Nearing 60, counting my super, and thinking: Time for the dump truck?

Given my genealogy consists of peat and potatoes, I assumed natural selection would take its course before I turned 50, so I never got too tangled up about preparing a nest egg.

The path towards a financial future was always out of sight because I spent most of my 20s and early 30s consuming an inhumane number of unmentionables.

I’m going into overdrive figuring out what retirement will look like, and I’m pretty sure it won’t include any cruises down the Rhine.

My youthful stupidity found superannuation and retirement both disturbing and dull.

Not to mention I worked most of my life as a journalist, getting paid just above minimum wage, so I could barely afford a cup of Perth’s overpriced coffee.

I also took some perverse comfort in the fact my wife would probably remarry some kale farmer after my heart finally gave out, and live out the rest of her days raising teacup pigs in the south-west of Western Australia.

But as my sixth decade on the planet rapidly disappears, I have been seized by a maddening anxiety that I will be packing groceries at my local supermarket into my 70s because I’ll have stuff-all to retire on.

My current super balance would get me an RV not too dissimilar to the one Walter White and Jesse Pinkman used in Breaking Bad to cook meth. Toss in my partner’s meagre super because she was working part-time while undertaking the critical role of raising our three kids, and the kitty is pretty bare.

I always thought the unwashed masses who boasted about remuneration packages were part of some cult-like club that played Dungeons and Dragons every Friday night.

But to make up for my ignorant money management I have started to change.

I’m salary-sacrificing, suddenly entranced by those superannuation ads with people riding escalators and mocking their nitwit friends for not investing sooner.

I’m obsessively Googling how much do you need to retire, quickly followed by how much would I get for selling a major organ online?

Ignoring all the conspiracy and survivalist websites, you need around 70 per cent of your pre-retirement wage to live comfortably.

According to a recent survey by the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA), if you retire at 67 you need around $595,000 if you’re single and $690,000 for a couple.

If you’re one of the lucky couples who have paid off their mortgage you get to enjoy a lifestyle of smashed avo and volunteering at animal shelters while living off a cool $100,000 a year.

That’s slightly problematic given the Australian Tax Office statistics show the average super balance at retirement stands at roughly $450,000 for men and $400,000 for women.

Super Consumers Australia is more optimistic, claiming you only need $258,000 to live out your remaining days, but that might mean ditching the annual novena to Bali and hopefully dying gracefully in your sleep a few years after retiring.

The hundreds of thousands ASFA is talking about are only achievable if you’re earning serious money.

If you’ve spent the best part of five decades toiling away in some poorly paid, unskilled job, it’s highly unlikely you’ll have enough super squirrelled away to take any cruises down the Rhine in retirement.

Of course, with the cost of living skyrocketing over the past few years, that means you will need more money to retire.

And here is some more cheerful news. The ASFA survey said the price of funding a comfortable retirement went up 3.3 per cent over the past year, due to increased medical expenses and rising insurance premiums.

Millennials trapped in rentals might want to quit their arts degrees and barista courses, get a dump-truck licence and head up north to work in the mines.

But don’t panic, there is always the pension. If you’re an older couple still renting, the $1538.60 you will pocket each fortnight means you can snuggle yourself away in a nice caravan park in Pinjarra.

And thanks to the marvels of modern medicine, most of the diseases that killed our ancestors have been wiped out, so we get to live to an unhealthily disgusting age.

By my calculations, if I work to 67 – and barring no catastrophic global financial crisis that doesn’t erase my super – I should have just under $300,000 when I finally hang up the boots.

I doubt that will be sufficient to live a comfortable life, but hopefully by then humans will be enslaved by artificially intelligent robots, so I won’t have anything to worry about.

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