Financial Planning for Chefs and Cooks

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.

We start with the pay you can count on in a usual week: your base hours, or your salary if you’re on one. Household bills are planned from that figure.

Then the rest of your pay is planned for before it’s paid:

• Weekend, public holiday and late-night rates
• Overtime and any split shift allowance
• A buffer for quieter weeks or time between jobs

How much goes where is your decision. We can work through it with you, so your budget doesn’t rest on your busiest weeks.

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 depends on your employer’s industry and your duties, rather than your job title. Fair Work sets out the main routes:

• The Restaurant Industry Award, for restaurants and cafes that mainly sell food and drinks to be eaten on the premises
• The Hospitality Industry (General) Award, for hotels, motels, caterers and restaurants connected with them
• Separate awards for registered clubs and fast food businesses
• Hospitals, boarding schools and aged care providers that employ their own kitchen staff, as neither hospitality award covers these employers

Fair Work’s Pay and Conditions Tool is the place to check yours. Whichever applies, we plan with you from the pay on your payslips.

If you’re full time on an annualised wage under the Restaurant or Hospitality Award, it must be at least 25% more than the award minimum. The award also sets outer limits, or maximums, on the penalty and overtime hours the salary covers, and hours beyond them must be paid separately. Each 12 months, your employer compares the salary with what the award would have paid and makes up any shortfall.

The Restaurant Award’s cook grades go up to a chef de partie or equivalent, so it’s worth checking with Fair Work which award, if any, covers a sous or head chef role. We can weigh the salary with you against the hours, super and cover that come with it.

Under the ATO’s rules, shift penalties, including public holiday penalties, and casual loading count towards the earnings your employer’s super is worked out on. Overtime doesn’t, provided an award or agreement clearly identifies your ordinary hours.

Your payslip and your fund’s statement together show what’s been paid. If something looks wrong, ask your employer first, then the ATO. We can plan your own contributions with you around what your employer pays.

A change of career can mean costs before the new pay starts. Points worth planning:

• Course fees, and what you’d live on while you study
• A possible dip in pay while you start again
• Your super while you study or work fewer hours, and any contributions you’d like to make
• Cover that comes through your employer, if you have it, which may not continue once you leave, so it’s worth asking your employer or fund before your last day

Setting it out before you leave gives you time to choose. We can work through each part with you.

Fair Work’s Pay and Conditions Tool can work out pay rates for your award and classification, and it’s the place to check them.

A financial adviser looks at what the pay does next: a budget built on your base pay, the super paid on your earnings, your own contributions, cover for your work in the kitchen and goals such as a home or a career change. We plan with the pay you receive, and Fair Work stays the place for questions about your rate.

Yes. We can look with you at super built across different kitchens, any casual years, when you’d like to step back from cooking, and extra contributions you might make along the way. A lighter role before you stop, such as training others or fewer shifts, can be part of the plan if that’s what you’d like.

We’d build the plan on super and savings first. 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. An apprentice in a first kitchen, a casual cook or a head chef on a salary can all start here, wherever things stand today.

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 recent payslips, a statement from each super fund, any insurance policies you have and a salary offer letter if you’ve received one. We can meet in person or online.