Financial Planning for Pharmacists

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 with the written agreement. If the Pharmacy Industry Award covers you, an annualised wage agreement for a full-time pharmacist must set out:

• The annualised wage, and which award provisions it replaces, such as penalty rates, overtime and leave loading.
• How it was calculated, including any penalty or overtime assumptions.
• The outer limit of hours it covers. Hours beyond those limits must be paid separately.

The employer must compare it each 12 months with what the award would have paid, and pay any shortfall. Payroll or the Fair Work Ombudsman can answer questions on the figures. We can build your budget and goals around the salary you agree.

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 where the pharmacy is and how it’s set up, and a solicitor can confirm your position. State and territory laws restrict who can own or hold an interest in a pharmacy, and the rules differ. Points worth knowing:

• Some laws count being a partner in the business, or a trustee or beneficiary of a trust that holds it, as holding an interest.
• Where they do, a partner or family member who isn’t a pharmacist may not be able to share ownership the way they could in another business.
• An accountant advises on the tax side of any structure the law allows.

We can plan your household’s finances, cover and estate with you around the structure you settle on.

The personal side of a buy-in is worth planning before you sign. Points to work through:

• How much of your savings a deposit would use, and what that leaves for a home or a buffer.
• Any personal guarantee a lender or landlord asks for, read with a solicitor.
• Life, TPD and income protection cover sized to the loan and your household’s costs.
• Whether you meet the ownership rules for the pharmacy, and the structure to use, confirmed by a solicitor and an accountant.
• Your pay and super while the business repays its debt.

A broker arranges any finance. We can plan the household side with you alongside the broker.

It depends on how you’re engaged. If an agency or a pharmacy employs you as a casual, your employer generally pays super on your earnings. On a contract, a business may still have to pay super if you’re paid mainly for your labour. An accountant or the ATO can confirm your position on any contract.

If no business is paying super for you, the contributions are yours to plan. Moneysmart also suggests checking whether a move from employment to self-employment affects any insurance through your super. We can set up contributions and review any cover with you around the way you work.

A salary calculator can turn a pay rate or an annualised salary into take-home pay after tax, which is a quick way to compare two job offers.

Advice looks past take-home pay to what an offer means for the rest of your plan: super, cover, any HELP debt, a home deposit and whether ownership is part of your future. A take-home pay calculator may not show whether an annualised salary covers the hours you’ll actually work, which is a question for payroll or the Fair Work Ombudsman.

Bring the figures you’ve worked out, and we can plan with you from there.

It depends on your employer. The ATO sets an FBT exemption cap for public and not-for-profit hospitals, which can let eligible staff package part of their salary. A for-profit private hospital or a community pharmacy generally doesn’t have that exemption, though other packaging, such as salary sacrifice into super, may be offered.

Moneysmart notes you need to arrange packaging before you’re paid, and that it usually suits people on middle to high incomes. Payroll or the packaging provider can confirm what’s offered, and an accountant can explain what it means for your tax. We can weigh it with you against your other goals.

Yes. You don’t need a plan already, whether you’re in your intern year, on an annualised salary or thinking about a share in a pharmacy.

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.

If it’s easy to find, have your annualised salary agreement or a payslip to hand, along with a super statement, any HELP debt details and any buy-in terms. Video calls and face-to-face meetings both work.