The Good Budget News for FiftyUps
As with any Budget, there is good and bad news for FiftyUps and their hip pockets this week.
Here is our summary of the measures that could affect FiftyUps in a POSITIVE way.
To read the other side of the story, click on the link at the bottom of this page.
The Good News
- Sustainable spending: Noone knows the importance of balancing a Budget better than a FiftyUp – whether they’re a working parent, a pensioner or a self-funded retiree – and Australia has been living beyond its means for long enough. So a path back to surplus is good news for our members and for all Australians.
- “Restart”: A new incentive payment for businesses, who will get up to $10,000 over 2 years if they hire an over-50 worker who has been unemployed for 6 months. This is a leg-up for FiftyUps who want to keep working into their late 60s (1 in 3 of you, according to our member survey), but it replaces other programs and we’d like to see more detail on it.
- Debt down: A temporary debt tax on high earners with incomes over $180,000, which 60% of our members support, will help to spread the Budget pain.
- Gold Pass gone: The travel pass bestowed on some former politicians – which is hugely unpopular with FiftyUp Club members – will be abolished in 2020. In the meantime, it will no longer cover partners’ travel and will only apply to MPs who have recently left parliament.
- Trains, Planes & Automobiles: Some Fiftyups will benefit from landmark infrastructure projects such as roads, rail and airports in the major cities, although the long lead-time for such projects also means many will not.
- Medical Research: As with infrastructure projects, a $20 billion medical research fund, to be bankrolled by extra payments on doctor visits, will benefit some FiftyUps, but mostly their children and grandchildren.
That’s the Good News.
Click Here to read the Bad Budget News for FiftyUps.
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