Financial Planning for Plumbers
Financial Advice Empowering Plumbers to Build Wealth and Freedom
From apprentice to licensed contractor, your cover, your super and how long you stay on the tools are all linked. We help you plan for each stage of the trade, from your first year to the last.
Our Financial Advice Team Is Here to Help You
We Can Help You
- Put personal cover in place when you leave an employer to work for yourself
- Choose income protection and TPD definitions that suit licensed manual work
- Check whether an apprentice has life and TPD cover through super
- Review your super when a builder pays you as a subcontractor
- Plan the years between coming off the tools and reaching preservation age
- Fit ute, van and tool finance repayments into your cashflow
- Budget for apprentice wages and their super on each payday
- Plan a sale or handover of a plumbing business built around your licence
Who We Help
- Apprentices in the first years of the trade
- Newly licensed plumbers deciding whether to go out on their own
- Subcontractors working for builders on an ABN
- Sole-trader plumbers running their own jobs and their own books
- Gasfitters, roof and maintenance plumbers on call, on gas lines and up on roofs
- Plumbing employers with plumbers and apprentices on the payroll
- Plumbers moving off the tools into estimating, supervising, inspecting or teaching
- Business owners stepping back and handing over to a buyer or a family member
What we advise on
How Our Advice Works for Plumbers
Personal Insurance & Protection
During a stretch when you couldn’t take on plumbing jobs, how would your income be looked after?
If you’re hurt or unwell, income protection can pay part of your income after a waiting period, so money still comes in.
We’ll set out the personal cover that suits your stage, from your apprenticeship to leaving an employer or running a business.
Workers compensation is insurance an employer holds for its employees, so as a sole trader or partner it generally doesn’t cover you. Income protection can pay part of your income if illness or injury stops you working, on or off the job, subject to the policy’s definitions, waiting period and the insurer’s assessment.
Together, we’ll work through:
- Income protection in place before you leave an employer, since workers compensation generally won’t cover you as a sole trader
- How an insurer may rate a plumber’s occupation, and what that can mean for premiums and policy terms
- Whether the policy fits licensed plumbing work, given that each income protection policy has its own definition of disability
- Own occupation TPD, available only outside super for new cover, against the any occupation definition common in super
- Whether an apprentice’s super includes life and TPD cover, which may not start automatically for members under 25
- Loan repayments on the ute and tools, counted when choosing a waiting period your savings could support
- Cover for gasfitters and roof plumbers, where work on gas lines or at heights may be asked about at application
- Public liability and tools insurance, which sit with your general insurance broker rather than with personal cover
Superannuation
If you take on jobs of your own, is your super still being paid?
Your own contributions can keep adding to your super through the stretches when no one else is paying it.
We can check who should be paying your super as you move from wages to subcontracting and your own jobs.
When a contract is mainly for your own labour, a builder may have to pay you super even though you invoice on an ABN. As a sole trader, paying super to yourself is your choice. Whether you’re treated as an employee for super purposes is worth confirming with your accountant.
Together, we’ll work through:
- Whether a builder should be paying your super, where your contract is mainly for your own labour
- Super paid to yourself as a sole trader, set at an amount the quieter months can still support
- Whether to keep insurance on a fund from a previous employer, once you know what it covers
- Several super accounts from years of different employers, and what combining them could mean for your cover
- Which fund your super is being paid into, whether chosen, stapled or the award’s default, and whether it still suits you
- Employee or contractor status, checked with your accountant before any super decision is made
- Cover held inside super for a manual trade, against cover outside super that may offer other definitions
- Whether a self-managed fund suits you at all, given its costs, trustee duties and the time it takes
Cashflow & Financial Wellbeing
When busy months bring in more, what could the extra from plumbing work go towards?
Putting fixed repayments first can show what busy months leave for your own goals.
We’ll show you how fixed vehicle and tool repayments sit against plumbing work that varies from month to month.
A ute or van, tools and stock can all be financed at once, and the repayments fall due whether or not the jobs come in. On-call and after-hours work can lift some months more than others. Your broker or lender arranges any finance; we look at how the repayments sit in your budget.
Together, we’ll work through:
- Ute, van and tool repayments added up as one fixed monthly cost, before any new purchase
- On-call and after-hours income, and how much of it the household budget should rely on
- A tool allowance or reimbursement under the award, if your employer requires you to supply your own tools
- Apprentice wages that rise with each year of the apprenticeship, budgeted before you take one on
- Payday Super for anyone you employ, with super paid alongside each wage since 1 July 2026
- A cash buffer for the weeks between builder contracts, built up gradually from busier periods
- Money put aside for replacing the ute and major tools, compared with financing them again
- Household costs if a partner takes parental leave while your plumbing income varies
Retirement & Aged Care
Could finishing up early, before your super is available, be part of your plans?
Building savings outside super can let you choose when to come off the tools.
We’ll map the years between coming off the tools and being able to access your super.
Preservation age is 60 for anyone born on or after 1 July 1964, and super generally can’t be accessed before then unless a condition of release is met. A physically demanding trade can mean planning for an earlier finishing date or lighter work, so savings outside super may need to cover any gap.
Together, we’ll work through:
- Savings and investments outside super to fund the years before preservation age, if you stop earlier
- A move into estimating, supervising, inspecting or teaching, and what a lower or steadier income does to the plan
- Leave entitlements from years in construction, including any portable scheme that covers your work
- A partner who keeps working after you stop, if that applies, and how their income and super fit the plan
- Two finishing dates modelled side by side: the one you’d like, and an earlier one in case plans change
- A lighter workload later in your career, and the super contributions that may still continue
- Selling the ute, tools and stock when you stop, and whether the proceeds go to debt, super or savings
- Support for an ageing parent, if you’re helping with aged care while still working full days
Financial Planning & Advice
When your work changes, from apprentice through to your own business, does your plan get a fresh look?
Revisiting your plan at each stage can help it grow with your trade and your ambitions.
We’ll build a financial plan, or Statement of Advice, that changes as you move from apprentice to employee, contractor and owner.
Each stage of a plumbing career changes how you’re paid, who pays your super and what cover you hold. Moving from wages to an ABN, or from working alone to employing others, is a good point to review all three together.
Together, we’ll work through:
- The move from wages to subcontracting, and the super, cover and any tax set-aside that change with it, checked with your accountant
- Going out on your own as a licensed contractor, with the household costs mapped before the first invoice
- Taking on a first apprentice, and how the extra wage and super fit the business and the household
- A partner’s income and leave, if your household runs on a trade income that changes month to month
- What you want outside work, ranked and timed around how long you plan to keep doing physical work
- Licence renewals and any change of licence class, used as natural points to review the plan
- Advice coordinated with your accountant on tax and your broker on any vehicle or home lending
- An annual review of cover, super and debt, timed for a quieter stretch in your work calendar
Tax & Wealth Strategies
Are the tax choices on your ute and tools helping the rest of your plan?
Planning around those choices can help your savings and super build over time.
We can show you how tax decisions on your vehicle, tools and structure affect your wider plan.
Deductions for a work vehicle and tools, depreciation, and whether to trade as a sole trader or a company are questions for your accountant, who also lodges your returns. We work with the result, so investment, super and cover decisions reflect your accountant’s advice.
Together, we’ll work through:
- Vehicle and tool deductions your accountant confirms, and how the cash they free up could be used
- Sole trader against company, a structure decision for your accountant, and what each means for cover and super
- Investing outside super once the van and tools are paid off, in your name or your partner’s, with tax advice from your accountant
- Extra income from weekend or after-hours work, and the tax your accountant suggests setting aside for it
- A logbook and receipts for the ute and tools, kept in a way your accountant can work from
- Personal super contributions as a tax decision, with eligibility and any deduction confirmed by your accountant
- How income protection premiums paid outside super may be deductible, confirmed with your accountant
- Investment income from savings built outside the trade, and how it adds to your taxable income, confirmed with your accountant
Property Investment Advice
Could an investment property you improve yourself fit your budget and your plan?
Running the numbers first can show whether a property could help build your wealth.
Together, we’ll weigh up an investment property, including any renovation or building work you’d do yourself.
Doing some of the work yourself can change what an investment property costs and how long it takes. Borrowing to invest can magnify losses as well as gains, and the loan must still be repaid if the value falls or the rent stops. Your broker arranges lending and your accountant explains the tax; we look at how the property fits your plan.
Together, we’ll work through:
- Your own labour on a renovation, and the paid plumbing hours the renovation takes up
- Materials bought at trade prices for an investment property, and how your accountant treats the costs
- The loan for the property, arranged with your broker, alongside any vehicle or equipment repayments you already have
- Rent, holding costs and vacancies, set against an income that changes with the work
- Owning the property in your name, your partner’s or jointly, with tax advice from your accountant
- Insurance for the household if you’re injured while carrying both a mortgage and an investment loan
- A property bought near the end of your time on the tools, and whether it fits your retirement plan
- Recent tax changes for investment property, and which apply to a property you hold or plan to buy, with your accountant
What We’ll Work Through Together
Cover When You Leave an Employer
Personal cover chosen and applied for before you leave employment, with the insurer deciding the terms.
An Apprentice’s Super and Cover
A check of the life and TPD cover inside an apprentice’s super, and how to request it.
Super as a Subcontractor
Clarity on whether a builder should pay your super, with your status confirmed by your accountant.
The Years Before Preservation Age
A plan for the income you’ll live on if you come off the tools before you can reach super.
Ute, Van and Tool Repayments
Vehicle and tool repayments built into a budget that allows for slower months.
Payday Super for Your Apprentices
Apprentice wages and super planned into the business’s cashflow before you take one on.
Sale Planning for a Licensed Business
A plan for selling or handing over a business that relies on your licence and relationships.
Stepping Down From the Tools
A plan for moving into estimating, supervising, inspecting or teaching, and the change in income.
Proactive, Holistic, and Experienced Financial Planning
A plumbing career is built over years: the apprenticeship, the licence, the early starts and the jobs that run late. The work is skilled and physical, and it’s often the income a household is planned around. We’ll take the time to understand how you work and what you’d like the years ahead to look like, then help you build a plan that fits the way you earn and the life you want around it.
For many plumbers, the reason behind the early starts is at home: a partner, children, a place of your own, or simply more time for life outside work. We’ll help you plan for the people who rely on you, and for the years after you step back from the physical work, whenever that is for you. Your plan can move with you, from your first year with a licence to the day you choose to put the tools away.
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.
Generally, no. Workers compensation is insurance an employer holds for its employees, so as a sole trader or partner you generally can’t cover yourself with it. A subcontractor working mainly for their own labour may count as a worker under the hirer’s policy, depending on the contract and your state’s rules, so that’s worth checking.
Where workers compensation doesn’t apply, personal cover is what you can hold for yourself. Income protection can pay part of your income if illness or injury stops you working, on or off the job, subject to the policy’s definitions, waiting period and the insurer’s assessment. Life and TPD cover can sit alongside it.
We can help you put suitable cover in place while you’re still employed, before you make the move.
Not always. Insurance through super doesn’t start automatically for a new member under 25, or for an account with a low balance, unless you ask your fund for it or the fund gives automatic cover to people in dangerous jobs.
Your fund’s annual statement or online account shows any life, TPD or income protection cover you hold. If there’s none, you can ask the fund whether it can be added and what it would cost.
We can go through what your fund holds with you, and whether cover inside or outside super suits your situation.
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.
They may need to. For super purposes, a contractor can count as an employee when the contract is mainly for their labour, it’s for their personal work rather than a set result, and they can’t pass the work to someone else.
Having an ABN doesn’t decide it on its own. The terms of the contract and how the work is done both matter, so it’s worth confirming your status with your accountant.
If the builder isn’t required to pay super, we can help you set up contributions for yourself that suit how your income comes in.
It helps to plan for those years early. Preservation age is 60 for anyone born on or after 1 July 1964, and super generally can’t be accessed before then unless a condition of release is met, such as permanent incapacity.
The years in between can be covered by any income protection or TPD cover you hold, subject to its terms and the insurer’s assessment, by savings and investments held outside super, by income from lighter work such as estimating, supervising or teaching, and, once you reach preservation age, possibly by a transition to retirement income stream.
We can model the gap with you and build a plan for it while you’re still on the tools.
An online quote can give you a quick starting point on price for your occupation. Advice also looks at what a quote may not show: the policy’s own definition of disability and how it applies to licensed plumbing work, the benefit period, the waiting period your savings could support and how the policy fits with any cover in your super.
Those details can affect how a claim is assessed. We can help you compare suitable options with all of that in view, and the insurer makes the final decision on any application.
It depends on the licensing rules in your state, but a plumbing business generally needs a licensed person responsible for the work it does. If that person is you, what the business is worth to a buyer may depend on who would hold that role after you.
Goodwill can sit with you too, in the builders, property managers and customers who call you by name.
We can help you plan a sale or handover early, with your accountant on the valuation and your solicitor on the contract, so there’s time to bring another licensed person into the business if that suits you.
Yes, at every stage of the trade.
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.
Tell us where you are now, whether that’s an apprenticeship, a new licence and ABN, or a business with staff, and what you’d like the next few years to look like.
We’ll explain how we can help and the details we’ll need from you, such as how you’re paid and the cover you already hold.
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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Testimonials from Our Clients
Grow & Protect Your Wealth Today
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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