Retirement and redundancy often trigger important defined benefit pension decisions. Learn how personalised financial advice can help you compare your options, understand the risks and opportunities, and choose a strategy that aligns with your long-term goals.

Retirement can be one of the most rewarding stages of life—but simple mistakes can cost Australians thousands of dollars and years of financial freedom. Discover the 10 most common retirement planning mistakes and the practical steps you can take to avoid them.

The government is set to ban new loans for residential property in SMSFs. These changes will help protect financially illiterate/naïve people’s retirement savings from making investment mistakes. Having diversification in superannuation investments protect people from making no or low returns which is imperative to living a comfortable retirement. Whilst it is a shame that property experts will be impacted, overall, as a Financial Planner this is a positive step for consumer

You can receive the Age Pension while living overseas, but your payments often reduce over time due to loss of supplements and residency-based rules. Understanding the 6-week, 26-week and 35-year residency rules is critical to avoid unexpected drops in income when planning an overseas retirement.

Your super balance at 40 and 50 matters because it shows whether you’re on track to reach the tax‑free retirement cap, which is projected to grow significantly over time. With ongoing employer contributions and investment growth, most high‑income earners need roughly $560k at 40 and $1.15m at 50 to stay on target. Understanding your position early — and getting tailored financial advice — can make a six‑figure difference to your retirement outcome.

Retiring early requires you to pay off your home loan, build your superannuation, and build your personal non-super investments to use before age 60. As Financial Planners we can assist with this goal and helping you make trade off decisions.

SMSFs are fantastic for the right clients, and terrible for the wrong clients. As Financial Planners, we are best placed to assess your circumstances and determine whether an SMSF would be right for you, and then provide you with ongoing guidance and support if they are.

Salary sacrifice provides two big benefits: Overall tax is reduced as super contributions are taxed at only 15% p.a. The investments in super are able to provide generous returns which and have a long time period to benefit from compounding returns, in a low tax rate environment.

The decision of whether to take your annual or long service leave is a consideration of the Age Pension, tax and the time value of money. We can help you decide what to do.

We are pleased to report that both of these issues have been addressed and that the proposed tax will no longer be applied to unrealised gains, and the cap will be indexed. However, it is not all good news for high net worth individuals: The government has instead proposed an additional amendment that balances above $10m would incur tax at 40%. This change is interesting because as the visual shows, for high net worth individuals, for the first time, superannuation could no

Once you turn 60 and are fully retired or reach age 65 (even if you are still working), you are eligible to access a tax free pension account. If you leave your money in super, it continues to be taxed at 15% on the earnings. This means for an account balance of $500,000 you would be paying at extra $3,000 per year * of tax that you don't need to pay!

For the majority of people, making extra contributions into superannuation that you claim a tax deduction on can be a great strategy to reduce your income tax and have a larger portion of your savings invested in the low tax rate environment of superannuation. However, there are a couple of important exceptions to be aware of!

Australia's ageing population is creating extra demand for Aged Care services. As such, we are seeing more clients (and most particularly their Powers of Attorney - often their adult children) reach out for financial advice. Aged Care is a complex, time consuming and often emotionally draining task, and we are here to help.

On the surface division 296 tax seems fairly innocuous, however it has several fundamental flaws including the tax on unrealised capital gains, no indexation and people loosing faith in super.

"How Long Does $500,000 Last In Retirement?" Our blog answers the age your funds last to based on your spending levels!

After working in Financial Advice for over 10 years, here are the 10 Biggest Australian Retirement Planning Mistakes I see.

These are the 5 red flags you should look for in your Annual Superannuation Statement.

Longevity risk, is simply the risk of running out of money too early in retirement. Financial Advisers can help mitigate longevity risk!

To access your superannuation, you need to meet a 'condition of release' which for most people occurs due to reaching a certain age and/or r

Michael Sauer was featured in this InfoChoice article discussing equity release options for seniors and retirees.