Introduction to Transitioning to Retirement

Getting access to funds in your superannuation funds when approaching retirement used to be an all or nothing affair.

You either had to keep working, in which case your pension would be unavailable to you, or you had to formally retire. This meant that many people were, in a sense, forced into early retirement and that others had to continue working until the official retirement age in order to maximise their retirement income.

Fortunately this rather inflexible system has now been replaced with the so-called "Transition to Retirement"measures that came into force on 1 July 2005. In a nutshell, Transition to Retirement allows people who are still working, and who meet the eligibility criteria, to derive income from their superannuation funds.

This arrangement opens up some interesting investment and income maximisation options for mature age workers and also gives them the possibility of easing into retirement while continuing in their careers.

You would do well to investigate whether making use of Transition to Retirement can benefit you in your circumstances as it could possibly make a real difference in your financial position and lifestyle.