Report: Financial Preparedness of Older Australians for Retirement

This report assesses the financial preparedness of older Australians for retirement, analyzing data from a survey of 1,525 participants aged 60 and over. The study examines primary income sources after retirement, the prevalence of high mortgage debt among low-income individuals, and the respondents' comfort levels with their retirement plans. The analysis reveals that pension and superannuation are primary income sources, and part-time employment is common. The report identifies that only a small percentage of low-income individuals have high mortgage debt. Additionally, the study highlights a statistically significant difference in comfort levels with retirement plans between older males and females, with males expressing greater comfort. The report includes statistical analysis, such as t-tests, to support its findings and discusses the limitations of the study, suggesting future research directions, such as reducing the survey's length and exploring the relationship between financial knowledge and retirement planning. The report is a result of the assignment based on the provided dataset from data.gov.au, modified for the purpose of the assignment.

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Assignment [Enter Assignment number]
Financial Preparedness of Older Australians for their Retirement

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Table of Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................3
Methods................................................................................................................................................3
Results...................................................................................................................................................4
Task 1.................................................................................................................................................4
Task 2.................................................................................................................................................4
Task 3.................................................................................................................................................5
Task 4.................................................................................................................................................5
Task 5.................................................................................................................................................6
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................7
References.............................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
Decisions such as the allocation of funds to pension portfolios, the valuation of mortgage
products and/or post retirement earnings require thorough preplanning (Wijeratne, Earl,
Peisah, Luscombe, & Tibbertsma, 2017). This research scrutinizes the preparedness of
Australian people for retirement planning using a descriptive analysis that includes
exploration of questions collected from a tailored survey to an illustrative sample of 1,525
Australians.
The primary objective of the study was to assess people from primary source of income after
retirement, number of low income group people (annual income ≤ $100,000) with high
mortgage, and comfort with retirement plans. These three factors are expected to define the
financial knowledge and awareness of people for the retirement expenses.
Methods
The survey data was retrieved from data.gov.au, and was specifically modified for this
research. The present sample contains response from 1,525 Australians (60 years or older),
which was representative of Australia’s general older and retired population.
MS Excel has been used for statistical analysis. The study decisions are based on exploratory
data analysis and graphical representation. Also, an independent sample t-test has been
performed to evaluate the difference between the two genders regarding their comfort with
retirement planning (Kim, 2015). Significance level of 1% has been used for the inferential
analysis.

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Results
Task 1
Figure 1 represents the distribution of number of respondents from the five age groups. It can
be noted that most of the participants belonged to either age group of 60-64 or 65-69. Gender
wise exploration in Table 1 reflects that there was an equal representation of both the genders
in the sample, especially in age groups of 60-64 and 65-69. A skewed representation of males
can be noted for age groups 75-80 and 80+.
Table 1: Gender wise age group of respondents
Figure 1: Bar Chart for representation of five age groups
Task 2
Individual time to complete the survey for each participant has been calculated in hour,
minute, and second format, where median time to complete the survey was found to be 18
minutes and 51 seconds.

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Task 3
The graphical summary in Figure 2 indicates that pension, superannuation benefits were the
two primary source of income of retired people, mostly worked in part time employment.
Other government sources of income and savings were the next two sources of income, but
interestingly, most of the people are unemployed under these employment arrangements.
Figure 2: Clustered bar chart used to represents primary source of income based on employment classification
Task 4
Financial planning for mortgage, especially for respondents aged 65 or over and with annual
income of $100,000 or less was calculated. For this consideration, debt of people more than
$50,000 was considered as the benchmark for mortgage. Formula based calculation yield that
29 respondents belonged to this category of financially risky situation.

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Task 5
Comfort of respondents with their retirement plans for funding future living was assessed
with a special attention on gender based difference. Table 2 presents the descriptive details of
the views of the respondents regarding how strongly they believed that their planning for
their retirement funds was adequate. Average opinion of males can be noted to be higher than
that of the males with equal standard deviations. Median of views revealed that older males
were more comfortable compared to their female colleagues. Figure 3 presents a clear
graphical view of the comparison between the views of both the genders compared to overall
sample.
Table 2: Descriptive summary of opinions on comfort for retirement planning
Figure 3: Bar chart for views on comfort over retirement planning for both the genders

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For confirmation of the descriptive details, an independent t-test with unequal variances has
been used as the inferential tool. Comparison between the comfort of retirement funding for
the two genders revealed that average opinion of males (M = 6.32, SD = 2.5) was greater than
that of the females (M = 5.85, SD = 2.5), and the difference was statistically significant (t =
3.70, p < 0.01) at 1% level of significance.
Table 3: Independent sample t-test results for comparison of comport of retirement planning between male and females
Conclusion
The aim of this study was to assess people regarding their financial preparedness for
retirement. The evaluation was based on primary source of income after retirement, number
of low income group people with high mortgage, and comfort with retirement plans. Pension
and superannuation benefits were found adequate to meet post retirement expenditures, and
older people were found to work on part time basis to meet up their financial liabilities.
Mortgage loan has always made life miserable. Fortuitously, only 1.9% (N = 29) people with
annual earning less than $100,000 were found to be under debt over $50,000. An interesting
piece of information was found, where older male respondents were found to be significantly
in higher comfort zone with their retirement plans compared to that of the females.

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Among limitations, it was noted that median time to complete the survey was almost 19
minutes. Lengthy survey forms are cumbersome to fill, especially considering the age of the
respondents (Harms, Kratky, Wimmer, Kappel, & Grechenig, 2015)
Future research can focus on reducing the length of the survey. Importantly, the relation
between financial knowledge and retirement planning can also enlighten the entire study.
References
Harms, J., Kratky, M., Wimmer, C., Kappel, K., & Grechenig, T. (2015, September).
Navigation in long forms on smartphones: Scrolling worse than tabs, menus, and
collapsible fieldsets. In IFIP Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (pp. 333-
340). Springer, Cham.
Kim, T. K. (2015). T test as a parametric statistic. Korean journal of anesthesiology, 68(6),
540.
Wijeratne, C., Earl, J. K., Peisah, C., Luscombe, G. M., & Tibbertsma, J. (2017). Professional
and psychosocial factors affecting the intention to retire of Australian medical
practitioners. Medical Journal of Australia, 206(5), 209-214.