Uncensored Money Season Eight: If I Was Turning 50 Again, Here’s What I’d Do (Money, The Gen X Edition)

Melissa Browne: Ex-Accountant, Ex-Financial Advisor, Ex-Working Till I Drop, Now Serial Entrepreneur & Author, Financial Wellness Advocate, Living a Life by Design | 12/03/2026

Show Notes

If you’re in your 50s and thinking it might be “too late” to change your financial future, this episode is for you.

In this Gen X edition of the series, Mel shares what she would do differently if she was turning 50 again when it comes to money, investing and financial independence.

Because while time matters, strategy matters more.

Too many women in their 50s are focused solely on paying off the mortgage, assuming investing is over, or avoiding the uncomfortable question of “how much do I actually need?”

This episode is about replacing wishful thinking with clarity and making the next decade financially powerful.

We cover why your home is an asset but not necessarily a retirement plan, why knowing your “number” matters more than ever, and how to find more cash without working yourself into the ground.

If you’re Gen X, consider this your financial pep talk.

Because we’ve adapted before and we can absolutely do it again.

In This Episode, We Discuss

• Why focusing only on paying off the mortgage can limit your retirement strategy
• The difference between assets and investments
• Why knowing your retirement “number” matters in your 50s
• How to find more cash and create more financial choice
• Why investing is not “over” just because you’re in your 50s
• Using superannuation and investing strategically in this stage of life
• Rethinking housing options including downsizing, rentvesting or alternative living arrangements
• Why financial literacy becomes even more important for women as we age

For more tips and resources, visit us at melissabrowne.com.au, on Facebook, Instagram or TikTok @MelBrowne.Money or send us an email at hello@melissabrowne.com.au.

Links mentioned in the episode are below

My Financial Adulting Plan can be found at melissabrowne.com.au/financialadulting

Find $10K in 12 Months Freebie can be found at melissabrowne.com.au/find$10kin12months

Finally, if you love this episode please make sure you subscribe, share it with a friend and leave us a review.

Transcription

Mel: Welcome to a solo episode today because today we're talking about what I would do differently in my 50s and spoiler alert, I am in my 50s. So we're leaving Lawsie behind who is in her glamorous 40s with all of the collagen that she still has. And I'm going to talk to my 50 year old sisters or for those of you that are in your 30s or 40s going but what's next for me? Like, what do I need to be thinking about next? This is also for you. Because what I see a lot of when it comes to 50s is there's a lot of panic. There's a lot of fear and there's a lot of, my gosh, this is all the time I have left. Stop talking to me about 30 and 40, 50 years, because I don't think I have that.

I also see a lot of fear around, but shouldn't I just reduce and consolidate and be smaller? And my message to you today is no you absa-freaking-lutely shouldn't. So we're going to unpack all of that today and I cannot wait to get into it now. So if you are in your 50s, you are firmly Gen X. And I think the top of 50, I know we're all firmly Gen X because my husband's 59 and he hates when I call you boomer he always looks up the stats straight away. So we are all Gen X. We survived dial up shoulder pads and metal playgrounds with those burning hot slippery dips where you just basically had third degree burns when you went down to bring your shorts. We survived no helmets, the cane at school and enough life lessons so that we can handle anything and yet too many of us aren't applying that we can handle in anything to our finances because it's 50. The truth that I want you to hear today is that someday, that notion of someday has to stop and the thing that I really want you to understand is that 80 % of women die on their own. So if you are abdicating this to a partner, if you are leaving this to someone else, it is time to lean the freak in because what I have seen as a financial advisor when I was practicing and as an accountant is I saw way too many women divorce at so go through a gray divorce they're called so in their 50s or 60s or have a partner pass away and they were horrified by what was left by what they presumed they had that their partner just didn't want to tell them. So we need to stop guessing.

We need to stop hoping and to start moving. And today it's not about deprivation, it's about strategy and choice. Because the truth is it's not too late. But it is time to move your ass and get financially literate. So these are the five things I am doing or would do if I was in my 50s again. Because as I said, I'm in my 50s as well.

So some of these, and I'll highlight the ones, some of these are things that I'm doing too. And just as our normal ⁓ podcast disclaimer, so we are here licensed to give general advice. We are licensed under RASK And the thing that's most important to hear for that is that anything that I talk about today is not for your particular circumstances, it's general advice. So make sure that you speak to a finance professional if you're after that specific financial advice. And as we're talking about investing today as well to remember that past performance isn't indicative of future performance. So number one of the five things I think we need to concentrate on our 50s is I wouldn't just focus on paying down the mortgage. And I get it. I get if you're in your 50s or you're probably thinking about if you have a mortgage is I just want to be debt free.

I just want to be debt free by the time I retire. But the thing that I want you to know, and if you've been here for a while, it's not the first time I've said it. Your home is an asset, not an investment. And what that means is you can't retire on kitchen renovations. You can't rely on kitchen renovations to fund your retirement. So if you are focusing on being debt free and not also on investing and maximizing your super contributions, it's time to reassess. Because let's just look at a hypothetical situation. If I was, if it was me and if I had say 300 grand left on my mortgage, I was like, I just want that gone by the time I retire. But if I was doing that, and not also maximizing my super contributions, and or not also investing in my own name because I'm like, you know what? I just need to do this because you know, there's only I only have a limited pool and I'm being conscious of where my funds go. And then when it's paid off, then I might divert some. The problem is I'm not doing it at where it's going to get me the biggest bang for my buck. So let's say instead of just concentrating on paying off my mortgage and that's it.

I instead made sure I was maximizing my super. Now that might mean that I can only afford to pay off a little bit of my home, which might make me a little bit nervous and then that it's definitely not paid off by the time I retire. But what too many of us forget is that in Australia, when we retire, we can pull out that superannuation tax free. So when I'm putting that money into super for most of us, it's getting taxed at 15 cents in the dollar when it's going in. And then the earnings are being taxed at 15 cents in the dollar when it's in there. So one, it's my after tax dollars that are paying off that mortgage. So already I'm getting more money in than would have been going on my mortgage. But two, the average return on investment is around 9.3 % over 30 years, as opposed to say six percent interest on my mortgage. So I'm potentially also getting a better bang for my buck in my super fund. And then when I retire, I have choice. You know, my mortgage at that point might be 250,000, which let's be honest, that's a really small amount potentially to be paying off each month. So you might choose to, you know what, with my superannuation drawdowns, I'm just going to have some of that that goes towards paying off that mortgage because future mortgage values are always going to be worthless because of inflation. Or I could just at that point that I retired grab a lump sum and pay off that mortgage in one fell swoop. But if all I'm doing is paying off my mortgage what I'm missing out on is those beautiful ⁓ pre-tax contributions where I'm only getting tax 15 cents in the dollar and I'm also missing out on that the compounding returns at that higher rate. So panicking and only putting money onto your mortgage. I understand why we do it. We do it because we have low financial literacy and we do it because let's be honest at the moment the share market's kind of all over the place and it can feel safer just to pay down debt. And it can feel safer because what you might be saying to yourself is I don't have a big runway in front of me anyway.

So I may as well just pay off debt. But we're going to talk about all that today. You have more of a runway than you think. So number one, I wouldn't just focus on paying off that mortgage. Number two is I would know my number and properly. So what number am I talking about? Well, I'm talking about when can I stop working or when can I slow down? Because I love the Japanese don't have a word for retirement. They just don't. This concept of just stopping work and then just existing just doesn't exist for them. And I love that because I cannot imagine not working. Now, I don't always want to go at the pace I am today. Definitely not. And I want to be able to choose the work I'm doing, but I will always be burning because I just can't imagine not. So it's what when can I stop working or when can I slow down? Could I just do one or two days a week? Now, I remember I was buying a ring at a shop in Sydney and there was this gorgeous man who was serving me on the weekend and he was probably, you know, I didn't ask his age, but I want to suggest that he was probably about 70. And I ended up saying to him over the course of our conversation, can I ask?

I'm curious about your decision to keep working. Is this something you have to do? Is this something that you're doing it because you love? And he said to me two reasons. He said one it's socialization. I get to meet people, I get to be helpful, I get to feel like I'm giving back. And I really love it. Like this is just, he goes, I wouldn't love it if I was doing it five days a week, but one to two days a week, I really enjoy it. I love that helping people and talking to them and getting that interaction. But he said, number two, it's pocket money. He said, it doesn't affect me, it doesn't affect anything else I have financially, but it means that because with that money, I'm able to go out to dinner with friends. I'm able to buy a slightly nicer glass of wine. I'm able to not think about whether I have my heating on in winter or not. He says, it's just easier. And I loved that so much. So I think, we have this thing around, I'm going to hard out at 65 and that's it. But what if you worked a day or two a week for those five years to 70 and it gave you a very different form of retirement than it might be otherwise? The next question around knowing my number properly is how much do you actually need? You know, in Australia, we have numbers around what is a comfortable retirement. And some of those numbers, to be honest, are reliant on you owning your own home. So it's really important to understand what does that mean for me? So the number used to be that for a couple, if you're retiring at age 67,690, it used to be 690,000, it's now 730,000. It used to be 595,000, it's now 630,000. So that's how much you need at retirement for what's considered comfortable. Now comfortable, according to the Superannuation website, means you can afford to have top level private health insurance, doctors and specialty visits and pharmacy needs. Means you can have fast, reliable, in-bn computer and an iPhone with good streaming services. You can own a reasonable car, have car insurance and maintenance. You can do regular leisure activities, including club membership, cinema visits, exhibitions, dance and yoga classes. You can have home repairs. You can have regular professional haircuts, confidence to use air conditioning, occasional restaurant meals and home delivery and takeaway coffee, replace your worn out clothing and an annual domestic trip to family and an overseas trip to ⁓ every seven years. Now, for some of you, you might go, well, that doesn't sound very comfortable. Whereas others of you are going, ⁓ that's perfect. Or even more of you might be going, that's more than I need. In which case you might need less for what's considered a basic retirement.

So it's understanding how much you need. Personally, I need way more than a comfortable retirement. And if you don't own your own home, or if you still have a bit of a mortgage at the end, you're gonna need more than a comfortable retirement, more than that amount, because it has to factor in your housing too. And those superannuation websites will spit out what those figures are for you. Or inside the My Financial Adulting Plan, we have a worksheet where you can figure it out for your unique circumstances based on what you want to spend. But remember as well, part of the reason you might be surprised that that's lower is because you're not at the money that you're receiving from super tax free. So you might be thinking you need one hundred thousand dollars when really.

You might only need $70,000 between the two of you because that tax is taken care of. So how much do I actually need the second number that I really want you to know properly? And the third is what do I need to be contributing or investing now in order to hit the number that I want to hit? So that means I need to understand what my super balance is now. I need to understand how it's invested, what my contributions are and what and knowing all of that, putting it into a calculator like the MoneySpark compound calculator, understanding what the balance will be by the time I retire and knowing, ⁓ do I need to up that contributions, etc. in order to hit that. But it's also taking away, being aware of the investments you have outside of super. For example, if you're investing in shares, if you have investment properties, then the amount of superannuation that I need is less because I have other investments working for me. So this might be a really difficult number to face for some of you. For some of you, it actually might be bringing you a whole lot of relief to go, ⁓ wow, I'm actually doing so much better than I thought. But clarity beats wishful thinking and knowing your number and then knowing what you were prepared to do and how you're prepared to work. And when you're willing to stop working, that's a really important second step.

So once we figured out those two, number three is really important. All of these things are important, but number three is really important. And number three is, so I do one and two. I do both of those steps personally. I don't have a mortgage, but I have investment loans. don't over, I don't pay, I pay a little bit more off, but I'm quite comfortable to have them exist still when I retire because I know that there will be income generated or I know I can sell down those investments and live. But number three means that we have a whole lot more choice and agency to do those things to get us there. And also once we are retired to continue. And that is I would find more cash so that I had more choice. And I'm not talking about just tightening your belt, although some of us need to be doing that.

We need to be swap pausing and cancelling our subscriptions. We need to be getting rid of our Uber Eats. Like we just need to be smarter about where we're spending. But then I would look at what could I do to bring in more cash? Now we've got a freebie on our website that we talk about a lot at lillisabrown.com.au forward slash freebies. And we'll put a link in the shownotes where it gives you 20 plus ways to find 10K in 12 months.

So let's just say I'm working from home and I do a hot girl's walk every day, say. I might decide to pet sit and or to pet walk because that might give me a lazy couple of hundred bucks extra a week and I'm walking anyway. And here's the thing, when I retire, I want to keep moving, right? So you might continue to walk pets and bring you in another couple of hundred bucks every single week knowing then you've got potentially more cash to spend but also you've got more cash to invest to contribute to superannuation and more. And that is how if I'm in my 50s, if I wanted to, if I wanted to invest $250 a month from age 50 for the next 30 years, knowing that Vanguard 30 year index returns at 9.3 % over 30 years, that 250 a month would give me half a million dollars when I hit 80, meaning my superannuation balance might be a bit low, but whoo-hoo, here's another stash of cash I can suddenly access. If I knew that I could get that, if I knew I could walk a pet every single week and I would easily have 250 bucks a month from doing that, that means that I can continue to fund that investing even when I am no longer working.

And that's the piece that so many of us don't think about. It's the, else can I be doing when I'm no longer working? It's why that gorgeous 70 year old man was working a day a week or two days a week. He loved it. It's socialization and it gave him choice. You might not want to work, but there are so many other things you can do. You might bring any uni student and for 10 weeks every year, you're okay with having someone in your house because you know it's for a limited time and that money goes straight to your super or goes straight to investing. Like we have more choice than we think. It's just what am I prepared to do? Number four is I wouldn't believe the lie that investing is over for me or I don't have 30 years. So I just gave you the example of 250 a month from 50 to 80 from found money. Because here's the thing. If I speak to 50 year old blokes, they never, never, never come back to me and say, but I don't have time because a bloke believes that they can continue to find more cash. And part of that reason is one, they are not sold the same ageism that we are. They are not sold the same lookism as we are. They are being sold. George Clooney, at age 80, sorry, at age 65 can still have twins and look like a silver fox and get and get his gorgeous wife Amal. Like women are not afforded that same respect. So it is understanding that we live in an age of society and as a result it is only women that believe this. And trust me I know because I've spoken to my male financial planner friends. Men do not ask that. Yet if I talk about a 30 year time frame I will get at least half a dozen DMs.

Women in their 30s, 40s, 50s saying hey but what about me? So once you understand how to find more cash you can still invest and you can still invest for longer because for me it's about developing multiple streams of income. It's about not just relying on my super, it's having other things in other places that I can access as well. So it is not too late, is very much still worth it even with small amounts, you know 20 bucks a day over 30 years invested in that same as 1.2 million like small amounts every day matter. And of course, the more you invest, if you're able to, if you're in your 50s going, hey, kids aren't home, I'm earning good money. You could invest a whole lot more each month and end up with a much bigger bang for your buck in a shorter period of time. So I'm just going to quickly pop that in now. So just saying you're like, yeah, I actually could afford to put in a thousand bucks a month. But I reckon I could only do that for 15 years. So if I was to pop that into a calculator, that's going to give me $400,000 after that point. At which point you might go, you know what? That's all I've got. But I'm then happy for that to sit there and not touch it for another 10 years. I just can't keep contributing. So that means that by the time you were 75, you would that would have grown from 388,000 without a single extra dollar contributed to $1 million, $980,000 to be exact. And you could be at 75 then going, you know what, I'm feeling good about this. Like I was smart for that last 15 years of my earning capacity when I could really put in some serious bang for my buck. And if I then don't touch that for 10 years after that, which I'm happy not to do because I've got some super not a lot. But hey, if I can draw it out on my super comfortably knowing that I've got this other asset that's building up over time. I mean, what a difference, right? So it's realizing that we have more choice. It's also realizing that we live longer. So as women, we are living to to 87 as opposed to the blokes living to 84. So it needs to last us longer.

And as I said, 80 % of us are gonna die alone. So it actually is necessary to get that.

The final one is I would assess all of my housing options. This is something that I talk to my husband about a lot. So we've got a large house out in the Blue Mountains, like four bedrooms, two of us, it's stupid, but we do use it. use ⁓ the office, we use a library, we both work from home a bit. So there's more bedrooms than we ever would use, but the living space we use a lot. But then we also have an apartment in the city. And I often say to him, at some point, we are going to have to make a decision for housing because this is we're not going to need this long term. So we're talking about what would that look like for us? What would downsizing look like in filling up one or both and then moving to something else? But I think it's having that plan. Because as I said, you can't eat  your house. Your home is an asset, not an investment, but we can turn it into an investment by being willing to downsize it. So I wouldn't count myself out of owning a home. I know women in their 50s that are buying their first home, genuinely in our community, because their broker is also looking at what's in their superannuation. What else do they have to be able to ultimately pay that off? I might also look at downsizing. I might look at rent vesting. I'm like, you know what? I just don't want to own my own home, but I am really comfortable. I didn't mean to say it like that. I actually had a funny thing in my voice when that happened. So I don't want to own my own home, but actually I want to still access property. And if I could buy an investment property and if the rent for that was paying the rent that I was paying and they were cancelling each other out.

I would feel really comfortable. I might adjust to what I thought was possible for me, or I might be get creative with other single friends who are maybe in the same boat as I'm at and say, there's three of us, ⁓ none of us really wanna get married, we're single in our 50s, do we wanna buy something together? How about we buy something, we own it together, we live in it together as a kind of commune, but a really smart commune. We could buy it tenants in common wills and legality around it so we're all protected but hey what would that look like? Like get creative around housing because I know so many women in their 50s who have bought their own home as I said or who've downsized and in Australia you can take advantage of super fun superannuation contribution rules that when you downsize you can get more into your super.

It's about not opting out because you think something isn't possible or clinging to something that isn't serving you anymore. You know, you might have the dream home, but your kids have all moved away. Or you might have your dream home because that's what you were sold. You know, the myth that you were sold that you needed for your own validation. And now you're going, you know what? This isn't serving me. All of my assets are tied up in this thing and I can't eat that. It's not going to give me the choice that I want so I'm actually prepared to downsize so that I have more choice. It's figuring out what is possible for you. So after all that the loving truth is you need to move your butt and you need to improve your financial literacy because I absolutely spoke about some things today that either made you head spin or made you go ⁓ wow I hadn't thought about that. At 50 we can't afford not to get educated. It's not cute to not care anymore or to abdicate because we live longer. We earn less over our lifetime, so our money has to work harder. So I want you to ignore the age charts because they weren't built for women like us anymore anyway when it comes to investing. After all, we've already rejected the notion that you can't wear long hair after 50 or flirt or whatever the freak we want. We're Gen X. We have adapted before.

This is just our next evolution. And honestly, we are more than capable, but you've got to start now.

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