The scary problem facing Australians at retirement

September 5, 2026 — 3:00am

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If you’re in your 50s or 60s, you’ve probably spent most of your adult life contributing to super. But has anyone actually taught you what to do with it when you retire? And does the thought of having to make that money last for the rest of your life make you nervous? You’re not alone.

Think about it. Do you know how much you can afford to take out each year? How much should stay invested? What happens if the sharemarket falls just after you retire? How might the Age Pension fit into your retirement picture? Or how you can tell whether your money is likely to last until you’re 90 or 95?

These are pretty fundamental questions when you’re about to give up your pay cheque and live off your life savings. Yet most of us have never been taught how to answer them.

And frankly, why would we know? For the past 30-odd years, almost all the attention has been on getting money into super, not teaching us how to confidently get it back out.

I want to turn this problem into a simple metaphor, so we can all see some fun in it.

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For decades, Australia has been building planes. And every single one of us has our own plane. Some are big and some are small, but thanks to compulsory super, most working Australians will have a solid, well-constructed plane when they get to retirement, with fuel in the tank, ready to fly. Most of us don’t know where we want to go yet – but that’s easily fixed with a few maps.

The problem is, we’ve spent all the past 33 years building the planes, and making them bigger and better, and filling them with fuel. But we forgot to build the runway and the flight school. And, heaven forbid, nobody has taught anyone how to fly a plane.

Now, as millions of Australians approach retirement, we’re handing them the keys to these planes, and expecting them to know how to fly them.

No wonder we’re nervous.

And we are nervous! AMP’s latest Retirement Confidence report has found that only 52........

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