Financial Planning for People Approaching Retirement
We Help People Approaching Retirement Build Prosperity and Freedom
Choosing when to stop work, turning super into an income and planning for later life can all draw on the same savings. We’ll help you weigh up the options and plan a retirement income that suits your goals.
Our Financial Advice Team Is Here to Help You
We Can Help You
- Choose the retirement date that works for you
- Consider contribution options within the caps in your last working years
- Compare a transition to retirement against stopping work
- Turn super into a regular retirement income
- Understand whether you may be eligible for the Age Pension
- Plan for any mortgage before the salary stops
- Plan for aged care costs, for a parent or for yourselves later
- Review super nominations and coordinate your estate plan with your solicitor
Who We Help
- People in their fifties starting to plan the next stage
- Workers with a retirement date wanting to know whether it holds up
- Over-60s still working weighing when to start drawing on super
- People easing into part-time rather than stopping all at once
- Couples with an age gap who will finish work at different times
- Recent retirees settling into life after work
- Carers supporting a parent while planning their own retirement
- Grandparents helping the next generation while keeping their own plan in view
What we advise on
How Our Advice Works in the Years Before Retirement
Retirement & Aged Care
We’ll help you set a retirement date, and work out what has to be true to support it.
A retirement date depends on what you plan to spend, what your assets may produce, any Age Pension entitlement and how long the money may need to last. Aged care can be part of the same conversation, whether for a parent or for yourselves later. We model the options with you before a date is set.
Together, we’ll work through:
- The date itself, and what has to be true for the numbers to carry it
- What you plan to spend in the first year after work, not the average year
- How long the money has to last, planned to a realistic age
- Whether an Age Pension entitlement arrives now, later, or not at all
- The order in which to draw on accounts, and how that may affect tax and entitlements
- Whether holding some cash could help you avoid selling investments after an early market fall
- Whether a lifetime income stream suits essential costs, alongside an account-based pension
- Aged care and estate questions raised now, while they are still hypothetical
Superannuation
We can show you what contributions in your remaining working years may still change.
Preservation age is 60 for anyone born from July 1964, and reaching it doesn’t automatically mean full access. Contributions in the years before retirement can still make a difference, and unused concessional cap amounts may be available if the eligibility rules are met. We look at what applies to you.
Together, we’ll work through:
- How much room is left under the contribution caps in the years you have remaining
- Unused concessional cap from the last five years, and whether the balance test lets you use it before you stop
- Whether a downsizer contribution will apply to you later on
- Whether to consolidate an old fund before a pension starts, after checking any cover
- Whether the option still suits a timeframe measured in years rather than decades
- What the transfer balance cap allows you to move into pension phase
- When any cover held inside the fund ends, and whether anything should replace it
- Nominations reviewed before the balance is converted into a pension
Tax & Wealth Strategies
We’ll help you understand how the years around stopping work may change your tax position.
A year with no salary, a year with a capital gain and a year with a redundancy payment can be very different tax positions. The financial year an event falls into can matter, so we plan the timing with you and work with your accountant on the tax implications.
Together, we’ll work through:
- How the years around stopping work may open different tax planning options
- The year you stop, which often carries a final salary and a payout together
- How a redundancy or leave payout is made up, with each part’s tax treatment confirmed with your accountant
- Whether to bring a contribution forward into a high-income year
- Capital gains on anything you plan to sell around the retirement date
- How income from a pension is taxed once the payments begin
- What changes about your deductions once employment income stops entirely
- Working with your accountant through the year you actually retire
Property Investment Advice
We can help you weigh up whether an investment property should be kept, sold or restructured before you stop.
An investment property can work differently once a salary stops. It’s generally counted in the Age Pension assets test where the family home isn’t, rent may affect the income test, and the year you sell can affect the tax on any gain. We consider the timing with you and your accountant.
Together, we’ll work through:
- Whether selling after the salary stops could reduce tax on the gain, checked with your accountant
- How the property is counted in the assets test, where the family home is not
- How rental income may be assessed, and what that could mean for an entitlement
- The cost base, including eligible costs, worked out with your accountant before you list
- What a downsizer contribution moves from an exempt asset into an assessed one
- Whether to keep the property and let it, or sell it and simplify
- What managing a rental would ask of you later, and who would do that work
- A gift, a family loan or acting as guarantor for a child buying, and the risks of each
Financial Planning & Advice
We’ll build one plan that holds the decisions of this decade together, alone or as a couple.
Decisions in this decade can affect one another. Going part-time can change contributions and the date, paying off a mortgage can change the income needed, and a parent needing care may change both. We bring them into one plan and revisit it as circumstances change.
Together, we’ll work through:
- One plan for two people finishing work at different times
- What each of you wants the years after work to look like
- The decisions in this decade that interact, mapped so none is made alone
- How going part-time changes the contributions, the date and the income needed
- What a parent needing care would do to both of your plans
- Enduring powers of attorney and your will to raise with your solicitor before retirement, alongside your nominations
- What the household would do if one of you could not work now
- A review timed around your intended finish date, and again once the income starts
Personal Insurance & Protection
We can review your cover as premiums and your needs change with age.
Stepped premiums generally rise with age, and the reasons for holding cover can change as debts reduce and family responsibilities change. Cancelling cover may be hard to reverse if your health changes, so we compare keeping, reducing or replacing cover before recommending a change.
Together, we’ll work through:
- Reviewing cover as premiums rise and what you need it for changes
- Whether a stepped premium is still worth paying, or a level one now suits better
- Which debts and dependants the cover still protects in the years before you stop work
- The age each policy ends, and whether that lands before you retire
- Cover inside super, and what may happen to it when a pension starts
- Whether trauma or TPD still has a job to do in this plan
- What cancelling early would cost if something happened before the date
- A decision made deliberately, rather than by letting a policy quietly lapse
Cashflow & Financial Wellbeing
We’ll help you understand what your household costs to run each year.
Retirement projections depend on what you spend, and tracking it while a salary is still coming in can give a clearer figure than estimating it later. Some costs may stop when work stops, others may begin, and plans such as travel can change spending in the early years.
Together, we’ll work through:
- What the household actually costs to run each year, tracked while a salary continues
- The difference between this year’s spending and the first year after work
- Any mortgage balance on the day you stop, and what that means for the plan
- One-off costs planned for the transition: a car, a trip, work on the house
- How much you may be able to save in the final working years, and what that would involve
- What supporting adult children is costing, and whether that continues
- A buffer to hold when the income stops, based on your costs and other resources
- A spending plan you can test now, rather than discovering it later
SMSF
We can help you work out whether a fund still suits you this close to drawing on it.
A self-managed fund keeps running through retirement, so trustee responsibilities continue for as long as the fund does. It also needs enough liquidity to pay at least the minimum pension. We compare it with other super options and consider whether it still suits your plans and the time you want to give it.
Together, we’ll work through:
- Whether the fund is still the right structure now the money is about to be drawn
- What running the fund would ask of you through retirement itself
- Who would manage the fund if your health changed, and whether that is documented
- What running the fund costs once the balance is being drawn down rather than built
- How a pension is paid from a fund, and the minimums that apply
- What winding the fund up would involve, if that becomes the answer
- Whether the assets inside it can produce the income you need
- Estate questions for a self-managed fund, to work through with your solicitor
What We’ll Work Through Together
When You Could Retire
Model spending against your assets and any Age Pension entitlement.
What You Spend
Understand your household spending before the salary stops.
Contributions in Your Final Decade
Consider contribution caps and any carry-forward amounts while you’re still working.
Moving Super Into Pension Phase
When to make the move, how the tax changes, and what to draw afterwards.
Sequencing Risk at Retirement
Consider a cash buffer and draw order to help manage an early market fall.
The Mortgage Before You Retire
Compare clearing, keeping or paying down any mortgage, and the trade-offs of each.
Your Binding Nomination
Review whether your nomination fits your estate plan, alongside your solicitor.
When a Parent Needs Care
Understand accommodation costs, means testing and the effect on your own plans.
Proactive, Holistic, and Experienced Financial Planning
Retirement can be a chance to spend more of your time on what matters to you, and the years ahead are worth planning with care. For many people, it’s the first time their days are truly their own. We’ll listen to what you want these years to look like, then help you understand where you stand today, what may be possible from here, and which decisions could help bring that life a little closer.
Retirement is rarely something you plan alone. A partner, children finding their own way, perhaps a parent who needs more help than before. We’ll take the people around you into account, and we can review the plan with you as things change. What we’re working towards with you is simple: more time with the people you love, more freedom in how you spend it, and a plan that considers the people you’d like to look after.
Every financial decision impacts the next
Your Financial Life Is Connected
Great advice starts with understanding the bigger picture. Every stage of life presents new opportunities and challenges, from buying property and changing careers to growing your family, planning for retirement and protecting what matters most. At Ryker, we help connect every piece of your financial world into one clear strategy.
Your
Wealth
- Property & Investing
- Career & Income
- Tax Strategy
- Insurance & Protecting Your Family
- Super & SMSF
- Wealth & Investments
- Life Events & Changes
- Business & Wealth
- Legacy & Future Wealth
- Retirement Planning
Frequently Asked Questions
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.
Yes, contributions in the years before retirement can still make a difference, depending on your income, balance and eligibility.
Three things worth looking at:
- Unused concessional cap amounts carried forward from earlier years, if the balance test is met.
- After-tax contributions and the bring-forward rule.
- Whether a downsizer contribution may be available to you later.
Each carries its own conditions and caps, so we work out which of them apply to you and how they fit with your other priorities.
Advice applies the general information to your own circumstances. Fund seminars can be a useful way to understand the mechanics, and they’re often free for members.
A seminar provides general information for a broad audience, so it may not consider your partner’s balance, your mortgage, what you spend, anything you hold outside the fund, or whether an Age Pension entitlement is in play.
Go to the seminar. Then we can help you apply what you’ve learned to your own situation, including a possible retirement date and income.
It depends on tax, access and what you’d like to leave behind, and it’s worth deciding rather than defaulting into.
In general terms, the considerations are how each account is taxed, what minimum pension payments require, how each option may affect a Centrelink entitlement, and what you’d like to leave and to whom.
The order you draw on accounts may affect how long your money lasts. We can model the options with you before you choose.
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.
It’s common, and it’s a planning question rather than a problem.
Household income may drop while many costs stay the same, and one of you may be able to access super before the other. Depending on your circumstances and eligibility, options such as contribution splitting or spouse contributions may be worth considering.
It’s also worth planning for what happens if one of you dies first. It’s uncomfortable to raise, so we approach it gently and model each of you separately and then together.
It’s a lifestyle decision with a financial consequence, and it’s worth considering in that order.
Financially, the things to weigh are the transaction costs both ways, what the proceeds could do for you, whether a downsizer contribution into super may be available, and how the change could affect an Age Pension entitlement, since the family home is treated differently from other assets.
Some options carry age and eligibility conditions, so timing matters. If it’s on the table, we can model it with you before you list.
It can change the numbers significantly, which is why it’s worth including in the plan before it’s needed.
The possible effects include higher costs for the person needing care, an accommodation payment, particular treatment of the family home in the means test, and changes to any Age Pension entitlement.
Planning for it doesn’t mean assuming it. It means understanding what the plan could do, and discussing powers of attorney with your solicitor while both of you are able to make them.
Yes. Tell us what you hold, what you’d like the years after work to look like and what’s on your mind, and we can start there.
The first meeting with us is free of charge. We’ll explain how we can help and what we’ll ask you to bring, such as super statements, details of any investments and a sense of what you spend.
This decade can bring several decisions together, and we can help you work through them in an order that makes sense for you.
Who We Help
Advice for All Stages of Life
From first job to retirement, we help you build wealth, protect it, and live well.
Starting Out
First jobs, first home, first super, HECS debt, budgeting and more.
Growing Families
First home buyers, new parents, school fees, single incomes, young families and more.
Medical & Health
Doctors, dentists, pharmacists, allied health, nurses and more.
Professional Services & Tech
Lawyers, accountants, brokers, engineers, consultants and more.
Trades & Business Owners
Electricians, plumbers, builders, sole traders, franchisees and more.
Corporate & Executive
Executives, senior managers, directors, board members and more.
Public Sector & Defence
Police, firefighters, paramedics, ADF personnel, teachers and more.
Approaching Retirement
Pre-retirees, transition to retirement, Age Pension, aged care, estate planning and more.
Other Stages
Any income, any stage, career changers, separation, second opinions and more.
Reviews
Testimonials from Our Clients
Grow & Protect Your Wealth Today
Whatever’s on your mind, we’re here to help. You’ll speak with an authorised financial adviser who’ll listen first and get to know what matters to you.
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