The Good Retirement: Living the high life on a low budget
Retirement can be a tricky time when we wonder, "Have I got enough money to live happily ever after?"
But come retirement time, many Australians find their nest egg isn't big enough to go luxury cruising or laze on a tropical island.
So how can you find enjoyment and fulfilment from retirement without spending a fortune?
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Daily Telegraph
2 hours ago
- Daily Telegraph
Matt Nable urges NRL to join fight against motor neurone disease
Don't miss out on the headlines from NRL. Followed categories will be added to My News. Matt Nable spent the early hours of last Friday morning crying. The acclaimed Australian actor, writer and iconic voice of Fox League's NRL coverage has had an awful week. The week before, was only marginally better. The week before that, no good either. Tears. Blank stares through the car windshield. Not hungry. Scrolling his phone through old photos and videos. Seconds, minutes, days, spent trying to fill the indescribable emptiness. Nable has come to terms with the realisation that he will never be whole again without his baby brother Aaron, 46, smiling the cheekiest of grins back at him. This is how each day goes for the thousands of brothers, sisters, mums, dads, cousins and friends of loved ones impacted by the hideous motor neurone disease (MND). 'You realise when you lose something like this, it's hard to accept,'' Nable, who lost his brother Aaron in March, 2024, said. Aussie actor and writer Matt Nable is headed to Melbourne for 'The Big Freeze'. Picture: Sam Ruttyn 'I won't ever be the same. I won't be whole again and that's part of life. 'We all go through that. 'But it doesn't make it any easier. 'Aaron's presence was so much that it's a massive hole that he's left. 'He has three little boys that are 12, four and three and when Aaron got the disease, that was his focus. Providing something for his children. (L-R) Aaron and Matt Nable. Picture supplied 'It's tough. He was such a gregarious man. A gentle man, he had a big life. 'He touched a lot of people. He was an A-grade scallywag with a beautiful heart. 'There were 2,000 people at his funeral. I don't even know 2,000 people. 'But he had a huge impact on a lot of people. He's really missed.'' It's the reason why Nable is headed to Melbourne next weekend to join the likes of fellow Aussie stars Eric Bana and Asher Keddie for the annual Fight MND 'The Big Freeze'. In it's 11th year, The 'Big Freeze' is an annual fundraising and awareness campaign dedicated to finding treatments and a cure for MND. The disease attacks the motor neurons that carry messages from the brain to the muscles via the spinal cord. These messages allow us to make movements like walking, swallowing, talking and breathing. 'He took that disease to the end. In the end all he could move was his eyebrows, so I saw first-hand what that disease is capable of,'' Nable said. Ever since it's inception in 2015, the Big Freeze just keeps getting bigger, inspired following the diagnosis of former AFL player, coach and Australian of the Year, Neale Daniher. The event, to be held across the King's Birthday long weekend, features a variety of activities, including a 'Big Freeze'' at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, where Nable and other celebrities will slide into an ice bath. Nable is on a mission to do more. The 53-year-old, who also played first grade for Manly and South Sydney in the early 1990s, has recently held meetings with NRL CEO Andrew Abdo and chair Peter V'landys to create a Fight MND Big Freeze NRL match or round next season. 'Pete and Andrew were remarkably sympathetic when I approached them about the NRL supporting the Big Freeze and they see the value in raising awareness,'' Nable said. 'The rugby league community has been affected by this. It's not a rare disease anymore. 'It was one in 500 people in 1985 and now it's one in 200 people, so there's something environmentally we're doing that is causing that. 'That's not a hypothesis, that's a fact. 'Inevitably it's about finding a cure, or a medicine where it stops the progress of this disease, so that people have some sort of hope that they can prevent it from moving on to the situation where they pass away and they can live on. 'It's a hard thing to get your head around that in 2025, there's no cure for that. 'It's also about bringing an awareness to people to help understand what the disease is because at the moment the money raised isn't government raised, it's all philanthropic, which is really hard to stomach. 'It's at a point that MND will touch everyone within their circle. I've got a mate Dave Chapman who is 52 and has it. 'He's got two young daughters and an amazing wife and it's heartbreaking. 'Chapo is in the fight and he's willing to come with me to Melbourne to raise awareness.'' The famous actor, who starred in the Australian film The Dry and Hollywood war movie Hacksaw Ridge, and the hype guy before every big match, Nable wakes each day and smirks at the silly three-leaf clover - not four-leaf - with the words 'lucky' on his forearm. Aaron had the entire Nable family ink the tattoo on their bodies before he passed. 'The things that you do in a career and for me, whether it's writing, acting or the stuff I do for Fox, I feel very privileged for all doing that,'' Nable said. 'But things like the Big Freeze, define you much more as a person. 'Getting involved in something like this, as hard as it is to talk about what Aaron went through, gives me and my entire family some real desire to help change the course of this awful disease.'' * Beanies are available by scanning the QR code or at Coles, Bunnings, Shell Reddy Express and online at
ABC News
3 hours ago
- ABC News
Flood Cleanup
BLAKE: Still on the Hastings River, still in major flood, I'll give you a look around. The debris has slowed down, but the things I've been seeing are really devastating. For the last two weeks, Blake has been recording what he's seen around his hometown, Port Macquarie in New South Wales. BLAKE: Major floods Just in comparison, where I'm standing is the 2021 flood. This is where it got up to, let me take you down to where it is right now. Yep, floods aren't new to this part of this world. But the recent disaster that hit the hunter regions and the mid-north coast was devastating. Noah here lives in Taree, where nearly half the homes were underwater last week. JONATHAN, NOAH'S DAD: Got everyone out through the bedroom window and to the boat and made my way to the next-door neighbour and picked her up. She lives there by herself, and she was almost chest-deep in water. Floodwater doesn't just make things wet, it's full of everything it picks up along the way, including dirt, sewage and chemicals. And it causes mold to grow, meaning a lot of things can't be salvaged even when they dry out. BLAKE: So, we had to put some fridges away, like chuck fridges away because they all got broken and stuff. We've lost heaps of piles of my kayaks. Just basic stuff we've lost, but still a lot. And it's not just homes that have been affected. The floods have hit business, and farms. SAM, FARMER: No matter what we could have done, no matter how well we prepared, no one could have prepared for this. This land is flat, which means there's nowhere for the water to flow naturally. And with the soil already soaked, it sits around and kills grass. JAMES, FARMER: Everything's covered in silt and a lot of the pasture we've sown for the autumn, winter and spring is all dead, so we're gonna have no food at all. Experts say the damage from these floods will be huge. Just repairing the roads alone is expected to cost around 2.5 billion dollars. Some people will be relying on insurance to help them rebuild. But as events like this become more frequent, insurance is becoming more expensive and not everyone can get it. Last week the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, came to Taree to talk to locals. ANTHONY ALBANESE, AUSTRALIAN PM: We are activating the Australian government disaster recovery payment, in nine government areas. Right now, everyone is working together to clean up the damage. 70 members of the Australian Defence force have come to help out, along with more than 2,000 SES volunteers from around the country. BLAKE: Moving a lot of mud. Cleaning up, getting new furniture in, cleaning everything, cleaning all the grass off because it was a big layer of mud. Getting his sand in cleaning boats. So now we've done all that and the volunteers have helped. So, now we're back up and running. Many people aren't exactly sure what the next few weeks, months or even years of their life will look like, but they're trying to stay positive. SAM: Seeing our cows still there, it gives us hope. BLAKE: There's nothing we could do about it, but right now, we're on the other side, which is a better thing.
The Age
4 hours ago
- The Age
‘Too hard to build': Albanese government slams local councils over housing shortfall
The Albanese government has taken aim at local councils and top-heavy universities as being responsible for the nation's housing crisis and a drain on Australians' stagnating standard of living respectively, even as Labor struggles to meet its home-building targets. In one of his first speeches since being appointed assistant minister for productivity, Andrew Leigh will argue on Tuesday that a 'thicket of regulation' is holding back housing, infrastructure and research. Leigh's speech at the Chifley Research Centre in Melbourne comes just weeks after the government's own independent housing sector adviser, the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council, warned that the Labor government's National Housing Accord was set to fall 262,000 short of its 1.2 million target for new homes by the end of the decade. Leigh will put the heat on local government, singling out North Sydney Council, which has been scrambling to repair its budget after the pricing regulator rejected a proposed 87 per cent rate rise, as a prime example of a slow-mover. 'After an applicant files an application for development approval, councils are supposed to do the initial checks and lodge it in their system within 14 days,' he will say. 'In the current financial year, just one in three development applications to North Sydney Council have been approved in that time. The average lag is 41 days.' North Sydney Council was contacted for comment. Leigh will note the council also has a low approval rate, approving just 44 new homes in the seven months to February this year, 'barely 6 per cent of its pro rata target of 787 homes under the National Housing Accord.' The accord has linked funding to a target – agreed to by federal, state and local governments as well as institutional investors and the construction sector – of building 1 million well-located homes over five years from mid-2024. Treasurer Jim Chalmers, following Labor's thumping election victory, marked a turning point in the government's priorities, telling the ABC's Insiders program in May that Labor's 'first term was primarily inflation without forgetting productivity. The second term will be primarily productivity without forgetting inflation.'
