Can a couple comfortably retire with around $400,000?

Mike Taylor

Managing Editor and Publisher

7 March 2022

Choice-aligned group Super Consumers Australia (SCA) has claimed that a couple approaching retirement age needs only $400,000 between them to fund a comfortable retirement.

The SCA wants feedback aimed at validating its financial targets which it claims show wahat retired Australians are actually spending.

SCA has long challenged the validity of the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) Retirement Standard which has been predicated on a couple needing over $600,000 a year to fund a comfortable retirement.

In fact, the most recent ASFA Retirement Standard data suggested that couples aged around 65 living a comfortable retirement needed to spend $6,799 a year.

However Super Consumers Australia said that its research showed that middle-income home owning Australian couple aged 57 only needed approximately $400,000 between them by the time they were 65

It said that its targets had found that middle-income people would need far less for a comfortable retirement than the existing ASFA Retirement Standard suggests.

“The fact that most retirees maintain their spending levels and are satisfied with their lifestyle suggests that using actual spending, rather than aspirational targets, is a more useful measure,” the SCA said.

It said that the vital point about its targets was that they had been developed independently from superannuation funds and industry groups who had a vested interest in getting people to contribute more to their superannuation.