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James Coyle
James has over 35 years experience in financial services with particular expertise in two of the key components of retirement finance - Superannuation and the Age Pension. He is passionate about providing the guidance and support that can help older Australians enjoy their best possible retirement. He lives in regional Victoria surrounded by dogs and chooks.
Yes I agree that pensioners are being left behind and are suffering due to rising costs.
The Federal government will most probably announce a one of grant in the budget which will do absolutely nothing to assist the pensioner.
To assist the pensioner it may be worth while in reducing the $3 per $1000 the government charges to say $2.5 per $1000 in the asset test as this will give those who have part pensions more funds spread over the financial year as this will mediate some of the cost of living
The government is constantly looking to benefit families with hand outs and tax cuts but the poor pensioner is constantly being forgotten, we have all paid our taxes throughout our working lives so I do believe that we need to be looked after better than we have been in the past
I have found that the so call pension rise was shocking that I had a increase of only $3.80. It seem that I was left out of the so call $20.00 increase.
Hi Peter, thanks for raising your concern. The full pension increase is automatically applied to all pensioners however there are a couple of other factors that can impact the increase you see.
Firstly, as the increase comes in part way through your payment cycle, you will only receive the higher amount for the days left in that cycle. Unless your payment cycle lines up perfectly with the day of the increase you will never see the full increase on your very next pension payment, the following payments will be higher though.
Secondly, March is also the time of year where Super companies provide Centrelink with updates on their customers’ balances. If your super has improved and is worth more now than Centrelink were previously aware that would mean your pension goes down. So although you only see an increase of say $15 overall, it’s because if it were not for the rise then your pension would have actually gone down by $5.
If you are unsure or believe there is a mistake with your pension the best thing to do is contact Centrelink and request a “Detailed Income and Asset Statement”. You can do this yourself if you have access to Centrelink via myGov by going to the “Documents and Appointments” heading and then “Request A Document”. Either way you will receive a summary of all the income and assets Centrelink have recorded for you as well as the values for each. You can then review it all and update Centrelink of anything that is incorrect so that your pension can be recalculated.
Instead of a one time payment why not increase benefits by $3.00 a week on top of indexation . Benefit then ongoing!