When Financial Solutions - Newcastle has been nominated for a Lake Macquarie Business Excellence award in the Best Start-up category. It is recognition that true innovation doesn’t need to originate in Silicon Valley; with vision, hard work and a generous dose of client care, it can happen in Eleebana.

George Bernard Shaw said “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

But even the unreasonable ones need encouragement to stay the course. That’s why we formed the Catalpa community.

Over the course of our careers, we have helped hundreds, maybe even thousands of local people plan for retirement.  We have also observed people living in retirement; most enjoy higher well-being in retirement. But we have also seen some retirees really suffer from poor life satisfaction.

When it comes to the most important things in life, we need to prioritise them. Our families, our oldest friends, our communities, our health and even our careers. If we don’t then we run the risk of disconnecting from what’s most important to us; from the people and causes we care most about.

Most of us don’t measure our success in life by how much money we manage to accumulate. We realise pretty early on that there’s more to life than money.

But when you ask Australians what success looks like for their super, the financials matter most.

On 4 July 1776, a group of men gathered in a large Georgian hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They were there to sign a lengthy, non-legally binding document.

The American Declaration of Independence may not have been legally binding, but it was certainly a powerful symbol nonetheless.