What's new

Calculator Updates for July 2015

Monday, 6 July 2015

A new release went live today, with a mix of user interface and legislative changes.

Legislative changes

On 22 June the Parliament passed the Fair and Sustainable Pensions Bill, increasing the full pension asset range by up to 31% (couples) but slashing the part pension asset range by around 48% from 1 January 2017. We have included this in the 1 July release assuming the new taper rate and the present value of the new assets thresholds are applicable now. We suggest all RIS users review their retirement plans in light of these changes:

	As at 30 June 2015	From 1 January 2017
Single home-owner asset threshold	$202,000	$250,000
Single not home-owner asset threshold	$348,500	$450,000
Couple home-owner asset threshold	$286,500	$375,000
Couple not home-owner asset threshold	$433,000	$575,000
Asset taper rate	$1.5 per fortnight for every $1000 of assets over threshold	$3 per fortnight for every $1000 of assets over threshold

In addition we have updated our calculation engine with the following changes effective 1 July 2015:

• Government co-contribution lower income threshold from $34,488 to $35,454
• Updated figures for the Age Pension income test thresholds and deeming thresholds as follows:
  • Income test threshold is now $162 for single and $288 for couple
  • Deeming threshold for the lower deeming rate is now $48,600 for single and $80,600 for couple

The ‘Clean Energy’ tax cuts, which were supposed to commence 1 July 2015, were recently repealed and hence are not included in this release.

User Interface changes

We all tend to glaze over when presented with those necessary but dense T&Cs. Well the RIS has had a front page makeover, and here is the same content but presented better. Four important things you need to know about using the RIS, but a simple icon and a brief heading gets the message across more effectively.

We’ve also changed the way charts get incorporated into the PDF. Previously we converted the chart to an image before putting them onto the pdf. However now we re-create the chart on the server and add it into the PDF. You can see the differences in the following two images:

before: after:

Notice how much sharper the text is - if you zoom in on the PDF text it will now be crystal clear, no matter the size.

before: after: This also means that printing your PDF will give you a much better quality printout.

Tags: retirement-planning pdf updates terms-and-conditions age-pension government-co-contribution

Congratulations to Media Super

Tuesday, 23 June 2015

Congratulations to one of our valued clients, Media Super, for taking out "Best Website of the Year – Superannuation" at the Financial Standard MAX Awards. Check out Media Super's Retirement Income Simulator here.

Infographics for simplified retirement planning

Thursday, 4 June 2015

The Retirement Income Simulator’s summary screen is a great way to get a high level view of your future, and today it’s received a substantial visual upgrade. We’ve gone from simple blocks of text:

…to something a bit more visually engaging:

The new summary screen contains all the same information as the old screen, as well as some new features. Now you can see an estimate of the chance of outliving your super, and an explanation of how changes you’ve made using the compare scenarios feature could affect your retirement.

You can try the new summary screen in our live demo.

Retirement Income Simulator gets a responsive redesign

Friday, 15 May 2015

The user interface for the Retirement Income Simulator online calculator has been redesigned. The new interface design features a responsive layout, with custom layouts for desktop PCs, tablets, and mobile phones.

In addition to the new design, we've added two new features.

Tutorial

A step-by-step tutorial has been added explaining the projected retirement income graph. This tutorial explains the basic operation of the calculator, and demonstrates how altering certain inputs can affect the retirement income projection. It opens by default, but can be skipped.

Text summary

For users who relate better to an infographic style presentation, the calculator now provides a simple text summary of their retirement projection with the key numbers highlighted. The summary is separated into the following time periods:

• Now
• Career (displayed for non-retired users only)
• At retirement
• Early retirement (displayed for retired users only)
• Beyond

We've also updated our calculation engine with the following legislative changes:

Effective March 20th

• Age pension deeming rates on financial investments are reduced by 0.25% as follows:
  • Lower deeming rate is now 1.75% for financial investments up to the threshold
  • Upper deeming rate is now 3.75% for financial investments above the threshold
  • The deeming threshold is $48,000 for singles and $79,600 for couples
• The maximum Age Pension has been increased as follows:
  • The singles pension rate has been increased to $860.20 per fortnight
  • The couples pension rate has been increased to $1296.80 per fortnight

Tags: updates age-pension design