When can you retire?

Welcome back to your weekly three-minute dose of money wisdom. We hope you’ve all enjoyed a nice break and you’re ready to be that little bit more awesome with your money in 2026.

We all know the power of the internet and we all use it every day. And most of us know our internet use enables the collection of lots of data.

One thing Google knows is what everyone is searching for. So, here’s a little test for you to put financial planning in perspective…

Go to Google and simply type, ‘when can I’. Google’s predictive search will anticipate what you might be looking for.

You’ll quickly see things like the following:

• When can I access my super
• When can I access my super in Australia
• When can I retire
• When can I withdraw my super

Google Trends data also shows that when kids go back to school at the start of each year, there is a surge in searches for ‘how much do you need to retire’. This surge is repeated during the Easter holidays, at the end of the financial year, and during the September school holidays. Read into that what you will.

As you have probably already determined, retirement is something most of us are dreaming of. However, there’s a big difference between dreaming of retirement and actually planning ahead for the retirement you dream of and making it a reality.

So, we thought we'd give you a few questions to ponder…

• What are you currently doing to put yourself in the best position possible for retirement?
• Do you actually have a plan or are you effectively flying blind? NOTE: Hope is not a plan.
• Are you on top of your most important retirement funding tool - your superannuation?
• How many pay cheques do you have left between now and when you want to retire?
• And what are you going to do with each and every one of them?

If you’ve been following us for a while, you’ll know we’re passionate about helping people fill in the gaps. The biggest regret of people over the age of 65 is not saving more for retirement, so we’re on a mission to help people try and avoid that regret.

Saving doesn’t mean having to live on baked beans. As a starting point, it often means making no sacrifices at all, simply making sure your super is invested with ultra low fees and invested in a diversified mix of growth investments. Get these things right and your super will already be doing a lot of the heavy lifting for you.

From there, you can see where you can save money in your day-to-day lives and determine how best to utilise it. Often people jump straight to paying more off the mortgage, but that isn’t always the most effective strategy (a story for another day). You can also be investing both inside and outside super, possibly even borrowing to invest to supercharge wealth creation.

To paraphrase an old proverb… Retirement helps those who help themselves.

Cheers,

Dan and Dave