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Your home is worth more than $1m. But what if you can’t afford the groceries?

After decades paying off a home, most people don’t expect to spend their retirement wondering if they’ll be able to afford the weekly grocery shop. But it’s a very real situation for many older Australians – their biggest financial asset is often one that generates no income.

Wealth and income are not the same thing.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report titled Older Australians: Income and finances shows that older people were more likely to be in lower-income households by disposable income, even though their wealth was higher, mostly due to home ownership.

That wealth is sitting in the walls around them, while their available income is being squeezed by rising everyday costs. Selling up and downsizing seems like a simple answer, but it can often mean having to move away from family, friends, doctors, familiar shops and a community they have spent decades building.

Fortunately, there are several ways people can access some of that home equity without having to move. But each one comes with a different trade-off that’s important to consider when making a decision.

In this article I compared the Home Equity Access Scheme, Commercial Reverse Mortgages and Home Reversion options.

Contact us for more information.

Budget changes could make super a smarter property strategy – if you can afford it.

The federal budget’s changes to capital gains tax concessions and negative gearing have reignited a familiar Australian conversation about property, tax and wealth creation. Under the political noise is a more practical question for everyday Australians – if investment property becomes less tax-effective outside superannuation, does superannuation suddenly become the smarter place to build property wealth?

Yes, but the opportunity is limited, and not equally accessible by all.

Let’s break down why.

Superannuation has always been exceptionally tax-effective for longterm investing. Capital gains on assets held longer than 12 months are effectively taxed at 10 per cent in the accumulation phase, compared with much higher marginal tax rates outside super. Then comes the retirement phase, where earnings and capital gains on assets supporting an account-based pension can become tax-free altogether. For wealthier Australians who already own their home, have larger super balances and have the means to structure investments strategically in a self-managed super fund, super’s tax settings can offer a significant advantage over holding property personally.

While this is a compelling advantage, there are limits that make the value of investing in property in super dependent on age and stage of life. In the accumulation phase a long enough investment horizon is needed to generate capital gain for property investment. Furthermore, from July 1, 2026, Australians will only be able to transfer up to $2.1m into the retirement phase under the transfer balance cap. Beyond that, assets remain in accumulation and continue to be taxed.

In practical terms, this means the tax advantages of holding large property assets inside super are not unlimited, particularly given modern property values.

Concessional contribution caps will also limit substantial new inflows for property investment into super. Still, for wealthier Australians with larger super balances and long investment horizons, there is a meaningful opportunity in that selling property within super during accumulation generally results in less tax than selling it personally.

But this is not a strategy equally available to everyone, and it is a distinction worth making given addressing intergenerational inequity is a stated aim of the Budget reforms.

For most Australians, particularly younger workers with modest balances, using super to invest in property is considerably more difficult than headlines suggest. Borrowing inside a self-managed super fund can only occur through a Limited Recourse Borrowing Arrangement, or LRBA. These structures are heavily regulated and expensive to establish.

Lenders typically require deposits of 30 to 40 per cent, interest rates are usually higher than standard residential mortgages, and loans are generally principal-and-interest from day one. Furthermore, if you rely on concessional contributions to help service the LRBA, those contributions will still count toward your concessional contribution cap.

In other words, the barrier to entry is substantial.

The broader housing conversation matters more than the tax arbitrage conversation.

Under Australia’s retirement system, the family home remains one of the most powerful wealth-building assets available because it is exempt from the Age Pension assets test. That makes home ownership enormously valuable from both a financial security and retirement planning perspective.

For non-homeowners, the priority should still be buying a principal place of residence before trying to engineer sophisticated property strategies through super.

For years, Australia’s tax settings have encouraged investors to compete aggressively against first home buyers, often leveraging tax concessions unavailable to owner occupiers. If the Budget changes redirect some of that investment demand away from established housing stock and towards other asset classes, younger Australians may finally face a slightly less distorted market.

That would be a positive outcome.

With inflation stubborn and the prospect of further interest rate rises still in the mix, attention is turning to whether the Reserve Bank needs more than one way to cool the economy.

One idea that has resurfaced is to use compulsory superannuation as an additional tool to control inflation.

At first glance, it seems logical and I can understand the attraction. This proposal would keep the money within the household's broader wealth.

Increasing compulsory super contributions would reduce the amount of income workers have available to spend, potentially taking some heat out of demand without increasing mortgage repayments or other borrowing costs.

It would also spread the impact more broadly than interest rates, which fall particularly heavily on households carrying large debts.

The appeal is obvious, particularly at a time when there is growing concern about how much further interest rates can be pushed before the costs to households and the broader economy outweigh the benefits.

But we should be cautious about turning superannuation into another economic policy lever. If contribution rates rise, workers have less disposable income available to spend today, which could reduce consumption and potentially ease inflationary pressure in the short term.

But those funds remain in the retirement system, continue to accumulate and ultimately become available to retirees, so demand is deferred, not eliminated.

Does shifting spending from the present into the future actually solve the problem or just kick the can down the road?

Retirees are generally less exposed to mortgage interest-rate increases than working-age households and many have no income tax liabilities.

Shifting more wealth into retirement savings may just cause an even bigger conundrum for inflation down the line.

Using superannuation as an inflation management tool also risks weakening superannuation's legislated objective according to the Superannuation (Objective) Act-to preserve savings to deliver income for a dignified retirement, alongside government support, in an equitable and sustainable way.

The suggestion of a legislative framework allowing the RBA to vary the compulsory superannuation rate within a defined range, in much the same way it currently adjusts interest rates, may undermine confidence in the retirement system.

Australians have spent decades being told that superannuation is compulsory because they need to save for retirement.

If contribution rates can then be adjusted up and down according to the economic cycle, people might reasonably start to view super as something closer to a quasi-tax.

They won't necessarily accept having their disposable income lowered in this way and reduce voluntary savings and investments to compensate.

If that happens, some of the intended reduction in spending may never materialise.

A reduction in spending may not even solve the problem if inflation is being driven largely by supply constraints rather than excess demand.

Higher interest rates can discourage households from spending, but they cannot build more homes, generate additional electricity or lift productivity.

The challenge may require more targeted solutions that address the underlying constraints driving prices higher.

The debate over using compulsory superannuation as an additional tool to help bring inflation under control should be approached with great caution.

Any such policy must be assessed not only for its potential impact on short term economic conditions, but also for its broader consequences for retirement adequacy, household saving behaviour, different groups of workers and the long-term credibility of the superannuation system.

The legislated superannuation objective should remain our North Star.

We should think very carefully before repurposing superannuation to solve short-term economic challenges and, in doing so, blur the role it was designed to play.

The main aim of this research was to explore how a servant leadership style can assist technical experts as managers to become more effective leaders. Secondary objectives included exploring the leadership challenges that technical expert managers experience, the factors that make it harder or easier for a technical expert to be a servant leader and investigating to what extent servant leadership can be relevant to their context. Qualitative research through semi-structured interviews was conducted. We found that technical expert managers mostly experience interpersonal and time capacity challenges. Emerging technical experts prefer a technical expert as a manager for guidance and mentorship, making it easier for technical expert managers to assume a servant leadership style. Having an intrinsic legacy motive beyond just making a technical contribution promotes a servant leadership style. Organisational culture and an organisation’s stage in its growth cycle can make it harder or easier to adopt a servant leadership style. Our findings further confirm that servant leadership includes a purpose of empowerment, encouraging technical expert managers to delegate more. Time constraints and several interpersonal leadership challenges may be mitigated because servant leaders tend to operate from a stronger relationship domain which helps to enhance a technical expert manager’s capacity to delegate. However, given work deliverables of technical expert managers, we conclude that an appropriate balance between transformational and servant leadership might be an even more advantageous leadership approach.

Technical experts as managers and servant leaders | South African Actuarial Journal