Financial Planning for Airport Shift Workers

We’re invested in your long-term success. What we do is personal, and we take it personally.

Your financial decisions connect, so we consider the parts of your financial life that are relevant to the advice you need:

• Property & Investing
• Career & Income
• Tax Strategy
• Insurance & Protecting Your Family
• Super & SMSF
• Wealth & Investments
• Life Events & Changes
• Business & Wealth
• Legacy & Future Wealth
• Retirement Planning

This is how we help you make decisions today with your longer-term goals in view.

Everybody’s situation is different, so we listen first, understand what matters to you and explain your options clearly before we make a recommendation.

Under one award, for example, part-time shiftworkers agree in writing on a minimum number of ordinary hours each week, and time worked past their rostered daily hours is overtime. Your own contract or agreement may set things differently, so it’s worth checking.

The ATO says overtime isn’t qualifying earnings for super, provided your ordinary hours are clearly identified in an award or agreement, though an award or agreement can add its own super obligations. That can mean super follows your ordinary hours while your spending follows the hours you work. Building the budget on your contracted hours, then planning the extra shifts, is something we can work through with you.

Your accountant and financial adviser bring different expertise to the same decisions. Your accountant can advise on tax reporting, structures and consequences; we help you plan how cashflow, debt, super, investments and protection work towards your goals. We can coordinate before important decisions.

What an accountant does

• Prepares and lodges tax returns, BAS and financial statements
• Advises on tax structures such as companies, trusts and partnerships
• Manages bookkeeping, payroll and ATO compliance
• Provides tax advice on the consequences of a transaction

What a financial adviser does

• Sets a long term strategy across retirement, investing and cash flow
• Builds wealth from early in a working life, starting with cash flow, a first home and super
• Recommends specific super funds, investments and personal insurance
• Operates under an Australian Financial Services Licence, which is required to give personal advice on financial products
• Handles retirement planning, Centrelink and aged care strategy, and estate planning considerations

Professional roles and authorisations matter. We provide financial advice within our authorisations and work with your accountant for specialist tax advice and lodgements.

Where they work together

• Tax position. Your accountant confirms your marginal rate, deductions and carried forward losses, which shapes decisions on super contributions, investment structures and the timing of asset sales.
• Business and entity structures. Your accountant advises on the structure itself and your financial adviser works within it for investments, insurance and succession planning.
• Cash flow. Your accountant’s figures can help us understand what’s available for debt repayment, protection and longer-term goals.
• Before key decisions. We can coordinate with your accountant on contributions, asset sales and other material choices in time to consider relevant tax consequences.

The award that applies depends on your employer’s industry and your duties, not the workplace. One award, for example, covers the airline operations industry, including labour hire workers placed in it, and doesn’t cover people employed by an airport operator. Another covers airport operators. Screening work can come under an award for the security services industry, and if a council runs the airport, its staff may be on a local government award. An enterprise agreement, if one applies, can also set pay and conditions.

Fair Work’s Pay and Conditions Tool can help you find which award applies to you, and an enterprise agreement states who it covers. We plan with you from the pay you actually receive.

Fair Work says a transfer of business can happen when work is outsourced or brought in-house, you start with the new employer within 3 months of your old job ending, and your duties are the same or nearly the same. Fair Work can help you check whether it applies.

If it does, a new employer must recognise your service for most entitlements, such as sick and carer’s leave. If the new employer isn’t a related business of the old one (an associated entity), it may not have to recognise service for redundancy and annual leave. Long service leave may also not carry over in some cases. Turning down a similar offer that recognises your service can mean no redundancy pay. We can plan leave, super and cover with you beforehand.

Under Fair Work’s employee choice pathway, a casual employee of at least 6 months, or 12 months with a small business, who believes they no longer fit the casual definition can give their employer written notice to change to permanent work. An employer can only refuse for certain reasons.

As a permanent employee you’d generally get paid leave, such as annual and personal leave, and no casual loading, so your take-home pay and your time off both change. It’s a good time to build a budget on the new hours and check any cover in your super. We can work through the numbers with you before you give notice.

Your award or agreement sets your rates, penalties and conditions, and Fair Work’s tools can show whether a payslip matches. That’s a useful starting point.

What advice may add is a plan for the money itself: how much of each pay goes to bills, savings and super, which insurance suits your duties, and what going permanent or a new employer could mean along the way. We start with your situation and put our recommendations in writing.

Yes. A plan can start with when you’d like to finish shift work, if you work shifts, and whether a coordinating, training or part-time stage comes first. If super from several employers is part of the picture, we can list each fund in one place.

From there, we’d plan the income each stage could need from super and savings. You can read more about our retirement advice.

We’re a national service, so you can meet with us by phone or video from anywhere in Australia. We also have offices in three cities:

• Sydney: offices in Sydney CBD, Parramatta, Seven Hills, Ingleburn and Narellan, servicing areas including the City of Sydney, Eastern Suburbs, Inner West, North Shore, Northern Beaches, Sutherland Shire, Blacktown, Liverpool, Campbelltown and all surrounding suburbs.
• Melbourne: our St Kilda Road office, servicing areas including the City of Melbourne, Port Phillip, Boroondara, Monash, Casey, Wyndham and all surrounding suburbs.
• Brisbane: our Eagle Street office, servicing areas including Brisbane City, Moreton Bay, Ipswich, Logan, the Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast and all surrounding suburbs.

Yes. Whether it’s your first airport job, a part-time role with set hours, casual shifts or a coordinator role, you can start with us wherever things stand now.

There’s no cost for the initial conversation. Any advice after that is a paid service, with its scope and fee agreed with you in writing first.

It helps to bring payslips from a few pay periods showing your hours and overtime, a written part-time agreement or contract letter if you have one, your super statements and any insurance policies.