Financial Planning for Lift Technicians and Mechanics

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 from the pay you can count on in an ordinary week: your base rate and any allowance paid regardless of overtime. A few months of payslips can show which parts hold steady.

Overtime, call-backs and any on-call pay can then sit above that line, with a share going to savings, super or a goal of your own. Policies and lenders can treat those layers differently, so it’s worth asking how they’d count yours. We can set this out with you from your own payslips.

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 who employs you and the work you do. Lift work pay can depend on your employer’s agreement or award, and one on-site award has its own lift clause and allowance. That clause covers electrical and metal tradespeople and their assistants on the installation, major modernisation, servicing, repair or maintenance of lifts and escalators.

Your employer can tell you what applies to you, and Fair Work is the place to check, including where the national award system applies. Whichever it is, we can plan with you from your payslips.

Start with the agreement itself, because only your document can show what it provides. For any cover your agreement provides, it helps to look at:

• What it pays, and which income that’s based on
• How long it pays for, and any waiting period
• When it stops, including if you change employer or move onto an ABN
• Who provides it, and who assesses a claim

Income protection is generally for illness or injury rather than losing a job. We can read it with you beside personal cover from the insurers willing to consider your work, and the insurer decides on any application.

Start with super. Having an ABN doesn’t settle it: a business may still have to pay your super if more than half the contract’s value is for your labour, payment doesn’t depend on a set result and the work can’t be delegated. The hirer doesn’t have to pay under a contract with your own company, trust or partnership. An accountant or the ATO can confirm where you stand.

Then plan for time off, as self-employed people don’t have paid sick leave, and keep invoices and income records from the start. Workers compensation is separate, and each scheme sets who qualifies. We can go through the offer with you beside your wage.

Start with the pay that could change, such as overtime or on-call pay, and compare the offer with your last year of payslips. Points to plan:

• A budget built on the reliable part of the new pay
• Super on the new package, and what your employer pays
• Any cover you hold: how a policy or fund records your job, and how its definitions may read the new duties
• A new application, if you make one, with your new duties set out

We can go through the numbers with you before you say yes.

Start with your pay steps. Under one award, for example, apprentices get a share of the lift allowance that rises with each year of the apprenticeship. Deciding early what each step goes towards can help it build your savings.

It’s also worth looking at:

• Which fund your super goes to, shown on your payslip
• Insurance in that fund: if you’re under 25, cover in a new fund may need asking for, depending on your job and your fund
• A small buffer of your own

We can set this out with you from your current payslips.

Yes. We can look with you at how long you’d like to keep doing physical work, a supervising or training stage along the way, and what changes in your budget if overtime or on-call pay winds down.

We’d build the plan on super and savings, with any sale of a small lift firm as an addition. 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. You can start with us wherever you are now, from the first year of an apprenticeship to running a small lift firm.

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 have a few things with you: recent payslips, a statement from your super fund and any agreement or policy papers you have. We can meet in person or online.