Financial Planning for Massage Therapists

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.

A clinic may have to. A business can have to pay super on a contract that’s mainly for your labour, which the ATO describes as more than half the contract’s dollar value. The payment also can’t depend on a specified result, and the work can’t be delegated to someone else.

Having an ABN doesn’t settle it. If the contract is with your own company, trust or partnership, the business doesn’t have to pay super for the person doing the work.

An accountant or the ATO can confirm where you stand, and we can then plan your own contributions with you.

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.

More than one award can cover massage work, including awards for health care and for hair and beauty. Where the national award system applies, Fair Work is the place to check which one applies to you.

Our part is the planning. We build your budget, super and cover around the pay you receive, and you can raise any question about the award itself with Fair Work.

A room can give you your own clients and your own hours, and it comes with costs that run whether or not the book is full:

• Rent, with a solicitor reading the agreement before you sign
• Insurances, membership and continuing education
• Your own super, which you may be funding yourself
• Time off, as being self-employed means no paid holidays or sick leave

We can compare the room with your current arrangement in your own numbers, including a buffer for quieter weeks, so you can see what each one could leave you.

Going mobile changes what a working day costs. Time spent driving between clients isn’t time spent treating, so we’d look at how many treatments fit in your week and what they’d bring in after running costs:

• The car, the table and what you carry
• Travel time and how it affects your fees
• Records of income and expenses, with an accountant on tax
• How your duties are described if you apply for cover

From there, we can build a budget with you that reflects the way you’d work.

A few places, and not all of them may apply to you:

• Sick leave, if you’re entitled to it
• Workers compensation, if your time off is work-related, as each scheme sets who qualifies
• Income protection, if you hold it, after a waiting period, subject to the policy’s terms and exclusions and the insurer’s assessment
• Your savings

Costs such as room rent, membership and insurances may keep running, so a budget is a useful place to begin. We can work through what you’d want in place and compare cover with you.

Professional indemnity and public liability are for a general insurance broker to talk you through, as we don’t advise on those policies.

What we look at is your household if you couldn’t treat: income protection, life and TPD, with your super and savings beside them. Together, we can compare options from a wide range of insurers around your duties and earnings. Any application is the insurer’s to decide.

Professional associations say each health fund sets its own requirements for provider status, and that belonging to an association doesn’t by itself give you that status. Requirements such as insurance, education and first aid vary by fund, so the fund, and any association you belong to, can tell you what applies.

Our part is the money side. If you hold provider status or you’re working towards it, we can plan for those costs in your yearly budget and for the timing around a move of rooms.

We’d cost it with you first, so you can see what fewer treatments could mean for your household:

• Course fees and the time they take
• Your income while you’re studying or building up teaching hours
• Costs that keep running, such as rent or membership
• Super, if your contributions change

It’s also worth reading any cover you hold before you change your work, as your duties and income may be described differently. We can go through that with you.

Yes. We can look with you at how many treatments a week you’d like to give later, whether teaching or mentoring could be a stage, and what room rent or other work costs would fall away. If you’re self-employed and no business pays super for you, your own contributions are yours to plan.

We’d build the plan on super and savings first, then add the work you’d like to keep. 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. A first massage job, a room you’re weighing up or a clinic you’ve run for years are all fine places to begin from.

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 your latest payslips or returns on hand, along with a super statement and the terms of a room agreement if you have one.