Financial Planning for Paramedics

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 your service and the award or agreement you work under. Where a service provides income protection and death cover, the terms can set a waiting period before payments start, a maximum period payments can run for and the share of your salary that’s topped up. Some arrangements exclude casual or temporary staff and staff past a set age, and the cover can end when you leave the service.

Your service’s payroll team, or your union if you belong to one, can give you the terms that apply to you. We can read them through with you and plan your savings and any personal cover around them.

It depends on what any cover through your service pays, for how long, and what your household would need. A few factors are worth weighing:

• How long the waiting period runs, and whether savings and leave would carry you through it.
• How long benefits can be paid, compared with how long you might be unable to work.
• Whether the cover continues if you change roles, reduce your hours or leave the service.
• How much of your income the household would need each month.

Personal income protection can pay a percentage of your income if illness or injury stops you working, subject to the policy’s waiting period, definitions and exclusions. We can compare the two with you before you decide.

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 the scheme that covers your employer. Workers compensation runs through a state, territory or Commonwealth scheme, and each one sets its own rules for psychological injury. Some schemes presume post-traumatic stress disorder in a first responder is work-related if set conditions are met, and some have changed their rules in recent years. The scheme or its insurer decides any claim.

Workers compensation is separate from personal cover and from any cover your service provides. Free, confidential support is available from Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636 and Lifeline on 13 11 14.

We can plan your finances around any claim and look at how your other cover fits beside the scheme.

You can still apply, and the insurer assesses your health and history when you do. Depending on the condition, the treatment and how recent it was, an insurer may offer standard terms, a premium loading, an exclusion or a decline, and insurers can assess the same history differently.

Answering every application question fully matters, because cover can be affected if information isn’t disclosed. A retail policy’s terms usually don’t change because your health changes, while cover through super or your employer can change under its own terms, so it’s worth checking before you replace anything.

We can talk through your history with you and compare how suitable insurers may approach it.

Public ambulance services can offer salary packaging with a fringe benefits tax exemption up to a cap, plus a separate cap for meal entertainment and venue hire. The exemption applies to staff predominantly involved in providing the ambulance service, so a move into another role can affect eligibility. The exemption turns on whether your employer provides public ambulance services, or services that support them, and on your role, not on whether the employer is government, not-for-profit or private. An employer that doesn’t provide those services may offer a different arrangement, or none.

Your packaging provider or payroll team can confirm what’s available, and your accountant can advise on the tax. We can look at how packaging fits with your super, budget and goals.

An online quote can be a useful way to see premiums and features side by side.

Advice looks at how a policy would sit beside any cover your ambulance service provides, including its waiting period, its benefit period and whether either continues if you change roles or leave. It also considers the cover in your super and what your household would need each month.

Start with the quote if it helps. We can then compare suitable options with you, and the insurer makes the final decision on any application.

It depends on the new role and who employs you. A move into the control centre, education or management with the same service may leave some arrangements in place, while a role that isn’t mainly ambulance work can affect packaging eligibility. Leaving the service for industrial, event or private work can end employer-provided cover and packaging, and may mean a different super fund.

Your service can confirm what continues in the new role. We can review your cover, packaging and super together before you accept, so the move fits your plan.

Some of them. The ATO says the cost of renewing your paramedic registration can generally be claimed, but the initial cost of applying for registration can’t. The costs of transferring or relocating to a new work location can’t be claimed either. Other work-related costs depend on your circumstances and your records.

Your accountant can confirm what you can claim. We can plan registration renewals and other yearly costs into your budget, working with your accountant’s advice.

Yes, whether you’re in your graduate year or have been on the road for many years.

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, your latest super statement and any summary of the cover your service provides. Tell us about your roster, any move coming up and what you’d like the next few years to look like.