Financial Planning for Marketers, Designers and Copywriters

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.

Yes. Our financial advice and strategies can help you prepare, on staff or freelance. On staff, that could mean working out how long your money would last and planning around what any award, agreement or contract gives you. Fair Work notes most small business employers don’t have to pay redundancy pay under the National Employment Standards, and it can explain your entitlements. If you freelance, redundancy may not apply, so we’d plan for a retainer or account ending.

Income protection is generally for illness or injury rather than losing a job, so we can help you understand what it would and wouldn’t do for you, and what may change with any cover if you leave. If your job does end, our redundancy advice can help with what comes next.

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 can, and an ABN doesn’t settle it. The ATO says a business makes super contributions for a contractor paid under a contract:

• Mainly for your labour, with more than half its dollar value for labour
• For your personal labour and skills, with payment not dependent on a specified result
• To do the work yourself, where it can’t be delegated

The ATO’s example is a freelance administrative assistant with an ABN who invoices for hours worked and counts as an employee for super. A contract with a company, trust or partnership is different: the business doesn’t have to pay super for the person they employ.

An accountant or the ATO can confirm how this applies to you, and we can plan your own contributions around the answer.

It can. The ATO looks at whether payment depends on achieving a specified result and whether more than half the contract’s dollar value is for labour, so the contract’s terms matter more than a job title.

Filming, and presenting in promotional activities, can sit under a separate ATO rule, where a fixed fee and an ABN don’t settle it unless you’re paid through a company, trust or partnership. The ATO lists social media influencers among the people that rule covers. It’s written around activities such as presenting and filming, so an accountant or the ATO can confirm whether it applies to your work.

Once you have the answer, we can plan your own contributions with you.

It depends on who you work for and what you do. Where the national award system applies, one industry award lists commercial designing, writing and drawing, and publishing, among the industries and occupations it covers, for employees in its listed classifications. That doesn’t make it the award for every designer, because your employer’s industry and your classification matter too.

Awards cover employers and their employees, and contractors don’t get award pay rates. Calling a contract freelance doesn’t settle which you are, so a lawyer can help if you’re unsure. Fair Work is the place to check which award applies to you, and we can plan your budget with you around your pay.

Start with what would stop on your last day and what you’d want in its place. Employer super, sick leave and any cover through work can all change, and Moneysmart notes that being self-employed means you won’t have the benefit of paid holidays or sick leave.

From there, we can look with you at how much work to line up first, whether one retainer or several, how long a buffer could cover household costs if an invoice runs late, and the share of each invoice to set aside for tax and super. An accountant can confirm the tax side, and a lawyer can help with questions about a contract.

It can. The ATO says that where a content creator is carrying on a business, free or gifted goods and services received in exchange for promotion will generally have tax consequences even where no cash is paid. If you’re not carrying on a business, amounts you receive may still be assessable, for example from side work beside your main job. Amounts from a hobby are generally not assessable income.

An accountant can confirm which applies to you, and it helps to record the market value of what you receive. We can then plan around the tax with you.

Your accountant and your app do valuable work, and we can build on it. We’d use your figures to look with you at what your household needs from your income, how your super and savings are tracking, what you’d want covered, and how a move between jobs or clients could change all of it.

That can help you see how each decision affects the others. We can work alongside your accountant, who remains the person for your tax and lodgements.

Yes. If you’ve spent years on invoices, we can look with you at what’s in your super, what your own contributions could add within the caps and what you’d like it to pay for. If you’re moving from agency work to fewer clients, or looking at part-time work as a stage before you stop, we can plan how that income could sit beside your super and savings.

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 from a first agency job, a first freelance invoice or a long career in marketing, design or writing.

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 or tax returns, a few recent invoices, a statement from your super fund and any policies you hold. We can meet in person or online.