Financial Planning for Nurses and Midwives
Empowering Nurses and Midwives to Build Wealth and Financial Freedom
Your roster, penalty rates if you earn them, salary packaging, super and any personal cover can all affect one another. We help you see how they connect and build a plan around the way you’re paid.
Our Financial Advice Team Is Here to Help You
We Can Help You
- Budget around your base pay, with shift penalties and overtime planned separately
- Understand how salary packaging affects HELP repayments and income tests, with your accountant
- Check which parts of your pay attract employer super contributions
- Review income protection against pay that includes shift penalties, subject to policy terms
- Prepare your budget, packaging and super for parental leave
- Organise super and cover across agency, casual and permanent work
- Plan for a pay rise or back pay across debt, savings and super
- Review packaging, super and cover when you move between public, private and aged care
Who We Help
- Graduate nurses and midwives starting a first contract and a first packaging form
- Nurses on rotating rosters or permanent nights, where pay changes with each roster
- Agency and casual nurses paid by more than one employer
- Returning nurses and midwives coming back after parental leave or a career break
- Enrolled nurses studying towards registration as a registered nurse
- Nurse unit managers and senior clinicians in roles that pay penalties differently
- Nurses changing employers between public hospitals, private hospitals and aged care
- Experienced nurses and midwives planning a gradual move to part-time or retirement
What we advise on
How Our Advice Works for Nurses and Midwives
Cashflow & Financial Wellbeing
What could extra shifts help you save for, once the regular bills are covered?
A budget built on your base pay can free the pay from extra shifts for the things you care about.
We’ll build a budget with you on your base pay, and plan separately for penalties and overtime.
Shift loadings, weekend and public holiday penalties and overtime depend on the roster, so the amount in each pay can vary. A senior role may raise your base pay while paying penalties differently, depending on your award or agreement. We can help you plan for both, and for any packaging card that covers part of your spending.
Together, we’ll work through:
- Essential costs set against base pay, with penalties and overtime treated as variable income
- How a run of nights, weekends or public holidays changes what reaches your account
- A savings buffer for rosters with fewer penalty shifts, topped up from the busier rosters
- Salary packaging cards and meal entertainment spending tracked within the household budget
- What a move to part-time hours or permanent day shifts does to your take-home pay
- Back pay or a pay rise, and how much of the extra goes to debt, savings or super
- Regular bills timed to your pay cycle while shift income arrives unevenly from pay to pay
- A senior role with a higher base and different penalties, compared with your current take-home pay
Personal Insurance & Protection
If illness or injury took you off the ward for a while, is your income looked after?
Income protection can pay part of your income after a waiting period, helping with bills while you’re off the roster.
We can review your cover for physical, shift-based work and the income that work pays.
Income protection replaces part of your income if illness or injury stops you working, subject to the policy’s definition, waiting period and other requirements. Whether shift penalties and overtime count as insured income depends on how the policy defines income. Workers compensation is a separate scheme for work-related injuries, and personal cover sits alongside it.
Together, we’ll work through:
- How a policy’s income definition treats shift loadings, penalty rates and overtime at claim time
- Cover options for casual or agency work, which usually comes without paid sick leave
- The waiting period and benefit period, set against any sick leave and annual leave you have saved
- Any default cover in your super fund, and whether its terms suit physical, hands-on work
- Workers compensation and a personal income protection policy, and how each may respond to an injury at work
- How a back or shoulder injury could affect your ability to work shifts and your household budget
- Whether the TPD cover you hold uses an own occupation or any occupation definition
- Life insurance amounts worked out from any home loan, other debts and dependants’ future costs
Superannuation
Could your years of shift work be building more of the super you’ll want later on?
Reviewing your fund and contributions can help every rostered year add to the super you’ll retire on.
We’ll check with you which parts of your pay attract super, and plan for leave and part-time years.
Compulsory employer super contributions are worked out on pay for ordinary hours, including shift loadings and penalties, and generally not on overtime, unless your award or agreement requires more. Paid Parental Leave carries a super contribution for children born or adopted from 1 July 2025. We can help you plan contributions around both.
Together, we’ll work through:
- Your payslip checked for which earnings attract super, including shift penalties and any overtime
- The fees, investment options and insurance in the fund you’re in now, compared with other funds
- Super paid by an agency on shifts worked through that agency, alongside your permanent role
- Paid Parental Leave super contributions, and whether extra contributions during leave suit you, if money is available
- Part-time years, and how fewer ordinary hours change the contributions your employer makes
- Any older public sector scheme with terms worth checking before you roll over or consolidate
- Salary sacrifice into super alongside salary packaging, with the tax effect checked with your accountant
- Insurance inside each fund, checked before any account is closed or rolled over
Tax & Wealth Strategies
How could salary packaging fit into the way your pay is planned?
Used well, packaging can put more of each pay towards the goals that matter to you.
We’ll plan how salary packaging fits your strategy beyond take-home pay, alongside your accountant’s tax advice.
Public and not-for-profit hospitals and some health charities can offer packaging under a capped fringe benefits tax exemption, and the cap depends on the employer type. Above a set threshold, packaged benefits appear on your income statement as reportable fringe benefits, which count in HELP repayments and some income tests. Your accountant advises on the tax detail.
Together, we’ll work through:
- The packaging cap that applies to your employer type, and the separate meal entertainment cap
- How reportable fringe benefits lift the income used to work out compulsory HELP repayments
- The Medicare levy surcharge and private health insurance rebate tests, where reportable fringe benefits are counted
- Family assistance and Child Care Subsidy income tests, if either applies to your household
- Packaging paused during unpaid leave, and the change to take-home pay while salary stops
- Compulsory uniforms, protective shoes and registration renewals, with your accountant confirming what is deductible
- Investing outside super with any money packaging leaves available after essential costs
- A second job or agency income, and how tax is withheld across more than one employer, checked with your accountant
Financial Planning & Advice
As your nursing career moves into new stages, what could your money help you do next?
Your pay, super and cover, looked at together at each step, can help each stage of your career build on the last.
We’ll build a financial plan, or Statement of Advice, that can change with your nursing or midwifery career.
A nursing career can move through graduate years, an area of practice, a move into management or a nurse practitioner pathway, and periods of part-time work. Registration has its own requirements, including a recency of practice standard, which matters if you plan a long break. We bring these decisions into the plan.
Together, we’ll work through:
- Graduate years, a chosen area of practice and any move into management, planned in sequence
- The recency of practice standard, and what a long break could mean for your registration
- Postgraduate study or a nurse practitioner pathway, with study costs and reduced shifts budgeted
- A move from clinical work into management, education or research, and the pay change that comes with the role
- How many days a week you want to work, and what the plan needs from each pay
- A period working overseas, a home deposit or extended leave, each saved for from base pay
- Your plan reviewed when your roster, employer or contracted hours change
- Decisions about pay, packaging, super and cover considered side by side rather than one at a time
Property Investment Advice
What would it take for a home of your own to fit around shift-based income?
Seeing how repayments would sit in your budget can turn a home into a plan you can work towards.
We can talk you through buying a home or an investment property on shift-based income, alongside your broker.
Lenders may assess income that includes penalties and overtime in different ways, and some may count only part of it. Your broker advises on lending and any offers for health workers. We can help you consider how a purchase fits your budget, super and cover, and work alongside your broker and accountant.
Together, we’ll work through:
- How much of your income comes from penalties and overtime, and how a lender may view that income
- A deposit plan built from base pay, with extra shifts counted as a bonus rather than relied on
- Any lending offers for health workers, discussed with your broker before you count on them
- An investment property’s costs measured against the quieter rosters, not only the busier ones
- Rental income or losses on your tax return and their effect on HELP repayments, with your accountant
- Income protection and life cover reviewed before taking on a larger loan
- Buying close to work against buying further out, and what each choice does to the budget
- Stamp duty, land tax and holding costs, and how each fits a budget built on a variable income
Retirement & Aged Care
When you picture stepping back from nursing, what kind of lifestyle do you see?
Projecting your super and savings forward can help you step back from nursing when and how you choose.
We’ll show you how part-time years and a gradual step back from shift work may shape your retirement.
A career with physical work and night shifts may finish gradually, through fewer shifts or a move away from nights. Part-time years can lower the contributions going into super, and a transition to retirement income stream may let you draw on super while still working, if eligible. We model the timing with you.
Together, we’ll work through:
- Fewer shifts in the final working years, and the effect on super contributions and the retirement date
- Drawing on super through a transition to retirement income stream while you cut back nights, if eligible
- How part-time years earlier in your career show up in your projected super balance
- Accrued long service leave, and whether taking it in a block or at reduced pay suits your finish, where allowed
- Casual or pool shifts after leaving a permanent role, and how that income affects the plan
- Contributions in the later working years, if money is available, within the contribution caps
- Age Pension eligibility, and how super and other assets are counted in the Age Pension tests
- Your retirement budget built on what you’d like to do, not only on what you spend now
SMSF
Have you wondered whether running your own super fund is worth it?
Comparing it with your current fund, costs and duties included, can help you choose what’s right for your future.
We’ll compare a self-managed fund with your current fund, to see whether running your own fund suits you.
A self-managed fund can offer control over investments, and it also brings costs, time, administration and trustee responsibilities. Moving out of an APRA-regulated fund also means losing its prudential regulation and the ability to complain to AFCA about the fund. We compare it with your current fund before recommending anything.
Together, we’ll work through:
- Whether running your own fund suits you at your current balance and stage of career
- The annual audit, record keeping and investment strategy that every SMSF trustee must keep up
- Default cover in your current fund, and whether similar cover could be arranged before any rollover
- The set-up and running costs of an SMSF compared with the fees you pay now
- AFCA complaint access and prudential regulation, which apply to APRA-regulated funds and not to an SMSF
- Investment choice within your current fund, which may give enough control without running an SMSF
- A partner as a fellow member and trustee, if that applies to your household
- Winding up an SMSF later, and the costs of moving back to an APRA-regulated fund
What We’ll Work Through Together
A Budget Built on Base Pay
Spending planned around the steadier part of your pay, with shift extras directed to your goals.
Packaging You Understand
Packaging planned into your strategy, with HELP and income test effects confirmed by your accountant.
Super Checked Against Your Payslip
Contributions checked against the pay they’re worked out on, including shift penalties.
Cover Reviewed for Shift Work
Income protection reviewed against how your pay is made up, subject to policy terms and definitions.
Leave Planned Before It Starts
Pay, packaging and super mapped out for parental leave before your last shift.
Agency Shifts Organised
Super and cover kept in order across agency, casual and permanent work.
A Pay Rise With a Plan
Extra pay or back pay directed to the goals you’ve chosen.
A Gradual Step Back Planned
A finish to shift work timed around your super, leave and lifestyle.
Proactive, Holistic, and Experienced Financial Planning
Nursing and midwifery ask a lot: long shifts, nights and weekends, and work that stays with you after you clock off. We’re here to help with the financial side of that working life, from a first contract through to the years when stepping back comes into view. We’ll listen to what you want from your work and your life, then help you build a plan for your pay, your cover and your savings that sits comfortably alongside your shifts.
Over a working life, a nursing or midwifery career can take many forms: graduate years, a new area of practice, a move between hospitals, a stretch of leave, part-time years or a return to study. Each one can change your pay, your super or your cover, and we can adjust your plan with you as each change comes. We help you plan for a life you can enjoy now, with time for the people who matter to you and the years after work in view.
Every financial decision impacts the next
Your Financial Life Is Connected
Great advice starts with understanding the bigger picture. Every stage of life presents new opportunities and challenges, from buying property and changing careers to growing your family, planning for retirement and protecting what matters most. At Ryker, we help connect every piece of your financial world into one clear strategy.
Your
Wealth
- Property & Investing
- Career & Income
- Tax Strategy
- Insurance & Protecting Your Family
- Super & SMSF
- Wealth & Investments
- Life Events & Changes
- Business & Wealth
- Legacy & Future Wealth
- Retirement Planning
Frequently Asked Questions
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.
Packaging can increase your compulsory HELP repayment. Once packaged benefits pass a set threshold in a year, they’re reported on your income statement as a reportable fringe benefits amount, and the ATO adds that amount to your taxable income when it works out what you repay.
Packaged benefits are also counted in some other income tests, including the Medicare levy surcharge, the private health insurance rebate and family assistance payments, although not every test uses the same figure.
Packaging may still be worthwhile, and it’s useful to see the full effect first. We can work through it with you, alongside your accountant.
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.
Compulsory employer super contributions are generally worked out on your pay for ordinary hours, which includes shift loadings and penalties for those hours, and generally not on overtime.
Your award or enterprise agreement may require more, so it’s worth checking what yours says. Your payslips and your fund’s records together show what has been paid.
We can help you check your contributions against your pay, and consider whether extra contributions suit your plan, within the contribution caps.
It depends on how the policy defines your income, so the wording matters as much as the amount of cover. The policy document sets out which parts of your pay count as insured income.
Cover held through a super fund may use different definitions, waiting periods and benefit periods from cover held outside super. Workers compensation is a separate scheme for work-related injury, and it may affect what a personal policy pays.
We can compare the terms with you before you rely on any of them. The insurer makes the final decision on any claim.
A packaging calculator can give you a useful starting estimate of your take-home pay, based on the assumptions it uses.
Advice looks at how packaging fits with the rest of your finances: HELP repayments, income tests, super, cover and what happens when you take leave or change employer.
It’s worth running the calculator first. We can then help you understand the wider effect, alongside your accountant, before you change your package.
Your current arrangement generally ends when you leave, and what you can package next depends on the new employer’s type and policy. Public and not-for-profit hospitals, public benevolent institutions and health promotion charities can offer packaging under different capped exemptions, while other employers may offer fewer options.
Any remaining card balance, a novated lease and the timing of your final pay are worth checking with your packaging provider before you leave.
We can help you compare take-home pay, super and cover between the two roles.
Generally the agency does. When an agency pays you for the shifts it places you in, it’s usually your employer for those shifts and responsible for super on that pay.
If you also hold a permanent role, each employer pays super on the pay it provides. It’s worth checking each payslip against your fund’s records, and giving each employer the details of the fund you want to use.
We can help you bring your super into one fund, after checking what cover is attached to each account.
Start with how your income will change: any employer-paid parental leave your agreement offers, any government Paid Parental Leave you’re eligible for, and any weeks without pay.
Salary packaging generally pauses when there’s no salary to package. For children born or adopted from 1 July 2025, Paid Parental Leave carries a super contribution that the ATO pays to your fund, and employer-paid leave may include super under your agreement.
We can help you plan the household budget, super and cover for the time away and the return to work.
Yes. Bring whatever you have to hand, such as a recent payslip, a packaging statement or a super statement, if you have them.
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.
From there, we’ll set out which parts of your pay, packaging and super we’d look at first, and what we’d need from you to begin.
Who We Help
Advice for All Stages of Life
From first job to retirement, we help you build wealth, protect it, and live well.
Starting Out
First jobs, first home, first super, HECS debt, budgeting and more.
Growing Families
First home buyers, new parents, school fees, single incomes, young families and more.
Medical & Health
Doctors, dentists, pharmacists, allied health, nurses and more.
Professional Services & Tech
Lawyers, accountants, brokers, engineers, consultants and more.
Trades & Business Owners
Electricians, plumbers, builders, sole traders, franchisees and more.
Corporate & Executive
Executives, senior managers, directors, board members and more.
Public Sector & Defence
Police, firefighters, paramedics, ADF personnel, teachers and more.
Approaching Retirement
Pre-retirees, transition to retirement, Age Pension, aged care, estate planning and more.
Other Stages
Any income, any stage, career changers, separation, second opinions and more.
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Whatever’s on your mind, we’re here to help. You’ll speak with an authorised financial adviser who’ll listen first and get to know what matters to you.
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