There are some angry retirees around Australia right now. Labor’s plan to rescind franking credits from those who haven’t paid tax has seen impassioned speeches at public hearings, angry letters to newspapers, and media profiles where the aggrieved quote how much they’ll lose from the changes. It all must be very confronting if you’re suddenly faced with losing a third of your income. Especially when you’ve left the workforce. As advisers we can understand the frustration, but our job is quite often delivering hard truths and telling people what they don’t want to hear. We’d prefer it didn’t happen, but…

Every year we’ll be confronted with a multitude of disasters. Sombre yes, but a fact regardless. Maybe they won’t affect us personally, but they’ll appear before us on the news and they should be pause for reflection. Most show how relatively helpless we are as human beings. Earthquake, tsunami, volcano erupting, hurricane. Natural disasters aren’t preventable, however bridge collapses, dam failures, plane or rail crashes are all preventable to some extent. Here, human error or mechanical failure in various guises begins to play its part. The aftermath of these disasters will inevitably be accompanied by questions. Depending on the outrage,…