Pierre and Pat have a negligible super balance; Mark and Martha have $825,000 combined in industry super; and Rich and Rita have $10 million sitting in their self-managed super fund. The budget helped Pierre and Pat; they'll end up with a slightly higher age pension because the government is no longer getting rid of indexation based on average wages. It's good news, although nothing to write home about. Rich and Rita were unaffected by the budget. Once retired, if they earn say $500,000 a year in their super fund, they'll get a tax break worth $75,000 a year or more. No changes to super meant it was a champagne budget for those who are loaded. But there are no corks popping for Mark and Martha, who've been using the government's MoneySmart retirement calculator to make sure their super savings are on track. They are a couple of years from retirement and last month the calculator told them $825,000 was about the right amount to live a "comfortable retirement" (as defined by the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia and published on the MoneySmart website). Mark and Martha have that amount (combined) in their industry super accounts, so they figured their savings plan was spot on. Unfortunately, the government has been making other plans for Mark and Martha.

Those working towards the MoneySmart/ASFA "comfortable retirement" have been assuming the age pension would make up about a quarter of their income at the outset (roughly $15,000 out of $60,000) and gradually increase over 25 years to eventually be their only source of income (if they live longer than expected). On budget night, the government ripped that assumption to shreds. It might not have been intentional, but by its actions the government made it very clear it regards the age pension as a safety net or welfare, not a "thank-you" to retirees for their contributions over their working lives. If you don't have much super, the government will give you a basic income via the pension. If you have more super than you know what to do with, you'll be showered with tax benefits through the super system. But if you're seeking something in the middle – a comfortable retirement – the government is less interested in helping you. Come January 2017, the partial pension and health card (unless you fritter away some of your savings) will be gone and you'll still only get a fraction of the tax benefits handed out to those with multimillion-dollar super accounts. What does this mean for your retirement planning?

If you want to be conservative, the safest approach is to ignore the age pension completely. You may think you'll qualify for the pension a decade from now but, by the time you get there, the rules will almost certainly have changed again. Unfortunately, this makes a huge difference to the amount of super you're likely to need. Turning back to our example, if we switch off the age pension on the MoneySmart retirement calculator, it shows that Mark and Martha need more than $500,000 extra to get their retirement savings back on track. The budget change makes a huge difference without even factoring in the loss of the healthcare card. Even if they count on some future age pension, they'll still need hundreds of thousands more than they were calculating a couple of weeks ago. Whether the budget change is right or wrong can be debated. But one thing it's definitely not is "reassurance to Australian workers they can have confidence in their retirement plans".

Loading If you're seeking a comfortable retirement, the only thing you can be confident about post-budget is that you are going to have to work longer and save more to achieve it. Richard Livingston is a founder of Eviser. This article contains general investment advice only (under AFSL 469838).