{"id":279749,"date":"2025-11-24T00:22:19","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T00:22:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/279749\/"},"modified":"2025-11-24T00:22:19","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T00:22:19","slug":"my-retired-parents-dont-trust-anyone-with-their-money-and-have-no-super-what-can-i-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/279749\/","title":{"rendered":"My retired parents don\u2019t trust anyone with their money and have no super. What can I do?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am anxious about my parents. Dad is 79 and Mum is 74. They both retired last year with no super; they have $500,000 in an ANZ Plus account. They don\u2019t trust financial advisers \u2013 no offence intended, they don\u2019t trust anyone about money. They own their home and four cars. How can I improve their financial situation?<\/p>\n

You\u2019re in a tough spot here. Trying to help people who don\u2019t want to be helped is unlikely to lead to a happy outcome for anyone involved.<\/p>\n

Hopefully, they are getting the age pension, and if they are happy living off this plus their savings, then I think you just have to let them be. It\u2019s a shame that they aren\u2019t making use of the superannuation system, but you can\u2019t force people to do things they don\u2019t want to do.<\/p>\n

\"Unfortunately,<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, sometimes when people don\u2019t want to be helped, there isn\u2019t much you can do.Credit: Simon Letch<\/p>\n

If we make use of the Home Equity Access Scheme, does that lower our assessable assets for age pension purposes?<\/p>\n

Because your home is already ignored for the age pension means test, using the Home Equity Access Scheme has no impact on your pension entitlement. Note, this does assume that the money you receive via the scheme is spent.<\/p>\n

Were you to accumulate it in a bank account, then of course your assets would increase and therefore there would be a negative impact on your pension. But then, if you aren\u2019t spending it, why access the scheme in the first place?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve just turned 65, and my super\u2019s lifestyle option automatically shifted to Conservative Balanced. I plan to keep working part-time until around 70, and I am considering moving about 10 per cent of my super into a higher-growth option until age 67\u201368 to potentially boost my balance and returns. What are your thoughts on this approach?<\/p>\n

Congratulations on taking an interest in your super and picking up on this change. I actually think the automation of this asset allocation change is borderline negligent on behalf of the super fund.<\/p>\n

Your money needs to last you hopefully 30 years or more, and therefore, as you have identified, it is important that you have exposure to growth assets to protect against longevity risk, that is the risk that your money runs out during your lifetime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I am anxious about my parents. Dad is 79 and Mum is 74. They both retired last year…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279750,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[84,4176,4174,4175,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-279749","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-finance","10":"tag-personal-finance","11":"tag-personalfinance","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}