What's new

Home loan feature

Wednesday, 1 May 2019

Our first new feature for a while is the ability to model a home loan. The chief benefit of this is that the user can see when their home loan will be paid off relative to their retirement date.

If your home loan is paid off before retirement, then everything works much the same as it always has. If your home loan is not paid off by retirement then you'll see a notification showing you how much will be outstanding, and directing you to the Retirement lump sums tab. This allows you to assign a lump sum withdrawal to pay off your loan, so you can see where you stand for retirement.

What you'll see

• Homeowner input extended to show two types of homeowner
• New inputs for loan amount, interest rate and monthly repayment
• A new home loan chart
• A notification that shows if the loan is not paid off before retirement
• The Retirement goals menu has been split into Retirement income and Retirement lump sums

Tags: feature

New enhancement for the self-employed

Tuesday, 12 September 2017

We've had feedback about the limitations of the Simulator in relation to the self-employed. This week we released an enhancement that allows you to indicate that you (or your spouse/partner) are self-employed. Look for it on the Contributions panel. Selecting Yes will remove the Employer contributions slider and assumed employer contributions, allowing you complete control over contributions.

We're always happy to have feedback on any improvements.

Tags: self-employed SG feature contribution

Calculator update July 2017

Tuesday, 4 July 2017

On 1 July we released the updated Retirement Income Simulator for the 2017-18 financial year. There were no changes to the underlying calculations, just parameter updates as follows:

• Co-contribution eligibility income threshold
• SG maximum contributions base
• Age pension income test and deeming thresholds

Our February release included the important updates to incorporate the transfer balance cap and new contribution caps.

Back in June some may have noticed a change in the presentation of fees on the Assumptions panel. This achieved two objectives:

• allow the user to set a different percentage fee for the post retirement period
• simplify the Assumptions panel to focus more on investment returns than fees

Tags: 2017 transfer-balance-cap fees

Calculator Updates for February 2017

Thursday, 16 February 2017

Today we released an update that, on retirement, limits the amount transferred to an account-based pension to the $1.6m transfer balance cap. The transfer balance cap is indexed with CPI, so will reduce relative to expected salary growth.

During retirement phase, any super balance that exceeds the transfer balance cap at retirement will remain in an accumulation account, separate from the super pension account.

We have updated the algorithm to meet lump sum and income requirements from the accumulation account first, subject to the minimum drawdown provisions applying to account-based pensions.

This release also introduces some warning pop-ups when you exceed the concessional cap or the transfer balance cap.

Tags: updates budget transfer-balance-cap

Federal Budget 2016

Sunday, 22 May 2016

There was a lot in the Federal Budget about super. In case you haven’t seen it, here’s Mercer’s analysis.

Our Apps Team is frequently in a limbo between policy announcements and what has actually been legislated, and we rarely include any policy measure in the simulator if it has not been legislated. In this case however, the changes are so broad that we have done a special Budget Edition simulator to help you see the impact on your super of some of the measures announced in the Budget. Using the scenario feature in the RIS we have considered the following measures:

• Continuing the operation of the Low Income Superannuation Contribution;
• Reducing the concessional contributions cap to $25,000;
• Reducing the income threshold at which the additional 15 per cent tax on concessional contributions applies to $250,000;
• Limiting non-concessional contributions across the lifetime to $500,000; and,
• Capping the amount of superannuation savings that can be converted into a retirement income stream at $1.6 million, indexed with price inflation.

The simulator uses the Summary -> Compare screen to show which Budget measures might affect your situation.

Other Budget measures we have not included relate to the incentives for spouse contributions, the ability to make deductible contributions independent of salary, the restrictions on transition to retirement income streams and the carry-over of unused concessional caps for five years.

We hope you find it useful. The link is: https://supercalcs.com.au/ris9budget

Tags: retirement-planning budget