Financial Planning for FIFO and Mine 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.

It depends on where you usually live, not where you work. The ATO bases eligibility on your usual place of residence, and it gives fly-in fly-out workers as an example of people who work in a remote zone but aren’t eligible because their home is outside it.

If you live in a zone for part of the year, the details matter, including how long you live there. Your accountant or tax agent can confirm your position before you lodge.

We can then build the result into your plan, so your budget reflects the tax you expect to pay.

Not on its own. The ATO describes the zone tax offset as being for residents of specified remote and isolated areas of Australia, and says this doesn’t include an offshore oil or gas rig.

As for any FIFO worker, it comes down to where your home is. A home in a zone may qualify if it meets the ATO’s rules on how long you live there in the income year, and your accountant or tax agent can check that against your own dates before you lodge.

We can then plan your cashflow around the tax your accountant expects you to pay, across the weeks you’re offshore and the weeks at home.

It depends on your goals. You and your employer can agree to put part of your pre-tax pay into super, where concessional contributions are generally taxed in the fund rather than at your marginal rate. From 1 July 2026 the general concessional cap is $32,500, caps are indexed, and your employer’s contributions count towards it.

Money in super is generally preserved until you reach preservation age and meet a condition of release, so it’s worth weighing against goals you’d fund before then, such as an early finish on site. Earlier unused cap amounts may be available if your total super balance was under a set limit last 30 June.

We can work out an amount with you that suits your cap, your tax position and your goals outside super.

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 may or may not be. Default cover in super is set by the fund, so the amount isn’t based on your mortgage, your household costs or the income you earn on site. Income protection inside super also has its own definition of the income it covers, which can matter when allowances and overtime make up part of your pay.

We can compare what you hold with what your household would need, and the insurer decides the terms of any new cover.

An online salary sacrifice calculator is a quick way to see roughly how a contribution could change your take-home pay, and it’s a useful place to start. Advice adds a wider view: your employer’s contributions and the cap, any unused cap amounts from earlier years, Division 293 if your income is high, and whether money held in super until preservation age fits what your FIFO years are for.

We can bring those together into one amount with you, and review it when your roster, role or pay changes.

Start with what will arrive and when. At the end of a job, an employee is generally paid final wages and any unused annual leave, and long service leave or redundancy payments may also apply, depending on your entitlements. It’s worth asking your employer what you’re entitled to. If you work on an ABN, these employee entitlements generally don’t apply.

Your accountant can confirm how each payment is taxed. From there, a plan can set aside a buffer for the time between jobs, review any cover that would end with the job, and decide what goes to debt, savings or super.

We can work through those decisions with you before your last swing.

Start with your fixed costs. A mortgage, car loans and other repayments set while earning a site income stay the same when the pay changes, so it helps to know what a local wage would need to cover before you leave.

One option is to live on the wage you expect while still on site and save the difference, which tests the budget and adds to your buffer at the same time. Another is to reduce debt first, so the change in income is easier to absorb.

We can plan your move home with you, using your own costs, the wage you expect and the date you’d like to finish.

Yes. We meet in person or online, so an initial conversation can be booked for your R&R week, anywhere in Australia.

It helps to have your roster dates handy, so any later reviews can be planned around your time at home too. If a partner or someone else shares the household finances, they’re welcome to join the conversation.

When you book, let us know when your next R&R starts and we’ll find a time that suits.

Yes, whether this is your first year on site or your tenth.

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 a recent payslip showing your allowances and overtime, your roster, your latest super statement and details of any cover you hold. Tell us what you’d like your FIFO years to leave behind, and when you’d like to come home.