It’s simple: This is the best kept secret in retirement planning

21 hours ago 3

Opinion

September 13, 2025 — 5.01am

I once had a mentor who gave me advice I’ll never forget: “Do it the !#$&ing easy way, Bec.” It was blunt, even lazy-sounding. But it was genius, and I try to hold it close in everything I do.

Because the truth is, most of us make things harder than they need to be. And nowhere is that more obvious than retirement planning.

Once the kids have moved out and there’s some spare money, salary sacrificing in your late 40s and early 50s will pay off big time.

We’ve been sold a myth: that it’s a lifelong grind. That you need endless advice, perfect investments and constant tinkering. That you have to scrimp for decades, or panic in your 60s trying to catch up.

But not if you learn the easy way – which, in my view, is also the smart way, and the way to enjoy more lifestyle before you retire, too.

The secret is this: spend seven or eight focused years in midlife knowing your goal, and deliberately boosting what you put into super. Then you can stop pushing, and let compounding do the rest for a decade or until you choose to retire.

Yes! Seven or eight years of paying closer attention, tipping in extra, and setting up the flywheel so it prints money for you. That’s it.

Not forever. Not a treadmill you have to run on until you’re grey and exhausted. Just a short, tidy window of actions taken in your late 40s or 50s, when the kids are leaving home, and you can finally find space in the budget – before you start spending more on your lifestyle.

Do that, and you’ve cracked the code. You get the money, sure, but you also get something more valuable: freedom, lifestyle and the power of choice. That’s the easy way – and it works far better than waiting until your late 50s to plan and save for retirement.

Let me prove it.

Anna and Dave both earn $100,000 a year. Both have $200,000 in super at age 48. Both get the standard 12 per cent contributions from their employer. (To make it simple, we’ll ignore tax, pay rises and inflation and speak in round numbers).

But Anna makes her move early. From 48 to 55 she puts in an extra $12,000 a year using salary sacrifice. Just eight years of extra contributions – so a total of $96,000. And in doing so, she saves on income tax too because her super goes in at just a 15 per cent tax rate.

It’s only now, with today’s system firmly in place, that this eight-year window has become one of the smartest plays in retirement planning.

Then she stops these extra contributions, and diverts the $12,000 back to her discretionary spending budget – spending on her lifestyle and travel in her later 50s. She spends the rest of her 50s, and until 65 when she retires, focusing those extra funds in her budget on travel, dinners out, enjoying life, while compounding does the heavy lifting in the background within her super fund.

She’s done the numbers and knows that with a 7 per cent return on her growing super balance, she’ll have enough to fund her whole life ahead.

Dave takes the opposite approach. He doesn’t want to think about financial planning in his 40s or early 50s. He’s absorbed the extra cash in his budget after years of living on a shoestring raising kids, and doesn’t want to knuckle down and pay money into a super fund he can’t access until he’s 60 or above and retires.

But the closer he gets to that age, the more real having money in super feels. And eventually, he decides it’s time to start contributing some extra cash into his super, if only for the tax benefits once he can draw it down. So at 58 he starts tipping in an extra $12,000 a year for eight years until he’s 65. It causes him to have to crimp his lifestyle a bit, and frankly he resents it.

They both decide to retire at 65.

Anna retires with about $1.25 million, while Dave has $1.14 million – from the same money invested and the same contributions. And if returns average better than 7 per cent over the long term, Anna’s advantage only grows.

She’s $110,000 ahead, yes, but more importantly, she bought herself a decade of freedom in her 50s and early 60s while her money kept working for her. That’s the power of time and compounding. And it’s the piece almost everyone misses.

Could they have started earlier? Of course. But in reality, most people in their 30s and early 40s are flat out with mortgages, kids and other responsibilities. Finding two spare cents to rub together feels impossible. For most, the real window doesn’t open until the late 40s or 50s when some of those costs start to ease off.

It’s a lesson I wish everyone understood, but this wasn’t an option for previous generations. Super simply wasn’t mature enough to deliver these outcomes. It’s only now, with today’s system firmly in place, that this eight-year window has become one of the smartest plays in retirement planning.

It works even better for couples. Take Jenny and Josh, and Mac and Priya. Both households earn $200,000 a year. Both have $350,000 in super between them at age 48. Same starting point. Same opportunities.

Jenny and Josh decide to get moving early. From 48 to 55 they tip in an extra $24,000 a year. That’s $12,000 each through salary sacrifice for eight years. Then they stop. For the rest of their 50s, they redirect that money back to themselves, into travel, lifestyle and freedom. Their super keeps quietly compounding at long-term returns of 7 per cent behind the scenes.

Mac and Priya aren’t ready to think about it in their late 40s or early 50s. They finally start saving at 58, putting in the same $24,000 a year for eight years until 65. They benefit from the tax savings, sure, but it crimps their lifestyle at a time when they’d rather be enjoying it.

Both couples contribute the same $192,000 in extra savings. Both retire at 65. But the results are stark. Jenny and Josh could be retiring with about $2.38 million. Mac and Priya retire with about $2.16 million.

That’s a $220,000 gap, for the same effort. The only difference was timing. Jenny and Josh not only end up with more, but they also freed up their lifestyle budget a full decade earlier. They bought themselves fun in their 50s and the certainty of reaching “enough”.

This is why I call the late 40s and 50s your prime time years. And they come in three clear phases.

The set-up phase: your short, sharp window of paying down debts and getting money into super as early as you can. You focus, save more, get the flywheel of compound investing really up and spinning.

The lifestyling years: your mid-to-late 50s, when you enjoy the freedom you’ve earned, confident compounding has your back.

Then, if you enjoy working and have the power of choice in play, you can pace yourself into retirement with some part-timing years: where work becomes less of a focus, and gradually you shape life on your own terms.

Do the set-up phase right and you win twice. More fun in your 50s. More money in your 60s. And that’s the path not just to retiring, but to having an epic retirement. Sounds like a good reason to start earlier and make your prime time count to me.

Bec Wilson is the author of the bestseller How to Have an Epic Retirement and the newly released Prime Time: 27 Lessons for the New Midlife. She writes a weekly newsletter at epicretirement.net and hosts the Prime Time podcast.

Advice given in this article is general in nature and is not intended to influence readers’ decisions about investing or financial products. They should always seek their own professional advice that takes into account their own personal circumstances before making financial decisions.

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