{"id":628517,"date":"2026-04-25T21:33:21","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T21:33:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/628517\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T21:33:21","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T21:33:21","slug":"the-superannuation-balance-you-actually-need-at-65-to-retire-without-the-age-pension","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/628517\/","title":{"rendered":"The superannuation balance you actually need at 65 to retire without the Age Pension"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The amount of money you need in your superannuation to retire<\/a> at age 65 depends nearly entirely on the type of retirement lifestyle you want to live, how long you live beyond retirement, and whether or not you own your home outright.<\/p>\n

The ultimate goal for any soon-to-be retiree is to live a comfortable lifestyle after they stop working.<\/p>\n

That’s one where you can maintain a good standard of living, including top-level private health insurance and regular leisure activities. It would also allow you to own a reasonable car, have funds set aside for home repairs, and the occasional meal out. An annual domestic trip could also be on the cards.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

Image Source: Getty Images<\/p>\n

How much does a comfortable retirement cost? <\/p>\n

Thanks to rising inflation and the cost of living, the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) raised the benchmarks for both a modest and a comfortable retirement<\/a> earlier this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The increase serves as a stark reminder that long-term returns from markets like the S&P\/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) play an important role in building retirement savings.<\/p>\n

To live a comfortable retirement lifestyle at age 65, individuals can expect to spend around $54,840 a year, and couples can expect closer to $77,375 a year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

How much do I need in my superannuation to fund that retirement lifestyle? <\/p>\n

To fund the level of spending needed to live comfortably, you’ll need a superannuation balance of around $630,000 for a single person, or $730,000 for a couple.<\/p>\n

But these figures assume you retire at age 67 and will need to fund around 11.5 years of retirement for a single person or 9.5 years for a couple.<\/p>\n

They also assume that you own your home outright, that Australians will draw down all their capital at retirement, and that they will receive a part Age Pension.<\/p>\n

The problem is, this isn’t a reliable figure for Australians who want to retire two years earlier (at age 65) or those who aren’t eligible for the Age Pension.<\/p>\n

What if I want to retire at age 65, rather than age 67? <\/p>\n

If you want to retire two years earlier, you’ll need to fund an extra two years (or more) of retirement.<\/p>\n

Using the figures above, that means a single person would need a superannuation balance of around\u00a0$740,340,\u00a0and a couple would need around\u00a0$890,000.<\/p>\n

And also remove the Age Pension payment. What do I need then? <\/p>\n

ASFA’s calculation assumes retirees will receive a part Age Pension. It’s quite difficult to calculate exactly what that would be here because it varies so wildly depending on your income and the value of your assets.<\/p>\n

So let’s calculate this using the maximum basic rate for the Age Pension as an example.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As of the 20th of March this year, the Age Pension has a maximum basic rate of $1,100.30 per fortnight for singles and $1,658.80 combined for a couple.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That totals $28,607.80 for singles over the course of a year, and $43,128.80 for couples.<\/p>\n

Assuming you need to fund 11.5 years and 9.5 years of retirement, respectively, this would add a total of $328,989 for singles and just shy of $410,000 for couples over and above the figures we calculated above.<\/p>\n

So the answer is\u2026 <\/p>\n

The superannuation balance you actually need at 65 to retire without the age pension is around $1.07 million for singles, and $1.3 million combined for couples.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The amount of money you need in your superannuation to retire at age 65 depends nearly entirely on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":628518,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[45,49,48,133,131,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-628517","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-finance","12":"tag-personal-finance","13":"tag-personalfinance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/628518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}