The Financial Reality of Being a (Moderately) Wealthy Retiree in Australia

Unless you are quite wealthy, not well organised or under 60, you shouldn't be paying any income tax in this phase of life. The following breakdown is based on my expected income and tax figures for the 2026-27 tax year.*

First, since transferring the maximum allowed into an "account based pension", I should get a tax-free pension of $81k per year. This is the minimum allowed distribution to maintain the tax-free status of my pension account. For my employer superannuation, that is as simple as just setting up a payment of $2,750 each month from the account. For our self-managed super fund (SMSF), I have to make sure I have enough cash in our Macquarie Cash Management Account to pay the $4,000 a month pension. Currently, I have around one year's worth of cash there. The SMSF will still be paying tax on Moominmama's account, my small remaining accumulation account, and concessional contributions. More on that later.

Then I expect to earn to around $100k net outside super, which would put me in the 32% tax bracket. This includes quite a lot of capital gains that I plan to take this year before the new CGT regime comes into effect. To reduce my tax liability, I will make the maximum allowed concessional superannuation contribution. I call this a no-brainer contribution, as being retired, I could take it out again the next year. The contribution will reduce my taxable income by $32,500.**

The contribution is taxed at 15% in the SMSF. But as that is less than 32%, it is a win, and that is not income tax. 

On the remaining $67k, there might be about $13.5k in tax payable. But I expect to have around $20k in franking credits and early stage venture capital offsets. These more than wipe out my tax liability, resulting in a tax refund of $6.5k adding to my income. So, I will have negative income tax. I have then $165k in disposable income, which almost covers our expected expenses of about $180k. The remainder will be covered from Moominmama's earnings.***

In order to pay income tax, you would probably need to be at least in the 37% marginal tax bracket–more than $135k of income outside superannuation. This is assuming you have a supply of franking credits and do a little borrowing etc. to generate deductions.

If you are a retired couple, you can double all these figures for a household income. 

* In Australia, the tax year runs from 1 July to 30 June. All numbers are Australian Dollars.

** You can make concessional contributions up to age 67 without a work test. But after age 65 the minimum required pension jumps to 5% of the account value. So, you might want to reduce capital gains realisations.

*** I won't exactly spend the capital gain, as the proceeds of those transactions will largely be reinvested. First of all, the part of the proceeds that is the original investment doesn't enter income, and only 50% of the gain is recorded as income under the current rules. But I could spend the $165k and only need $15k from Moominmama. 

Cancelling Moominmama's Insurance

I cancelled life and disability insurance on Moominmama's superannuation account. Here in Australia there are number of different types of insurance that are tied to your retirement account (health insurance isn't one of them!).

Her job will end in either 1 week (fast track) or 8 weeks (slow track). By law, superannuation funds cancel all insurance if there haven't been any contributions for 16 months. I did not know this till now. The insurance is costing us more than $200 per month. I don't see the point in continuing to pay. Not being a big fan of insurance in general, I probably should have cancelled ages ago.

I think she should take the fast track–quit in one week's time and get a bigger redundancy payout–rather than the slow track, which means working another 7 weeks and getting a smaller payout, but earning salary, superannuation contributions, and leave entitlements during that time. The fast track pays about $1,500 more and you get the interest on getting the redundancy payment earlier. But for unclear reasons she is leaning towards the slow track, even though she essentially has no work to do. I told her she can do this if she wants as $2,500 is not that much money 😂. She did this analysis using Gemini, which produced about the same result as I calculated and argued it said the slow track was better. But that was ignoring tax, which is higher on the slow track. Gemini did include the tax on a separate line and then on the final line gave the net result.

Progress on Pension Restart

Unisuper restarted my pension with $823k. I was now looking to restart my SMSF pension with $1.2 million to reach the full transfer balance cap I am allowed. But I noticed in the weekly email from the Sydney Morning Herald–"Real Money"–that there could be a problem in contributing to a super fund and making withdrawals in the same year, if you want to claim a tax deduction for the contribution. I just contributed $32,500, that I was planning to claim on my 2026-27 tax returns. Now if I move money from the accumulation account, which this was contributed to, to a new pension account, I will end up distributing some of this money back to myself as a pension this year. So, I asked my fund administrator, SuperGuardian, if this would be a problem. If it is, maybe I need to take it out again first, if not, we can go ahead with restarting the pension.

Restarting My Unisuper Pension

I put in a request to restart my Unisuper (industry/employer superannuation) account based pension with a larger number. The idea is to hit the total of $2.023 million between Unisuper and our SMSF, which is my transfer balance cap. The advantage is to pay less superannuation tax, the downside is that the money gets paid out of superannuation into the taxable environment. 

Originally, I started a TTR pension with $600k. But as I have made additional superannuation contributions in the meantime, the accumulation account has been growing. Because all of the existing pension is rolled over into the new account and investment values change daily and you need to specify exactly how much to transfer from accumulation, it is hard to hit a precise number, but I also added a note that I wanted to reach $823k. Then I can restart the SMSF pension with a round $1.2 million. But no big deal, I can always start with a not round number. I now have all the $97.5k contributions for this year in the SMSF. 

You can see the effect of the new superannuation contributions in this graph. There is a jump in cumulative superannuation contributions and a reduction in current savings. The big spike in current savings was the redundancy payment. Superannuation profits are at a new high, while current accounts remain depressed mainly because of gold exposure.

New Transfer Balance Caps

From 1 July the ATO is raising the transfer balance cap for superannuation to $2.1 million. This is the maximum amount of money that you can transfer into a tax-free pension account. There is a twist (as everything about superannuation is unnecessarily complicated). If you already started a tax-free pension, you only get a partial increase in your personal cap. ATO has already posted these new caps in MyGov. Mine is $2.023 million, up from $2 million. My total superannuation balance was already about $2k over that on 30 June. Despite that, I am contributing more money to superannuation. This is because the capital gains rate on the money that will have to remain in my "accumulation account" will be only 10% vs. a 32% minimum going forward outside superannuation. Even if my superannuation eventually exceeded $3 million, the capital gains rate will only be 20% on the returns attributed to the portion of the account above $3 million.

How much can I contribute? You can only make non-concessional contributions if your total superannuation balance is below the general transfer balance cap of $2.1 million. Your personal cap doesn't matter for this! If you have more than $1.97 million in super as of 30 June this year but less than $2.1 million, you can contribute up to $130k. But, if you already used the "bring forward rule" in the previous financial year, this is reduced to $120k. I already used $55k of that amount last year, so I can contribute $65k in non-concessional contributions plus $32.5k in concessional contributions this year. If my total balance is over $2.1 million at the end of this financial year (30 June 2027), I won't be able to make any non-concessional contributions after that.

Starting the Big Restructure

I have started restructuring our portfolio in response to the new tax laws. The first step is to make contributions to our SMSF's Interactive Brokers account. I plan to use up all the available contributions. The step after that will be to sell shares in the PMGOLD gold ETF at CommSec and then transfer some of that money back to our offset account to replace the contributions to the SMSF. We'll then buy a futures contract in the SMSF, reduce our margin loan at CommSec, which has a very high interest rate, and also make some new investments. This first stage will only sell less than half of our gold. 

2026-27 Pension Payments and Contribution Limits

If you have a tax free superannuation pension in Australia, you must make minimum pension distributions each tax year in order to maintain the tax free status. Between ages 60 and 65, you need to pay out 4% per year.

In 2025-26 I paid out $3,150 a month from my SMSF pension account and $2,000 a month from my Unisuper pension account. The SMSF returned about 12.5% for the year, so that should be the increase in the value of the pension account before taking into account the pension payments I made. I am estimating I need to pay $3,400 a month this year. I won't know for sure till near the end of the financial year, when SuperGuardian have completed the accounts for 2025-26 (the deadline for submitting a tax return is much later for SMSFs than for individuals). I might need to make an extra payment then. 

I could reduce the Unisuper payments a little. However, HSBC require me to deposit $2,000 per month in my account to get 2% cashback on tapped payments. I think this tax free $120 or so is worth it (purchases over $100 don't get cashback) for paying out an extra $900 for the year. 

In any case, I can still recontribute this money. Because my 30 June 2026 total superannuation balance is less than the new $2.1 million transfer balance cap, I can still make non-concessional contributions this year. I already brought some forward to 2025-26 and so the limit remaining is $65k. I can still make concessional contributions up to age 67. The annual cap is now $32,500. So, I can make $97.5k in super contributions this year.

 

Cheque from the British Government

So, I made this year's U.K. state pension contribution. Today I found this in my mail:

A paper cheque from the British government! They write: "Our records show that a refund/payment is due and a cheque for the sum of £15.25 is attached below." I don't have a British bank account anymore, and Commonwealth Bank here will no longer process foreign cheques. They haven't since 2022. Cheques are being phased out in Australia, anyway. When they did used to process foreign cheques, I imagine it would have cost at least AUD 25 to do it. I can't see why the UK government don't just credit this towards my next year of contributions.

How Can You Run Out of USD 6 Million?

Financial Independence asked on my recent post about the 4% rule:

"I need to have more insights on how somebody can run out of almost 6 million dollars. Why and how would you even spend 180,000 a year"

Thank you for the inspiration for another post! First of all, this is a simulation where you spend 4% in the first year and it then increases at the rate of inflation. The expected rate of return is 8.3% a year with a monthly standard deviation of 1.86% (that is low volatility)* and the inflation rate is 4% per year, which is the current rate in Australia. Failure is defined as having negative money left apart from our house (currently about USD 950k of the total) in 2060, when Moominmama would be 85. The model does include getting the Australia age pension when the money falls below the asset test level and the UK state pension. You could still sell the house, but that would reduce the Australian age pension–owner occupied property is not in the asset test. With 4% inflation there is a 10% probability of failure. There is about a 20% probability of having less than AUD 1 million left. With only 3% inflation but the same rate of return the failure rate falls to 3%.

So, this doesn't say that we would actually spend USD 180k per year. It is a thought exercise. 

On the other hand, to see what we actually spent, you can check this post with almost 40 years of data and my latest post on 2024-25 spending, which also gives recent years. We spent about AUD 175k (c. USD 125k) according to this last year. It includes mortgage interest but not principal in spending. It doesn't include taxes. These will be a lot lower than they were in recent years, but you also have to pay those out of your portfolio. I think we can easily get to USD 150k including taxes going forward. Education is the biggest expense apart from taxes. If we stay in private education it is going to rise steeply. It is around USD 30k per year at the moment. Apart from this we don't live a luxurious lifestyle–for example, our car was built 22 years ago, though we will probably buy a new one soon.

* The investment returns are the averages over 30 years of the target portfolio. They are better than our own track record, because we did so poorly before 2012.  

4% Rule Failure Rate

I have been discussing retirement planning with my brother who is two years younger than me. As a result of these discussions, I have added stochastic investment returns to my projection model as well as the Australian Age Pension (which is means tested) and I increased the planning horizon to 2060 from 2050. Moominmama would be 85 in 2060. Previously, I stress tested the projection by using very low constant rates of return.

Running my baseline spending scenario–linear growth in real spending with stepdowns of 1/6 after each child finishes university–it is very rare to run out of money by 2060. This is defined as negative net worth beside our house. In 100 runs there are no failures.

But if we spend according to the 4% rule, we run out of money by 2060 about 10% of the time, though rarely by 2050. This is using the monthly returns distribution over the last 30 years of the benchmark target portfolio as investment returns. In many more cases, real (2026 dollars) net worth is below AUD 1 million by 2060 and falling fast. If I use our own historical returns–which were very bad before 2012–the failure rate is around 40%. With our returns and linear spending the failure rate is around 25%.  

This graph compares the target portfolio, our track record, Australian shares, the MSCI World Index, and gold:

Spending according to a 3% rule and the target portfolio returns has no failures in 100 runs, though a few near misses. 

So, we need to keep our spending well below 4% or increase returns if we don't want to run out of money.

Just Cancelled My Life and Disability Insurance

I hadn't realised I was still paying life and disability insurance premia post-retirement. I just cancelled them online, saving about AUD 700 per year. The amount you pay is fixed or rising with inflation, but the coverage that you get falls as you get older and stops entirely for disability at 70 and death at 75.

More Good Venture Capital News

I recently reported that my investment in the Aura VF2 fund was now in profit. Now, our Angellist investments through Unpopular Ventures have swung into profitability too:

 

There is a 3 month lag in reporting values. We invest in their Rolling Fund as well as individual firms. One of those firms is now reporting that it is worth 9.5x the value I invested at. On the other hand, two companies I invested in have effectively gone to zero. While I am excited to not be losing money any more, our overall IRR on our Angellist investments is only 2.76% so far. 

But this is an AUD 60k bump in value that makes a substantive change to our numbers for 2025. It pushes up our 2025 rate of return to 9.68% in AUD terms or 18.14% in USD terms. That puts us just ahead of the S&P 500 for the year:

The "retirement number" rises to AUD 7.011 million. Total net worth at the end of the year Was AUD 8.252 million, which is comfortably ahead of the base case net worth projection of AUD 8.2 million. Also, the private equity return for the year roses to 9.3% from 4.7%! The annual contribution to total return from private equity was 1.8% instead of 0.9%. Unpopular Ventures returned AUD 40,118 for the year, making it our 8th best investment.

How Well Did Your Super Fund Do in 2025?

The Australian reports on superannuation funds' performance for calendar year 2025. Neither of our employer funds - Unisuper and PSS(AP) - made the top ten. Unisuper Balanced is in the top 10 for the last 10 years. The average return for 2025 was between 8.8% and 9.3% depending on the source. I assume this is for accumulation funds. I estimate that Unisuper made 7.8% pre-tax or around 6.8% post-tax. PSS(AP) made 10.5% or 9.2% post-tax. On the other hand, our SMSF returned -6.1% pre-tax :( This is mostly because of its outperformance in 2024 (34.0%) and cryptocurrency coming back down to Earth in 2025.

December 2025 Report

December was the first post-retirement month. I am changing the layout of these reports to remove investment performance over the last five years and add in the income and spending report I dropped back in 2018. This is because I have a new focus on making sure spending stays within our budget, whereas it is hard to change investment performance over a five year period on a monthly basis. I will report on longer term investment performance in the annual review as usual.

In December, the Australian Dollar rose from USD 0.6550 to USD 0.6674 meaning that USD investment returns are better than AUD investment returns. We had a good month in terms of investment return. Stock markets were slightly up with a lot of intramonth volatility (total returns including dividends):

US Dollar Indices

MSCI World Index (gross): 1.07%

S&P 500: 0.06%

HFRI Hedge Fund Index: 0.26% (forecast)

Australian Dollar Benchmarks

ASX 200: 1.36%

Target Portfolio: -0.19% (forecast - depends on HFRI result)

Australian 60/40 benchmark: 0.22%

We gained 1.28% in Australian Dollar terms or 3.28% in US Dollar terms. So we outperformed all benchmarks apart from the ASX 200, which we got fairly close to.  These returns are preliminary, as we won't get results from Aura Venture for more than a month, and Angellist report with a three month lag. I was curious about how much I end up revising my monthly performance figures when all the data is available. Here are the results for the last year:

"Original" is the rate of return reported in this blog and "Current" is my current estimate. In the last year, on average I overestimated the rate of return initially. On the other hand, I initially underestimated the return for last December but as you can see I have already trimmed this December's number a little.

The SMSF again outperformed, returning 0.62% beating Unisuper (0.37%) and PSS(AP) (0.40%). 

Here is a report on the performance of investments by asset class:

The asset class returns are in currency neutral terms as the rate of return on gross assets and do not include investment expenses such as margin interest, and so the total differs from the Australian Dollar returns on net assets mentioned above. Only US stocks lost money. Futures had the highest rate of return with Australian Dollar Futures contributing the most. Hedge funds made the largest overall contribution.

Things that worked well this month:

• As mentioned above, most hedge funds did well with Tribeca Global Resources (TGF.AX) gaining AUD 42k and Regal Investment Fund (RF1.AX) 17k. Gold, 3i (III.L), and Cadence Opportunities (CDO.AX) all gained between AUD 9 and 10k.

What really didn't work:

• Only five investments lost money and no investment lost more than AUD 10k.

We moved towards our target allocation. Our actual allocation currently looks like this:

About 65% of our portfolio is in what are often considered to be alternative assets: real estate, art, hedge funds, private equity, gold, and futures. A lot of these are listed investments or investments with daily liquidity, so our portfolio is not as illiquid as you might think.

Moominmama receives employer superannuation contributions every two weeks. We also make monthly concessional contributions to Moominmama's superannuation to reach the annual cap on contributions. I made the last USD 10k contribution to the Unpopular Ventures Rolling Fund this month. There will still be capital calls from Aura Venture Fund II and III. I am receiving monthly TTR pension payments from both Unisuper and our SMSF. I will decide how much to recontribute to superannuation later in the financial year. 

This was a quieter month in terms of transactions:

• I sold 5k WAM Capital (WAM.AX) shares.
• I bought net 1k shares of WCM Global Quality (WCMQ.AX). 
• I sold 250 Perth Mint Gold ETF (PMGOLD.AX) shares. 
• I sold all our position in WAM Strategic Value (WAR.AX, 100k shares) in order to fund the 1:1 entitlement offer for the L1 Global Long Short Fund (GLS.AX, formerly Platinum Capital, 85k new shares). 

Here are the income and spending accounts for this month:

Results are shown separately for retirement and non-retirement accounts as well as housing, which nowadays doesn't have much activity. The grey lines are additional notes. Total investment income is split into investment income before exchange rate moves and the contribution of exchange rates. Other income is non-investment income including salaries, employer superannuation contributions, and net tax returns. Investment income is shown pre-tax. Tax credits include franking credits on Australian Dividends and imputed tax on superannuation returns. These are taken away from investment income to get changes in actual net worth. Inheritances include gifts from relatives. Saving is from non-investment income, transfers, and inheritances.

This month, salary hit a record number as I received the redundancy payment of more than AUD 1/4 million. Spending was fairly average at AUD 12k. There was a larger than normal transfer out of superannuation as I made excess concessional superannuation contributions in the previous tax year, which I withdrew from Unisuper. We received a cash gift from Muminmama's father (counted as inheritance). As a result of all this, net worth increased by AUD 347k, almost all of it in non-retirement accounts. Now, I will have to decide how much to contribute to superannuation. I want to hit the goal of transferring AUD 2 million to a tax free pension account. I also want to max out the concessional contribution cap of AUD 30k for this year to help reduce my taxes, which will be very high because of the redundancy payment. The payment itself has low taxes but it pushes most of the rest of my income into the top tax bracket.

To keep things simple, I will use net worth at the end of this month as the "retirement number". Net worth at the end of December not including our house is AUD 6.875 million. Using the 4% rule means we could dissave AUD 275k per annum. Our spending is a lot below that. Total net worth is AUD 8.112 million.

Required Withdrawal Rate

Following up from the discussion on the safe withdrawal rate here is the history of our required withdrawal rate. This is the past twelve months spending divided by net worth minus housing equity, assuming that we have no other sources of income:

 

Retirement first looked possible in 2018 when we received the inheritance. Without that, we would likely be only just on the cusp of the 4% SWR currently. But then expenditure rose around the birth of our second child and the stock market fell in the pandemic and we went back above the 4% level. There was a voluntary redundancy scheme at my workplace in 2020, but I decided I couldn't afford to do it. 

Since then, we dropped back to a fairly consistent 3% till recently. I was waiting for another voluntary redundancy scheme though I thought about going part-time from age 60. Early this year there was a new scheme and  I submitted my application. Then I panicked and didn't take it up. Meanwhile, markets rebounded and we are now near 2%. My employer reopened the scheme and this time I am doing it. 

My forward projections assume that real expenditure will continue to grow linearly, though actually it looks like it has flattened out:

 

I do assume step downs in spending when each of my children reach age 21. In my worst case scenario, if we only made zero real investment returns after 2026, then our net worth would about halve in real terms by 2050. Our required withdrawal at that point would be 5.5%. That assumes that we don't downsize our house or cut spending.

In the best case scenario–historic rates of return of 8.4% nominal per year–we would have 4 times our current net worth in real terms in 2050.

Something people in the FI community don't talk about is that if you annuitise your wealth you can then withdraw much more than 4%. Maybe 6-7%. This is because you pool longevity risk with other people. 

 

Retirement Update

So, I now have a copy of the contract for my retirement and severance package, following it previously being approved. I will hand in the document in person on Monday. I will still be employed for the next six weeks. The severance package follows a standard formula and amounts to about AUD 255k after tax. That would be similar to working another two years full time. I think Financial Samurai would approve: 

1. I reached financial independence - I will only need to spend less than 2% of net worth initially. That is Ed Thorp's retirement rule. Still, I don't go 100% in equities. I don't want to go through the GFC holding all equities again. I think it is possible to get equity-like returns with much lower volatility.
2. I'm retiring early - at 60, which is less than 67 and very early for people in academia. 
3. I got a severance package.
4. My wife is still working part time. 😎

My life won't change that much, actually. I won't have to teach or go to meetings I don't want to go to. I won't feel guilty about doing other stuff when I am supposed to be doing my job. Like right now 😀 But I wasn't scheduled to teach again till next July, once I finish this year's teaching in late November. I was actually scheduled for 2 months leave in December and January, to use up my "leave balance". But I will still be supervising PhD students, doing journal editing for the next year, and doing some research stuff.

What will change at Moomin Valley? I will probably going back to tracking net worth regularly, as this will be an important number. Obviously, I have been tracking it, but I haven't been reporting on it in the blog except on the NetworthShare widget. The "retirement number" - net worth at the end of November, plus the severance that I will get in December will also be important to keep in mind.

P.S. 

Interesting discussion with Karsten Jeske, where he admits that he hasn't sold any shares and would find it difficult to do, despite all his research on safe withdrawal rates:

 

No-Brainer Retirement Contribution

In Australia, if you are between the ages of 60 and 67 and you are retired, you can make concessional retirement contributions even if you aren't working at all.* Why would you want to do that?

A concessional contribution is one you can deduct from your income on your tax return. However, the superannuation fund does have to pay 15% tax on the contribution. If your marginal income tax rate is in the 16% bracket–18% including the Medicare Levy–or above, you will save on total tax paid. For example, if you have a paid-off investment property, you might be earning $30k a year in rent. If you make a $12k contribution to super, you will wipe out your income tax bill. Obviously, this saves a lot more tax if you are in a higher income tax bracket.

Now here is the no-brainer bit. As you are retired, if you want, you can turn around the next day and take the money out of super again! 

Maybe you need the money. But even if you don't need it now, unless you stop your existing tax free pension account and start a new one, which is a hassle, earnings will be taxed at 15% in super, vs. the 0% rate you have engineered outside super. If you've already hit the transfer balance cap, then you won't be able to make your tax free pension account any bigger.

Assuming I retire later this year, I am planning to make a concessional retirement contribution to top my concessional contributions for the year up to $30k. As I will probably be in the 30% tax bracket this tax year, the savings will be worthwhile. But I probably won't take it out again right away, unless I have already hit the transfer balance cap.

* After age 67 you need to meet the "work test" to make concessional contributions. You can continue to make concessional contributions even if you have more than $2 million in superannuation. You can't make non-concessional contributions after you reach that level.

New Thoughts on Keeping Superannuation in Accumulation Mode

A year ago, I wrote a post about whether you should initially keep your superannuation in accumulation mode when you retire. I thought that if you don't need to spend the money in your superannuation accounts right away, it doesn't make sense to pay out that money to sit in regular taxed investments. But I missed one key point. Dividends from what Americans call "taxable accounts" are taxable whether you spend them or not, but capital gains are only taxed if you sell. The more capital gains you realise, the higher tax bracket you are going to be in. Unless you are lucky enough to be able to live on dividends from the "taxable accounts" alone, you are going to have to realise capital gains if you don't have a superannuation pension. 

In my case, I might be able to stay in the 16% tax bracket if I don't need to realize capital gains. So, with tax free superannuation, I will pay very little tax. If I kept my superannuation in accumulation mode, I would be paying an average of 12.5% tax on earnings in superannuation and I would have to realise $80k of capital gains in "taxable accounts" instead of receiving a superannuation pension. That would push a lot of my earnings into the 30% tax bracket.* So, I am planning to put my superannuation accounts into tax-free pension mode and pay out the minimum distribution of 4% a year until I am 65.

With my wife still earning around $45k a year in salary for now, I might not need to do much in the way of realising capital gains outside superannuation.

What about just spending the redundancy payment for the first couple of years? Some of that is going to go into superannuation and the rest will sit in our offset account. The more we spend it, the more mortgage interest we are going to have to pay. Despite that, it might actually make sense to spend that first, but psychologically I prefer a big cash buffer, low mortgage interest, and a steady pension coming in. I can just set and forget the pension from Unisuper.

* Of course, long-term capital gains are only taxed at half the headline tax rate, so the effective marginal rate would be 16% including the Medicare levy.  

Employer Approved My Redundancy Again

I heard yesterday that my employer approved my redundancy under this round of the voluntary redundancy scheme. So, if everything goes smoothly, I will retire 30 November, just before my 61st birthday. I would have gone on leave from 1 December anyway, in order to reduce my surplus leave entitlements.

I am already changing my accounting spreadsheets to reflect this. I have also set all my investments to pay out dividends rather than re-invest them in order to maximize cashflow.

FIRE?

The university has reopened the voluntary redundancy scheme after saying that there will be no further forced redundancies. It looks like they have increased the payout to 3 weeks pay per year or service instead of two. My simulation shows that it would be a breakeven until the end of 2028 under the assumption I work full time in 2026 and half time in 2027 and 2028. In addition, I now know that I will get a UK state pension. Using the 4% rule, that means I need to save AUD 1/2 million less than I would otherwise need to. 

We don't need to reapply if we applied previously. My previous application was approved. But I said no. So, maybe I can say yes now. Technically, I would be retiring early as I am younger than 67, even though I can get a tax free pension from my superannuation.