Introduction to The Retirement School

Hello and thank you for your interest in subscribing to The Retirement School. This short introduction tells you a little about your host Bec Sullivan and runs through what the course covers. The course is due to go live in September 2026 after testing with early participants.

Transcript

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Hello everyone and welcome to the Retirement School. My name is Beck and I'm your host. Now I have been working in financial markets for about 30 years in investing, but in the last decade in particular, I've been working for some of the largest retail, big retail superannuation funds in Australia. And as part of that work, I have had the privilege of listening to so many people's retirement stories. And most of the time, while there's a great deal of excitement about retiring, there's also a lot of concerns and worries about money in particular. So I have designed the retirement school to help reassure you that everything's going to be okay in retirement, to explain some of what may seem to be the more complex concepts to you about superannuation, insurance, retirement calculators, other investment options, estate planning, a whole host of topics. But also just to give you the confidence and the knowledge so that you can go and get financial advice for what is one of the most important times in your life when it comes to finances. So I want to stress that the discussions that I'm going to have with you over the next 12 episodes aren't designed to replace financial advice. They are not personalized to your situation at all and may not be appropriate for you. I want to introduce some topics and ideas to you that you can then take and get personalized advice to make sure that they fit with what your objectives are in retirement. Now I know getting financial advice is something that people worry about the cost of getting advice. So I've designed this course so that you can get the maximum return from seeking out a financial advisor. Firstly, because if your financial advisor has to educate you on all things to do with retirement as they pertain to money from the very start, if they're charging on a time base time basis, then that's obviously going to cost you more. But even if they're not charging on a time basis, they're probably going to have some kind of time limit. So I know that financial advisors working through a super fund might only have an hour to spend on the phone with you, and in that hour they are going to pick where they think they can give you the most benefit. They're not going to be able to cover every topic. So I have designed this as an audio course, and you may wonder why I haven't done videos or a book, and I'll get to that. What I'm really trying to do is give you full coverage of things to do with money in retirement, leading up to retirement and at retirement. Now, if you're like me and I love to do my research, you spend a lot of time wading through websites, or if you're on social media, there's lots of clips, but they're short, so they don't really dig into the topic. They'll give you a high-level, you know, little tidbit of information and then directing you to another resource. And I find that there's so many websites and blogs and links, it can be hard to cover everything you need to know. And sometimes you don't know what you need to do. There are things that you've never even thought about. So the design of this course, the retirement school, is to cover all of those various topics in back-to-back episodes. Now I've done it audio for a couple of reasons, mostly because it's flexible. I know everyone's busy today, and being able to listen to a podcast means that you can pick it up and take it with you. You can listen to it in the car on your way to or coming home from work. You can listen to it while you're working. You can listen to it while you're going for a walk, or you can listen to it at home in front of your computer, and that's great because then I will refer to some links, some charts, some tables, some graphs that it really helps if you can have open on the screen. But I didn't want to tie you down to having to watch videos. Videos of me talk, I can't think of anything worse. So this is what I think was the most flexible format. There isn't a transcript, there isn't a book. Sorry if that's what appeals to you. Once again, it comes down to time, people having the time to sit there and read a book. But one of the biggest issues is that when it comes to financial information, it changes so regularly that the book is almost out of date by the time you've got it published. I wanted to have something really flexible where I will refer to links and encourage you to look at the most recent information, but I'll also be able to update episodes as things change. So I am recording this at the moment in May 2026. The federal budget has just been released, and goodness gracious, weren't there some big changes for financial investment and super in those? And I think that just illustrates why you need to be really flexible when it comes to this sort of information. Now I would encourage you to go back and listen. You can listen as often as you like. There are things that you're going to hear them on the first round and think, hmm, didn't get that, or I think I need to go back and listen to this one in more detail and perhaps look at the visual information, the websites, and the links that I'm referring to to really help that information sink in. You also might want to take notes to discuss matters with your partner, your family, or friends, and of course, most importantly, to have notes of what you want to discuss with a financial advisor, things you need to find out from other advisors like accountants, solicitors, and centrelink before you go and get that financial advice. There are 12 episodes, there are about 30 minutes in duration, some are a little bit shorter, some are a little bit longer. You can skip forward or back as you need. I know if you do, there's sums in your head that's about six hours of listening pleasure. I promise to try and make it not too boring. I know I'm going to cover some basics that some of you may already know, and I will go through those as quickly as possible so that I can really get to explaining why things are structured the way they are and why it might make a difference to you to investigate that particular option a little bit more closely. That's enough from me for an introduction. If you have subscribed, you are ready to move on to the next topic, and that will be about your superannuation accounts and how you're invested. I look forward to talking to you then.