![\"Australian](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/nest-egg-16.9-1200x675.jpg\")
<\/p>\nKnowing with reasonable certainty how much income you can expect to draw from your superannuation in retirement makes it possible to approach this major life change with confidence. <\/p>\n
Having a goal in mind and planning to hit that goal is essential, and the earlier you start, the better.<\/p>\n
Aiming for $1,500 per week in retirement income will provide a comfortable retirement, at least as measured by the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia, which estimates that singles will need $55,923 per year to fund a comfortable retirement.<\/p>\n
This so-called retirement standard assumes you own your own home and will draw a part pension when you become eligible at age 67. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Image source: Getty Images<\/p>\n
How much do you need in superannuation to hit the $1,500 target?<\/p>\n
But let’s assume for the sake of argument that you are aiming to generate $1500 per week, or $78,000 per year, in retirement income from dividends alone, without drawing down on your invested capital. <\/p>\n
How much you’ll need invested to achieve this target depends on how much you can reliably expect to generate in terms of dividend yield<\/a>.<\/p>\n If you are generating 10% a year \u2013 a lofty ambition and likely unsustainable \u2013 you’d need $780,000 in retirement savings.<\/p>\n If you were generating just 5% a year, you would need double this amount, or $1.56 million.<\/p>\n Considering that retirees get the benefit of franking credits on top of the base dividend yield from a share, as long as the share is franked, I’d argue that 5% is very much on the low side. <\/p>\n A goal of 7.5% is likely quite achievable and would require a superannuation <\/a>savings amount of $1.04 million.<\/p>\n Which shares can generate sufficient returns?<\/p>\n There are a lot of shares you might consider that pay healthy dividends.<\/p>\n Infrastructure companies such as toll road owner\u00a0Atlas Arteria Ltd\u00a0(ASX: ALX<\/a>) often pay strong dividends, with Atlas forecast by Macquarie to pay a yield of\u00a0better than 8% out to FY28.<\/p>\n Rail freight operator Aurizon Holdings Ltd (ASX: AZJ<\/a>) also pays a good dividend, currently running at 6.28%.<\/p>\n Real estate investment trusts also often have steady long-term businesses, with Waypoint REIT (ASX: WPR<\/a>) paying a 7.19% dividend yield and HomeCo Daily Needs REIT (ASX: HDN<\/a>) paying 7.78%.<\/p>\n And among the banks,\u00a0Westpac Banking Corp\u00a0(ASX: WBC<\/a>) is paying 4.45% fully franked, while\u00a0Bank of Queensland Ltd\u00a0(ASX: BOQ<\/a>) is paying 6.12% also fully franked.<\/p>\n How to boost your superannuation balance<\/p>\n If you’re a bit low on your superannuation at the moment, consider either salary sacrificing into your super or making a concessional contribution. <\/p>\n This year, the concessional contributions cap has increased to $32,500, meaning you can contribute up to this amount and pay only 15% tax. However, keep in mind that the $32,500 level includes any contributions made by your employer and any salary sacrifice amounts. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Knowing with reasonable certainty how much income you can expect to draw from your superannuation in retirement makes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":877229,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[64,63,99,6166,186,184,185],"class_list":["post-877228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-editors-choice","tag-finance","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=877228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/877229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=877228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=877228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=877228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}