Financial Planning for Assistants in Nursing and PCAs

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.

Start early, because a placement block can mean fewer paid shifts for as long as it runs. Points to work through:

• The dates and length of each block, from your education provider, and the shifts you’d expect to give up.
• A buffer saved in the months before, sized to your fixed costs for those weeks.
• The Commonwealth Prac Payment, which eligible students on a mandatory placement in a nursing degree or a VET Diploma of Nursing apply for through their education provider. Eligibility depends on receiving income support, or meeting a work test and an income test, and the payment counts as income for tax.
• Bills and repayments that fall due during the block.

We can build the placement budget 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.

Compulsory repayments apply in any year your repayment income is above the minimum repayment threshold. The ATO works them out when your tax return is assessed, and from the 2025–26 income year they’re calculated only on the income above that minimum. HELP and VET Student Loans use the same thresholds.

Repayment income starts from your taxable income and can be higher once other amounts are added. These include reportable fringe benefits, such as packaged benefits above a set threshold, reportable super contributions, including salary sacrifice, and any net investment losses.

So higher pay, such as after registering as an enrolled or registered nurse, can start or increase repayments. We can plan your budget and goals with you around them.

Generally yes. The ATO counts your ordinary hours, casual loading and shift penalties, including public holiday penalties, in the earnings your employer pays super on.

If you work for a hospital and an agency, or a hospital and an aged care employer, each one pays super on the pay it provides. Your fund’s records can be matched against each payslip, and every employer will need the details of the fund you’ve chosen.

We can check your contributions with you, and look at whether bringing your accounts into one fund suits you, after checking the insurance attached to each.

A repayment calculator can give you a useful estimate of what you’d repay at a given income, based on the assumptions it uses.

Advice looks at how those repayments fit your wider finances: when your pay may change after study, how any packaging or salary sacrifice could affect your repayment income, what placement blocks do to the years before, and how the repayments sit beside super, cover and your other goals.

It’s worth trying the calculator first. We can then help you build its figures into a budget and a plan.

The insurer decides, based on your answers about your job, your duties, your hours and your health. Many policies base the benefit on your earnings in the 12 months before an illness or injury, so a year with fewer shifts, such as a study year, can lower what a policy would pay.

Casual work generally comes without paid sick leave, so the waiting period is worth matching to your savings. Workers compensation is separate, through a state, territory or Commonwealth scheme.

We can compare options with you before you apply. Free, confidential support is available from Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636 and Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Your pay and your entitlements both change. Points to work through:

• The casual loading stops, and paid leave such as annual leave and personal leave starts to build.
• Agreed hours, if you move to a part-time role, which can make a household budget easier to set.
• Any income protection you hold, and whether its waiting period still suits once you have sick leave to draw on.
• Super, which keeps being paid on your ordinary hours and any shift penalties.

We can set out the before and after with you, so the change fits your budget, savings and cover.

Yes. Your first casual shifts on the ward, a course you’ve just started or many years in the role are all fine places to start from.

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’s useful to bring a few recent payslips, any course offer or enrolment details, a super statement, the details of any cover you hold and any study loan statement. We can talk face to face or over video.