Financial Planning for Concreters

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.

It depends on the whole arrangement, not the ABN alone. The ATO looks at the contract as a whole: being paid for the time you work is one sign of an employee, while being contracted to achieve a specific result points towards a contractor. On a contract, a business may still have to pay super if you’re paid mainly for your labour.

Fair Work says it’s illegal for a business to call a worker a contractor when it doesn’t reasonably believe that’s true. Your status is for the ATO and Fair Work to decide, and an accountant can check yours.

We can plan your super contributions and cover around the answer, whichever way it falls.

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.

Start with the costs that don’t move. Any crew wages, pump or truck repayments, insurance premiums and household bills can fall due whether a pour goes ahead or not, so the plan lists those first and sets a buffer against them.

A buffer sized to a run of pushed pours, rather than only to a slow month, can give you time while invoices catch up. Booked pours can then be tracked week by week, with each invoice date shifted when a pour moves.

We can build that plan with you, and review it as your work and costs change.

A balloon payment is a lump sum due at the end of a loan, after smaller regular repayments. Moneysmart notes that the lump sum is repaid with interest, so the total cost of the loan is generally higher.

The date and the amount are set out in your loan contract, which makes the balloon something you can plan for well ahead. Options can include saving towards it, refinancing it or selling the gear, and a broker arranges any refinance.

We can build the balloon into your cashflow and savings plan, and check that your cover still suits the debt while it’s owed.

A finance broker compares lenders and arranges the loan, which is valuable when you’re buying gear. A financial adviser looks at how the loan fits the rest of your plan: the buffer you’d want before you sign, whether your life, TPD and income protection would still suit the new debt, what the repayments mean for your super and savings, and how any balloon payment will be met.

We can work alongside your broker, who arranges the lending, while we plan the rest with you. Any new cover is still subject to the insurer’s assessment.

Loans in your name generally still have to be repaid if you can no longer work or if you pass away. Life cover can pay a lump sum to your beneficiaries, and TPD cover can pay a lump sum if you meet the policy’s definition of total and permanent disability. Either could go towards those debts.

Sizing that cover starts with what you owe on any truck, pump or other gear, plus household debts and what your loved ones would need. Who owns each policy and who receives the money matter too, and a solicitor can advise on your will.

We can compare suitable cover with you, and the insurer decides any application.

It can. Insurers usually ask about your job when you apply, and duties such as screeding, trowelling, laying reo and cutting with power saws may be part of that assessment. Since 5 October 2021, the duty when applying for consumer life cover is to take reasonable care not to make a misrepresentation, which means answering the questions asked with reasonable care.

An application can be offered on standard terms, with a premium loading, with an exclusion for a named condition, deferred for a period, or declined. The insurer decides.

We can help you describe your work clearly and compare suitable options before you apply.

Yes, from an apprentice’s early pours to owning the gear and employing labourers.

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.

Useful things to have with you: a payslip or a few recent invoices, a super statement, the policy documents for any insurance, and any equipment finance contract, especially one that ends with a balloon payment.