Hello fellow super enthusiasts!

The heading for this Blog was my attempt at being cool but according to my kids, if you use the word cool, you are miles from actually being cool. Oh well, onwards and upwards! Hopefully, you didn’t look at the heading on this entry and think I had misspelled the word ‘public’. Hopefully, you know that PBLCI is the Pensioner and Beneficiary Living Cost Index.

So, what is this index? The PBLCI measures the effect that changes in prices of goods and services have on the out-of-pocket living expenses of those on the Age Pension and other households where the main source of income is a Government benefit. The PBLCI is released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics every three months and appears in Age Matters, which I mentioned in my last blog.

Anyway, having a squiz at the March 2011 quarter shows that the index has risen, for all-groups, by 1.9%.  The gist of the matter is that health increased a fair bit (+6.7%), transportation jumped up (+3.6%) and food prices nipped up (+3.3%). Probably because of banana prices….I went to a café the other day and without thinking, I ordered a banana smoothie which resulted in needing to dust off the credit card to pay for the thing!

When we talk about adequacy, when we talk about super, when we talk about product design, it all seems to be centred on accumulation and pre-retirement. We need to make sure that super is a whole of life product and that post-retirement products step up to the plate. Why? Because when you compare the PBLCI series since it began in 2007, it’s risen a substantial 15.2% compared to CPI which rose 12.2% over the same period. So cost of living doesn’t get any easier to bear as you get older…hmm, maybe we should do something about adequacy now? I know! How about increasing SG to 12%?

What are your thoughts on post retirement products, adequacy, costs of living – let me know!

Yours in Super,

 Hans