't have a mortgage to pay but then, unfortunately what you do then is if you've got a dollar, you spend the dollar, you're not forced to save it. Yeah. So, it's a bit of a devil when you do that.

Shane: So that initiative that you and your colleague talked to pressure management, that is amazing fortitude and also strength to do that. We still have issues at the moment, particularly with females retiring with less superannuation, the gender pay gap and broken work life due to caring and other things. So back when you did that, that's amazing. It's something I hope you feel very proud of.

Carolyn: Oh, absolutely. I think, as I said, because my mom had been so forceful in my sister and me saying, you've got to look after yourselves because, you know, mum had, well, she'd had a divorce, and she was sort of left out to hang and dry, as they say. So there was an opportunity to take, and I always say, take opportunities.

Don't let those sort of things go by. And also, I think it actually shows women that they can do things. The other lady in the office with me, she was a real forerunner of a lot of women's issues. We weren't allowed to wear slacks. Can you believe that?

This is back in the early 1970s. So that lady and I decided that we would wear slacks because we weren't allowed to wear slacks. So things were really different back in those days.  It's not long ago.

Shane: It seems unimaginable that that would be a challenge, but clearly it was. And just back to the conversation you had about the 50 cents on a dollar versus the 11%, how receptive were they initially?

Carolyn: I don't think anyone had actually ever challenged them. I don't think it was a deliberate intention to discriminate against females. But it was just that in those days, if a woman got married, sometimes in the public service, they actually had to leave. They had to leave, and so things were just different. It wasn't long before we were allowed to have our 6%. So that was good.

Shane: Okay, excellent. Well done. Now, Jeff, you mentioned when you started at the bank you had a super fund or retirement scheme and so at a young age, 16, how did you think about that? Were you thinking, oh, it'd be great to get that in my pocket or you just sort of forgot about it because it wasn't there?

Jeff: It was probably Shane, I think most times it was probably forgotten about, especially when you were very young. It was only if you turned the clock forward 10 or 15 years and you might have been dealing with people who were perhaps older than you were. The conversation would often come around and regards what their fund was doing, whether it was performing well.

So, everyone got a statement annually and would start to talk about it, compare what they had and that would vary obviously, depending on terms of employment, how long people have worked in the job, et cetera. But it was always something that was there. And I think through both careers, as I've outlined, superannuation played an important part because it was the financial backing that I had that was going to get me where I want. I've always had goals, and I set myself goals.

And even at the age of 72, I still set myself goals. I never say I just want to sit down and vegetate. I intend to live life the best I can and to its fullest. So it's important I look at it, and superannuation still is very important to me today. I think Carolyn and myself are very similar in that we're lucky that having the stint with the public service, obviously, we have defined benefits, super. And also we do have the private super as well.

As far as income streams go, we have the benefit of receiving sort of from both ways and we've thrown ours together and it gives us a comfortable lifestyle, so it's very important. And we find ourselves talking to our younger friends, our family as well. We constantly talk about the importance of superannuation, how they should be doing things, whether it's salary sacrificing or whatever.

It's a conversation piece we have. And I think AustralianSuper recently held a session at Jeff Shed World Trade Centre and we brought along Carolyn's brother, who had recently retired. And he probably...

Carolyn: He knew nothing.

Jeff: No, well, he knew what we'd told him and probably that wasn't gospel to him.

Carolyn: He didn't trust us.

Shane: You got him there, that's the first thing?

Jeff: We got him there and it was good to sit back because we feel we have a good knowledge of superannuation and it was good for him to sit back and hear what his future is. So, he's quite comfortable with it. But I often say, don't work too long, because we have that other thing we need to have in life, a lot of people think you need money, but you also need health.

All the money in the world won't help you if you don't have reasonable health. So the important thing is, as we age, to pick a point where you can stop work and start a new life, because that's what you do. The minute you stop work, you start a new life.

Carolyn: I think that people don't realise that super is there to be enjoyed.

Shane: Yeah, 100%.

Carolyn: I think some people actually think, "Oh, I got a bucket of money, oh, I better keep it." But it's actually there to give you a wonderful lifestyle, because when you're busy working, accumulating that super, you can't actually do what you really want to do all the time, because you have commitments, you have children, you have mortgages, you have a whole lot of stuff.

And so you can't actually fulfil the dreams that you've got. And so that superannuation can actually give you the opportunity to fulfil some of those dreams and aspirations, whether that be travel or whatever it be. As Jeff and I, we always talk about, the super gives you opportunities, if you can look at it as a decent asset, like most of us have a house. And the next best thing is really your superannuation, because, as we all know, it came in for everyone in the 1990s.

But people, they just don't seem interested in it. And yet it can do such a wonderful thing for you if you look at it in all the different opportunities. Like Jeff said, he did transition to retirement. That was a great little thing. I had basically no super when I started at the tax office and I went to a financial adviser in the city and I said to that person, how am I going to get super? How am I going to get enough money?

Because obviously, being at the tax office such a short time, you don't build up enough money to retire. Because I had a goal of retiring at about 64. And he said, okay, if you salary sacrifice this amount of money every fortnight, and in this amount of time, you will have $150,000. I go, oh, yeah right. Yeah right. And I watched it, and it was incredible. It was just building up and building up and building up.

And that was one of the best things I ever did, actually, was to go and get some financial advice. Even though we've played in super and we've both accountants and we're all sorts of stuff, we still went and got advice to see the best way forward. For me, particularly because Jeff was different. He had a different super. And so that was a really good thing I did, and I got my goal, and it was amazing. So I was thrilled when I got there.

Shane: I've just sat here for the last five minutes listening to you both and what you have just demonstrated and talked about your experience and the influence on others is exactly the purpose of why super is here, but also the importance of the engagement piece. And so you both had that, I guess, whether it be fortune or thoughts coming from others. So your mother told you about super.

You working, Jeff, in the banking environment helped. And so that first step of understanding the engagement, and you made the point, Carolyn, about a lot of people don't take an interest, and a lot of it is people don't know. They think, oh, it gets deducted every pay. And I don't actually see it.

So it's not like an active investment. And we tell people, if that was your salary, you'd know where your money was. And where it's invested, and even your comment that you made about spending money in retirement. So it's so important. We talk about the working life is the saving part, and the retirement bit is about taking the pay.

So your salary stops from your employer, and then you start taking the pay and you got to spend it. It's your money. I don't think we could have said it any better than the way the two of you have just said it. So, well done and thank you. So, Jeff, when you finished up at the bank after 30 years, eight months and 21 days, approximately, you obviously kept your super in intact and then invested it outside the super.

Jeff: Yes, Shane. I rolled it over at the time, and it remains, it still remains there today, actually. I think one thing if I can just pick up on something you just mentioned, Shane too, I think superannuation, it's a thing that doesn't just stop when you stop work, it's a product that's been built that there's so many uses for it because as we age and we all age we have the people who go through the opportunities of being able to downsize their homes and there's government allowances there, benefits there that you can place money into super, that have limits on it, but you can do that. You also have the opportunity if you wish to go back and do a little bit of work, you can earn some income.

Shane: Carolyn waved at everyone there.

Jeff: Which is outside and Carolyn and I have dipped our toe in that roughly twelve months ago, we went back and...

Carolyn: We're mail sorters.

Jeff:  We're mail sorters for Australia Post.

Carolyn: Dandenong South Post Office Mail Centre. We love it.

Jeff: And it's an opportunity, we're working in a really diverse workforce. It's a great work environment. Carolyn and I have a bit of a contest. We're on barcode.

Carolyn: Who's going to do the most sorting!

Jeff: Barcode sorters, they're called, and the barcode sorters put through 33,000 letters an hour.

Shane: Really?

Jeff: So it's a matter of whether you can keep the machine running smoothly and without stopping.

Carolyn: And when we started last year, because we are the oldest there, we start at 7:00am. And you got to get there ten minutes early and do your warm up exercises. And then you get to your workstations and the bell doesn't ring. But it's not like that. Well, we're casuals. We went on for the Christmas mail rush, so it was either that or working for Dan Murphy. We thought we would drink all of our pay, so we thought we'd better...

Shane: You’d want some cash; you don't want to get paid in goods.

Carolyn: So we thought we'd better go and work for Australia Post. And we had a friend that actually worked in the postal service and we said, would they really want us oldies? He said, you're fit and healthy. He said, they will love you, too. So we just worked for the four weeks before Christmas, so we thought we'd finished. That was it, done and dusted. And they said, oh, no, you can come back next year, Jeff and I said, "We're retired, we don't need to come back and work."

"But you're pretty good." And I go, "Oh, okay." And then they used to say to Jeff in the afternoon, do you go home and sleep? It was from, like, 7:00am to midday. It's just a five-hour shift, so we're going from being executives in a public service to working in a factory sorting mail. It was incredible. We loved it.

There's machines going around and parcels up here, and it's noisy. And it was just something that we'd never, ever been involved in. And that was where we got into AustralianSuper, because Australia Post uses AustralianSuper. Some people used to say, why are you two working?

I said, "We're retired, but we thought we would just do a little bit of work to help the workforce." Oh, so you know a bit about super, do you?

Shane: Yeah, look out.

Carolyn: So, everybody started asking, how much do you need to retire? We go, well, there's no answer to that one. And so it was really good, wasn't it, Jeff, that we were able to say to people, well, think about, what are you earning now? Is that enough? You're not going to pay tax once you get this age, and do you want to go and buy a new car? Do you want to go on lots of trips? There's nothing, one figure does not fit everyone.

Are you single? Are you a couple? Have you got children at home? You're paying university? So, go on a website. There might be some tools that you can have a look at. So we actually found ourselves having a lot of fun, but also able to share some of our knowledge. Wasn't it?

Shane: Ambassadors.

Carolyn: Mentoring. Oh, well, we love it. We just love life. We just can't get enough.

Shane: We're picking that up. With the Australia Post work, what was the motivator to do that? Was it monetary? Was it activity? Was it a bit of both?

Jeff: No. I was reading a newspaper article that said they couldn't get workers, so I think of it, because we'd been out of the workforce for a number of years, it was the opportunity to go back and have a look at what the workplace was like today, almost a decade on.

Carolyn: So, it's really strange, isn't it, Jeff, that we, when some of our friends go, "You're doing what?" We might do two days a fortnight, do you reckon? Just to keep our hand in. And we call it fun. It probably isn't so much fun if you have to do it five days a week and you're going to stay there for ten years, that wouldn't be much fun. It's a great place. It's safe, it's secure.

Shane: Well done. Well, as you said, there's more than you're getting out of it than the monetary, it's the engagement with others and the energy that you get. So, starting to talk about the decision to retire, so how old were you, Jeff, when you retired?

Jeff: 64, I'll say 64.

Shane: And, Carolyn, you?

Carolyn: I was 59.

Shane: So you both retired about the same time?

Jeff: There was some travel planned. We planned some travel to the Kimberley and it was roughly a four week trip. And one day my boss walked up to me and said I was no longer required. I'd been working to complete a task and that task was now completed and I was no longer required. And I thought, well, it's about time I thought about stopping work. I'd worked nonstop since the age of 16, so I'd been lucky there.

And it fitted in with the trip. Carolyn, at that stage, made a decision, she was to continue working because she felt she was a little bit young. Anyway, that was fine. We went off and we received a phone call from a colleague of Carolyn's within about a week of being away and said her area had been, what was the word that was used?

Carolyn: Obliterated.

Jeff: However. Yeah, the area was no longer existent and they were planning to move Carolyn to another role in a different area. And Carolyn sort of thought about it and said, I don't really want to be moved, so can I have the offer Jeff's got? So it was shortly after, it worked out in about four weeks after.

Carolyn: I actually said, "Why should I go to work when you're at home retired?" I'm out of here... So, I retired at 59, which was amazing. The best thing we ever did, though.

Shane: So both of you had plans to work longer if the redundancy package hadn't come along?

Jeff: We felt we had financial needs to probably work a little bit longer. Part of our plan to get to our goals had been we had borrowings, et cetera, so there were some financial needs to continue to service those commitments we'd made. And we just looked at it overall and we undid things, we changed things.

There was some downsizing done in housing and we basically just moved on. We were able to just put together a package that suited us both financially and it worked out quite well. I don't think we ever look back and said it was a wrong decision. So it worked out perfectly, really.

I always say one of my things is the fact that you've worked with people who have been in the organisation from day one. They'll be there at 60 years of age and they'll think about retiring if they've got the opportunity to, 90% of them will have good health. The next decade comes along, you see the people 60 to 70, and you'll have a few ailments in the people you catch up with.

There's no one that seems to get to the 70 to 80 bracket that hasn't been given a number of some description regarding a health issue. And I think it tells me the younger you can think about retiring, I think you take that opportunity to do that so that you can have that life you've been working to put in place, to get out and enjoy the life, because it can stop very quickly for us. And if the health's taken away from us, we're unable to travel, we're unable to do much at all.

Carolyn: And we like to keep busy. So we've done heaps of volunteering work.

Shane: Yeah, tell us a bit about that.

Carolyn: I think we'd only been retired a short time, and we saw in the local newspaper a fundraiser for a young boy, and his name was Oscar, and he had major health issues, he was ten. And the club that we eventually joined, they were trying to raise funds to get a car for the family so that Oscar's wheelchair could be wheeled into the back of the van and securely fastened so Oscar could travel around with the family.

So we donated some money and then the club, it's Lions International, and we met the people there and we really liked them, so we joined and we do a lot of Bunnings barbecues, cooking the sausages, plus a lot of other fundraising work, and we got an immense amount of pleasure out of doing that.

And we've done other volunteer work as well, so that's kept us busy, and it's also opened up a new circle of friends. And so by just putting yourselves out there, sometimes this whole new world has opened up. Sometimes when you can take a step, leap of faith, it comes back many, many times more, in a pleasurable way, for yourselves.

Shane: Yeah, I mean, just hearing the story, your original decision was to make a financial contribution to assist someone in need, and then it's turned into something of fulfilment, both for you and for others and friendships and community and all those...

Carolyn: Yeah, it's been fantastic. Absolutely. And it was the best thing we ever did at the time. And then we've got other friends, friendship groups, and we don't know how we had time to go to work actually.

Shane: We hear that a lot. We hear that a lot. So, outside the charity work, family, Australia Post, tell me more about what you love doing in retirement.

Jeff: Well, the days start, we get up and go to a local aqua centre, where we get in the rehab pool, which is warmed water, and it's a bit like the old Australian barbecue. I'd say the Aussie barbecue, where the men are at one end of the pool, the ladies are at the other end of the pool, and they're talking about each other.

But it's been a group that Carolyn and I are probably the younger ones. And so again, we spend a lot of time talking about superannuation, finance with the group of friends. And it's interesting, when we talk about superannuation, Carolyn and I, I think it's fair to say our personal belief is superannuation is to be spent.

It's not there to be accrued and never spent. But it's interesting some of these people who, as I say, are a lot older than we are in years, are still accruing. So the conversation is, when are you ever going to spend.

Carolyn: So that's the start to our day. So we have our little swim. And at first I went there because I liked the water. And I said to Jeff, come on, you got to come. He goes, no, no, I'm not getting in my bathers. I said, we all feel that way, Jeff. I said, the first time you come, you'll be so self-conscious. But after that, it doesn't matter. You walk down the ramp and you get in the water, and then it's all fun.

And then we all have coffee. We might have lunch with friends there. Then we always walk at 10,000 steps a day at minimal, don't we, Jeff? And we have our Fitbit's on and it tells us when we haven't got up and we need to get up and move a little bit around. We love our little garden at home so we do our gardening and we love cooking so we always cook ourselves up a lovely meal with lots of vegetables and we try and watch a couple of the game shows in the afternoon.

What else do we do? Oh, we look after our families a lot of course, we cook for our families as well. We love having neighbours in for dinner. We have a lot of fun. That's probably our regular day. So then we love to go on trips. So, we get in the car and we drive up to Bendigo for the races or we drive up to Bendigo to see an art show or something or we used to catch the tram into the city a lot and go the Wheeler centre and go to the art galleries and we just do stuff and we never say we're bored, ever.

Shane: Coming to the end, but clearly, you're positive. You're very active and Jeff, you made the point a number of times about the importance of health and spending your money and enjoying your life while you can. Have you thought about the times where you can't maybe do the activities that you want and what you might be required to do in life, or your saving differently?

I know you said you've got the defined benefit fund from the ATO, which probably provides a level of security there. Is there any thought on that?

Jeff: Well, the other thing I think, Shane, that this is not financial advice, but the other thing I think to always remember is with superannuation there is a risk. It's a financial investment. We're reliant upon AustralianSuper to look after the money. But if you choose to spend it on whatever it may be, on travel or new car or cars, new home or whatever, we do have a government pension system which is in place and which can sort of supplement your living and it's designed to at least meet reasonable living.

It might not meet your full needs, but I think that's an important part to keep in mind. I can probably say up front, Carolyn and I aren't eligible for any assistance, but those people, if you plan it, if you wish to plan it that way, you can sort of benefit off both, have your own superannuation plus the government topping up.

Carolyn: I suppose we always talk about finances. We've always, from the time we got together, were upfront about it. I think sometimes problems can happen when people maybe are uncomfortable talking about their finances with people or their partner, even the new partner. And so we've been upfront and we do talk about it if something happens to our health or to each other, what will we do?

So those conversations are important to have, and they should be flexible. Like, things can change. You can't just say, we're going to do this and set it in stone, because situations change. We always promise each other would never put each other in care.

We've made a promise, so that's going to be a challenge in itself if we ever get to the point where we need to look after each other that well. But I think we're always thinking about things like that. You don't just leave something. You have to keep coming back to it, like a will. Like, when you make a will, you shouldn't just make a will and forget about it because things change. And so you need to always come back and revisit it. What are, you know, can I do something like, as Jeff said, we're different.

Jeff actually has his super in Growth still. I'm a Balanced lady. When the GFC hit, Jeff's super went down and then it went up. He goes, see, I told ya. I told ya. It's beaten yours. And so we actually compare each other's super. "You're doing better than me - No, I'm doing better than you." But we don't look at it daily. Of course we don't. But we might look at it probably, reckon we look at it about once a month. We'd look at our balances and see what we're doing.

Like when Covid hit, I was like, oh, should I put it in cash? That's absolutely wrong thing to do. But I had it ready and I thought, nah, don't do that, just leave it. I read and listen to all of the advice about switching between Growth and Balanced and Cash so I just left it in Balanced and it was all fine. It all worked out in the end. It went down and went up, went down and up. And I think that's what people need to look at as well.

If you look at it in a short time frame, you'll often see the variances in quite a dramatic uplift. One thing that's good about super is that we've got ours in pension phase so therefore you're not paying your 15% tax that you pay if it's in accumulation. But if you ever want something out, like if you want to buy a car or you want to go on a massive holiday, you can just ring up AustralianSuper or fill in a form, and within a couple of days, that bucket of money that you wanted out is in your bank account.

It's absolutely brilliant that you can just take out your 5%, or depending on what age you are, the fixed amount, and then if you need more money, you can access it. So it's a pretty flexible tool.

Shane: And again, when it's in retirement and when meet preservation, it is your money. So, yes, the income streams are there to help you with that steady income, to help you live. But at any time, you can access the money. So, people sometimes aren't aware of that. Or as Jeff's alluded to, some of his mates at the pool don't want to do that.

But it is, it's your money and you can access it anytime you like. Now, normally, what I would do at the end of these conversations is ask you for a tip for any of our listeners. I think you provided an amazing insight and tips for our listeners, both on super and retirement, but on life in general. And I've thoroughly enjoyed meeting you both.

And you're actually an inspiration around not only how you've planned for retirement, but just the way you're living now and the values you hold to the community and the enjoyment that I can see in both of you. So, thank you so much for joining us today. I'm sure our listeners will get a lot out of hearing your story. So, Carolyn and Jeff, thank you so much.

Carolyn: You're very welcome.

Jeff: Thank you, Shane.

Shane: Thank you for joining us today. If you're an AustralianSuper member and would like to join us and share your story or have a question or topic you would like us to cover, then click the link in our show notes to get in touch. If you enjoyed this podcast, subscribe and share with your friends and family. My name is Shane Hancock and I look forward to the next episode where we'll hear from another AustralianSuper member. See you next time.