Plan your dream retirement –

then live it

Making the transition from working life to retirement can be a challenging time where your financial world is concerned.

Without an income generated from working, you may be faced with a whole new set of financial challenges you never thought to consider before.

A financial advisor with retirement experience can ensure you are making the most of your superannuation, tax, and pension to maximise your income and the longevity of your retirefment fund.  Without the clarity to understand how these financial system interact, you can encounter financial challenges, including:

• Realising your superannuation may not be enough to last your whole retirement
• Facing tax obligations you could avoid with the right structuring
• Needing to review your financial goals in light of a new phase of life
• Wanting to maximise your investment income but not knowing where to start
• Having too many assets to receive the pension, but not enough cash to live comfortably
• Selling assets and ending up with a tax burden or over the pension eligibility threshold
• Not knowing how to rebalance your portfolio to ensure both longevity and stability of your resources
• Unsure how to achieve a comfortable retirement while still leaving a legacy or estate plan for your family
• Wanting to support children or grandchildren financially, but without the financial structure to do so safely and effectively

Sounds like a lot, right?

Moving from having a regular income to one built entirely on the results of your hard work can be scary.

We take the fear out of the transition by working with you to ensure that your retirement plan is secure and structured to help you maintain your desired lifestyle.  We start building your plan wherever you are at – whether 5, 10, or 20 years from retirement.

The answer depends on the lifestyle you want, but the ASFA Retirement Standard gives a useful, regularly updated benchmark for the superannuation balance required at retirement age 67.

• To achieve a comfortable retirement, the superannuation balance required is $730,000 for a couple and $630,000 for a single person.
• To achieve a modest retirement, the superannuation balance required is $120,000 for a couple and $110,000 for a single person.
• To achieve a modest retirement when renting privately, the superannuation balance required is $385,000 for a couple and $340,000 for a single person.

These figures assume home ownership for the comfortable and standard modest tiers, with the higher renting figures reflecting the cost of not owning your home outright. These figures are averages, not targets. Your own number will depend on your goals, assets, and whether you plan to travel, downsize, or support family along the way, and ASFA updates the balances quarterly, so it’s worth checking the source page directly if you’re working from an exact figure.

There isn’t a single “retirement age.” It depends on whether you’re asking about your superannuation or the Age Pension, and the two work differently. You can access your super once you reach your preservation age, which depends on when you were born. For anyone who hadn’t already reached it by 1 July 2024, preservation age is 60. From age 60, you can access your super if you’re retired or leave a job, and from age 65, you can access it regardless of whether you’re still working. The Age Pension is separate, and the Age Pension eligibility age increased to 67 from 1 July 2023. If you’re not ready to fully retire once you reach preservation age, a Transition to Retirement strategy can let you access some super while still working. myGov

Retirement is consistently one of the most common reasons people seek out financial advice, whether that’s structuring a plan they’ve been working towards for years, or catching up quickly once retirement feels closer than expected. As mentioned above, research from UniSuper and Vanguard both point to the same pattern: people who get advice tend to feel more confident about their retirement, not just about the numbers but about the decisions around downsizing, income streams, and aged care costs. It won’t be the right time for everyone, but if you’re weighing up big decisions, such as how to fund your retirement, when to access your super, or how to structure things tax effectively, that’s usually the point where a conversation with an adviser is worth having.