Retirement Planning Advice

Before anything else, we want to know what you’re actually planning for. Not a target balance, but the life it’s meant to fund: the year you’d like to stop, what you want to be doing, and who you’re looking after.

From there, we model where you stand today against where you want to be, and we test it properly. For example, comparing what happens if you stop working at 62 instead of 67, or if one of you keeps working two days a week, or if the market falls sharply in your first year of drawdown. We also consider when a plan is most exposed, because the money withdrawn in a downturn never gets the chance to recover.

You come away with a plan that has real numbers in it, and a clear sense of what’s already taken care of.

Super does most of the heavy lifting in retirement, and the rules shift depending on your age and whether you’re still working. It’s worth knowing where you sit.

Preservation age is now 60 for everyone. From 60, you can start a transition to retirement pension while still working full time, drawing between 4 and 10 per cent of the balance each year. Earnings inside that pension are still taxed at 15 per cent, unlike a full retirement pension, so it tends to work best paired with salary sacrifice rather than run on its own.

Once you meet a full condition of release and move super into retirement phase, the investment earnings become tax-free up to the transfer balance cap. Anything above the cap stays in accumulation and keeps being taxed at 15 per cent.

In the years before you finish, most of the opportunity sits on the contribution side: concessional and non-concessional contributions, the carry forward rule if your total super balance is under $500,000, spouse contributions, and downsizer contributions if you sell a home you’ve owned for at least ten years.

Action: If you’re 60 or over and still working, ask us to model a transition to retirement pension alongside salary sacrifice before you write it off. The two are usually worth looking at together.

Source: ATO, on preservation age and withdrawal options, transition to retirement income streams, retirement phase and the transfer balance cap and the concessional contributions cap, and Moneysmart on downsizer contributions.

Age Pension age is 67, and most retirees receive at least a part pension. It’s designed to sit alongside your super.

For people who have put money away consistently, it’s usually the assets test that decides how much. Above the threshold, the pension reduces by $3 a fortnight for every $1,000 of assessable assets, which works out at $78 a year. That’s steep enough that decisions you might otherwise make without much thought, like renovating, helping the kids with a deposit, or keeping cash outside super, quietly change your income for years. Gifts stay on your record and keep being assessed for five years, so they’re worth planning rather than doing on the spot.

We’ll work out what you’re entitled to now, what you’d be entitled to under a different structure, and whether the concession cards attached to the pension are worth more to you than the payment itself.

Source: Services Australia, on Age Pension eligibility, the assets test and gifting. Limits and cut-off points are reviewed in March, July and September each year, so check the current figures with your adviser.

For budgeting and cashflow, most people underestimate the first five years of retirement and overestimate the last ten. Spending is rarely flat. It’s highest while you’re still travelling and doing the things you waited to do, eases through your seventies, then rises again with health and care costs.

The Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia puts the balance needed for a comfortable retirement at $630,000 for a single person and $730,000 for a couple, assuming you own your home outright, draw down your capital and receive a part Age Pension. The figure that gets far less attention is the renting one. A single person renting privately needs around $340,000 for a modest lifestyle, against $110,000 for a homeowner at the same standard. Home ownership, rather than investment return, is the biggest single variable in most retirement budgets.

Your own number will look different again, depending on what debt you carry in, what you plan to spend while you’re still active, and whether anyone else is relying on you. Working it out early is usually a relief, because a vague number is far more worrying than a real one.

Source: ASFA Retirement Standard, February 2026. Figures assume you own your home outright unless stated, draw down your capital and receive a part Age Pension.

A portfolio built to grow and a portfolio built to pay you an income are not the same thing. Once you’re drawing on it, the order in which returns arrive matters as much as the average, because a poor year early on takes out capital that would otherwise have kept compounding.

We manage retirement portfolios through the CAREphilosophy®, which holds a defined reserves allocation so income can come from cash and defensive assets during a downturn instead of selling growth assets at the bottom. Your asset allocation is set against your timeline and how much movement you’re comfortable with, and we revisit it as both of those change.

Retirement changes which tax rules apply to you, and when. Most of the value here is in timing rather than anything complicated.

Super withdrawals are tax-free from 60 once you’ve met a condition of release. Investments held outside super are not, and the order you draw on them matters. So does when you sell. Realising a large capital gain in your final year of full-time work costs considerably more than realising the same gain in your first year of retirement, once your marginal rate has dropped.

Where there’s an investment property, a share portfolio or a business to sell, we plan the sequence rather than treating each decision on its own.

This is the part people tend to put off, and it’s usually simpler than expected once someone walks through it with you.

Your estate plan doesn’t automatically cover your super. Super isn’t an estate asset, so it passes according to your binding death benefit nomination rather than your will. Nominations lapse after three years unless they’re non-lapsing, and an out-of-date nomination is one of the more common things we find when we review an existing plan.

Who counts as a tax dependant matters too. Financially independent adult children generally don’t, which means the taxable component of your super can be taxed at 15 per cent plus the Medicare levy when it passes to them. There are ways to reduce that, and they need to be in place well before they’re needed.

We’ll work alongside your solicitor on wills, powers of attorney and advance health directives so the super side and the estate side line up.