Video Tutorial Series

Video 1: Intro

Kicking off a series of videos to help familiarise you all with the web tools that accompany the book.

Each short video will walk you through a different feature of the apps — from analysing your spending to modelling your retirement income year by year.

This first video sets the scene — with a professional voiceover to set the tone. More videos to come over the coming weeks

Video 2: SpendLens

What does your retirement actually cost, and how do you find out?

SpendLens analyses your bank statements and gives you a clear picture of your spending by category, by month, across multiple years. In this video we show you the results — in the next videos we'll show you how to get there.

As always, completely free and your data never leaves your device.

Video 3: Uploading

This one shows how to get your bank statements into SpendLens, upload multiple accounts at once, watch thousands of transactions get automatically categorised against a library of over one thousand Australian merchants, and see how the rules system works to make future uploads even easier. 

Video 4: Reviewing

This one shows how to review and refine your transactions — searching and filtering, editing vendor names so they apply across all matching transactions, changing categories, and using bulk select to recategorise multiple transactions at once. Plus a handy shortcut — click any category in the Analysis tab to jump straight to the filtered transaction list. 

Video 5: Auto-categorise

This one covers the AutoCategorise feature in SpendLens, two options for very quickly handling any remaining uncategorised transactions. We also cover how to save your work and pick up where you left off next session.

This wraps up the SpendLens series, in the next video we move on to PlanLens, the retirement income modelling tool, just released with new name.

Video 6: Intro to PlanLens

We're moving on to PlanLens — a free retirement income modelling tool that combines superannuation, Centrelink, and tax rules in a single model. This video gives you an overview of what the tool does and how it's structured. The next videos will go through each section in detail. 

Video 7: The Charts

This one takes you through the six charts and summary table in PlanLens ; the Income Plan, Financial Assets Balance, Calculated Withdrawals, Loans & Offset Accounts, Tax, Net Worth, and the All Transfers table. Each chart shows a different piece of the retirement picture, updating in real time as you change your inputs.

Video 8: Finance Tab

his one walks through the Finances tab in PlanLens, where you enter your current situation. Covers marital status and home ownership, your personal details and desired income, superannuation, financial assets, property, loans, and other assets and income. Plenty of practical notes along the way on how each input feeds into the retirement projections.

Video 9: Assumptions Tab

This one covers the Assumptions tab in PlanLens — the rates that drive the thirty year projections. Goes through salary growth, super growth, share returns and franking, cash interest, inflation and tax indexing rates, property growth, and loan interest rates. Small changes here compound significantly over time, so worth understanding what each one does.

Video 10: Planning Tab

This final video covers the Planning tab in PlanLens, the year-by-year modelling of your superannuation contributions, downsizer payments, share and cash movements, property renovations and sales, lump sum loan repayments, and offset accounts. It also covers the built-in contribution rule checks, save and load, and the PDF report that brings the whole plan together in one document. 

Video 11: PensionLens

This one introduces PensionLens, a free tool that shows where you sit on the Age Pension curve. It covers the questions the tool answers: what Centrelink will pay you and why, which of the two means tests is setting your rate, how much you can earn from work before your pension reduces and what tax you would pay on it, whether a lifetime annuity would leave you better off, and whether a younger partner's super counts. It also explains the Sweet Spot, why at a constant drawdown rate there is a range of super balances where more savings can leave you with less total income, and how PensionLens works out where you personally sit on that curve. 

Video 12: Inputs  

This one goes through the PensionLens input panel from top to bottom: relationship and home ownership, ages, super balances, the pension phase switch, drawdown rates, employment income, Work Bonus banks, and the combined household assets. It finishes with the Age Pension panel, which shows your entitlement under both the assets test and the income test and marks which one is actually setting your rate. 

Video 13: The Sweet Spot curve   

This one covers the Sweet Spot curve itself: the peak, the trough, the recovery point, and the dead zone between them where more super can leave you with less total income. It also covers the book-style table below the chart, and the lifetime annuity what-if, showing how moving money into an annuity shifts your position on the curve because only 60 per cent of it counts toward the assets test. 

Video 14: Work headroom and tax 

This one covers two things retirees rarely see clearly: how much you can earn from part-time work before your pension reduces, and how much income you can have before you pay any tax. It works through two examples, an age pensioner taking on some paid work, and a self-funded couple with $90,000 a year of income and no tax at all, and explains the two reasons that second result is possible: tax-free super after 60, and the seniors tax offset that lifts the tax-free threshold once you reach Age Pension age.  

Video 15: Accumulation accounts and the younger spouse strategy 

The final video covers the pension phase switch and the younger spouse strategy it enables. When one partner is under Age Pension age, holding their super in accumulation phase keeps it out of both means tests, which can lift the household pension. The video also shows the trade-off, since moving super to accumulation stops it being drawn on and can lower total income even as the pension rises, and explains why the Sweet Spot curve flattens when only one partner is eligible.