Somewhere around 50, a quiet question starts turning up at odd moments — in the car, at 3am, when a colleague announces they're retiring. Am I actually on track? Most people never answer it, because they assume the answer involves a spreadsheet, a financial adviser and a weekend they don't have.
It doesn't. You can get a surprisingly honest answer in about twenty minutes with a cup of tea, your last super statement and a calculator. Here's how.
Step 1: Decide what "on track" means for you (5 minutes)
You can't hit a target you haven't set. The most useful starting point is the ASFA Retirement Standard, which is updated every quarter. For the March 2026 quarter it says a "comfortable" retirement — private health cover, a decent car, some travel, eating out occasionally — costs about $78,566 a year for a couple and $55,923 for a single, assuming you own your home outright. A "modest" lifestyle is roughly $52,000 for a couple and $36,000 for a single.
Those are averages, not verdicts. If you know you'll want to travel more, add to it. If you're happy with a simpler life, trim it. Write your number down — that's your annual target.
Step 2: Work out what you've actually got (5 minutes)
Log in to your super fund (or funds — if you've got more than one, that's a job for another day) and write down the balance. Add any investments outside super: shares, an investment property's equity, cash in the bank. Don't count the family home unless you genuinely plan to sell it.
Now the part most people skip: write down what's going in each year. Your employer's contribution appears on your payslip. Add anything you salary sacrifice or contribute yourself.
Step 3: The rough projection (5 minutes)
Here's a simple rule of thumb Noel has used for years. Over the long run, a balanced super fund has historically returned around 7% a year after fees. At that rate, money roughly doubles every ten years.
So if you're 50 with $300,000 in super, and you did nothing else, you'd have somewhere around $600,000 at 60 and could be close to $1 million at 70 — before adding a single extra dollar of contributions. Add fifteen years of employer contributions on top and the picture is usually better than people fear.
ASFA estimates a couple needs around $730,000 at 67 (and a single about $630,000) to fund a comfortable retirement, assuming they'll also receive a part age pension as their savings run down. If your projection lands near that figure, you're in reasonable shape. If it's well short, keep reading — you have more levers than you think.
Two honest caveats. First, 7% is a long-term average, not a promise; some years will be far better and some far worse, and the closer you are to retirement the more that matters. Second, inflation means $730,000 in seventeen years' time buys less than it does today. Treat this as a compass, not a GPS.
Step 4: Pull the levers that still work at 50 (5 minutes)
The reason your 50s are such a powerful decade isn't that you earn more (though you often do). It's that every extra dollar you put into super now has ten to fifteen years to compound, and it goes in at a tax rate of just 15% instead of your marginal rate.
Salary sacrifice. If you're paying 30% or more in income tax, redirecting part of your pay into super means the tax office takes 15% instead. For 2026–27 the concessional contributions cap (employer contributions plus salary sacrifice combined) is $32,500. Most people in their 50s aren't anywhere near it.
Catch up on unused caps. If your total super balance is under $500,000, you can carry forward unused concessional cap amounts from the previous five years. Someone who's had a few lean years of contributions can sometimes put in a large lump sum — from a bonus, an inheritance or an asset sale — and claim it as a tax deduction.
Kill the debt first, then push. If you still carry credit card or personal loan debt, clearing it beats almost any investment. Mortgage debt is a more nuanced call (we'll cover that in a separate post), but the principle is the same: money that isn't leaking out in interest is money that can compound.
Check your investment option. A lot of people were defaulted into a "balanced" or even "conservative" option decades ago and never looked again. With ten-plus years to go, that choice can cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's worth understanding before you change anything — but it's absolutely worth understanding.
What if you're behind?
Then you are in very good company, and you've just done the single most valuable thing: you've looked. Being 50 and behind is fixable. Being 65 and surprised is much harder.
The people who get into trouble aren't the ones with modest balances; they're the ones who never ran the numbers. You've got a target, a starting point and a rough projection. Every decision from here — how much to sacrifice, whether to downsize, when to stop work — gets easier because you have something to measure it against.
Go deeper. Noel Whittaker's Retirement Made Simple (6th Edition) walks through exactly this exercise in far more detail — how much you'll need, how long your money will last, how the age pension fits in, and the strategies that make the biggest difference in the years before you stop work. Updated for the current financial year. Buy direct from the author for $19.95 and get both PDF and EPUB.
This article is general information only and doesn't take account of your personal circumstances. Figures are current at time of writing and change each financial year. Consider seeking advice before acting.