Discussion: Retirement

You're going to be the BOM equivalent of those eccentric professors who hang around the department for years tinkering on projects and saving phd students.

My mum is still working at her long term job at 68. Her boss only retired recently well into his 70s.

Isn’t Ida Buttrose 75? She is running the ABC

Why does the upper level of USA politics come to mind. Trump, Biden, Sanders, McConnell, etc

You have not been employed long enough to develop the requisite degree of "seen it all before" to appreciate retirement. Give it time.

Blair I guess you're too young to be in the old comsuper scheme (CSS), but if by chance you are then GO FOR IT (one week before your 55th birthday)!

Problem is that the CSS 54-11 provisions depend on how well the investment portfolio is doing at the time. Now is not good for that option.
Have just experienced the first week of working from home Will reserve judgement for the moment, because the things I might have done to fill in the extra time are actively discouraged at the moment.

One benefit of people working from home - lower traffic congestion and pollution but ironically happens to be at a time with low petrol prices in Aus.

As phatmax says, all the old rules of thumb about defined benefit schemes are the obverse of sensible behaviour today. With interest rates close to zero, equities falling and profits about to do the same, the old pension to lump sum conversion multiple of 12.5 is a recipe for penury.

I'm too young to be in the CSS scheme, but I am in the other defined benefit scheme (PSS).

For those who don't understand the language being used here, the old public service scheme (CSS), which was closed to new entrants sometime around the early 1990s, is structured such that in most cases, unless you've recently been promoted or expect to be promoted again, you're better off financially by resigning just before your 55th birthday than staying on. (A lot of these people come back on contract - the shortest "retirement" I've seen is two weeks). I'm assuming this came about because the scheme was drawn up in an era of much higher inflation and in the old days your final salary (which your payout is based on) would go up by 5-10% a year just by staying there, which is no longer the case.

Blair - identical situation re Retirement schemes here. Given we are in the same age bracket I started work about the same time for a crown research institute in the mid 90s, missed out on a very lucrative scheme. Now many of those with long term service found themselves "retiring" at about 60 then signing back on 3 months later because they were deemed important.
Lucky bastards :D

In my experience most of those who came back on a contract had also received an early retirement package to leave in the first place, so they got the double pot of gold. Seemed like they had mates in the upper echelons!

I didn't get a package, and I took a job as Orienteering Development Officer on 3 days a week at an hourly rate about half of my previous salary.

Phatmax the pension component of CSS was based on final average salary. The lump sum was comprised of your contributions + investment return, but didn't reduce when the market went down. If that happened, they just declared a zero dividend for that year. In other words you couldn't lose any of your contributions, or any of the accumulated investment gains prior to the current year. So in the current environment it would be far superior to the PSS - that;s why they scrapped it. When they brought in the PSS and we were offered the choice, it was a no-brainer to stay in the CSS.

Meanwhile all the regular workers just lose their jobs when the market goes bad or the company runs out of money due to neglectful past spending (as mine did) and get nothing out of it.

No comment from a member of the NSW govt SSS scheme, aka the "old" scheme" in NSW PS parlance.

As a member of the new PSS scheme, you get to a point where it costs you money to go to work. Usually when your retirement income is about 70% of your salary. After allowing for tax differences an that you are nor paying into super any more, you get more by staying home than by working. Had a friend that got to where his retirement salary was equal to his actual salary, so when he retired he had a significant increase in income.