Financial Planning for Scaffolders, Riggers and Steel Fixers

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.

One approach is to cover fixed costs from the pay that follows you from job to job, and treat the rest as extra. If an award covers you, the multistorey allowance is paid to everyone on site and steps up as the building rises, then holds at the top until completion, so a low-rise or civil job afterwards can pay less. It helps to set out:

• Your base rate and any industry allowance, for regular bills.
• Multistorey allowance and any overtime, directed to savings, a deposit or debt.
• On daily hire, the follow-the-job loading in your rate, meant for the gaps between jobs.
• A buffer sized to your fixed costs.

We can set the budget up with you and adjust it with each new job.

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 insurer’s assessment of your application, not on the job title alone. Insurers set premiums based on age, health, job and lifestyle, so they ask about your duties: work at height, under suspended loads and near falling objects, and heavy lifting and bending. An application can be offered on standard terms, with a premium loading, with an exclusion for a named condition, deferred for a period, or declined. The insurer decides.

Take reasonable care with every answer: if important details are left out, the insurer may change or cancel your cover or refuse a claim. We can compare options with you before you apply, and look at how any cover you hold through super fits alongside them.

An online form can be a quick way to see a starting price, and the questions about height are there because insurers set premiums on your job as well as your health.

Advice adds the work before you submit: setting out your real duties accurately, from scaffold and steel work to dogging under suspended loads, comparing how different insurers treat that work and what their policy definitions say, and sizing income protection and any lump-sum cover to your pay and costs. We can also look at how any cover in super fits alongside it.

The insurer decides the terms either way, and we can work through the options with you before you apply.

It can, so a step up is a good time for a review. A higher licence class can lift your pay and, where an award covers you, your classification, which can change what cover suits you:

• Income protection: many policies base the benefit on your earnings in the 12 months before an illness or injury, so recent pay may not be fully counted yet.
• Life and TPD sums insured, set against your debts and costs now.
• Your occupation rating, which may change if your duties move towards supervising.

We can review each with you, and the insurer decides the terms of any new or increased cover.

It depends on the injury and the cover you hold. Workers compensation is separate, through a state, territory or Commonwealth scheme. The scheme decides any claim for a work injury, and other payments may also apply:

• Accident pay, if an award covers you, which tops up workers compensation to your ordinary hourly rate for up to 26 weeks once the claim is accepted.
• Income protection, if you hold it, which can pay part of your income after a waiting period, including for illness or injury outside work. The policy sets how it works alongside workers compensation.

We can read any cover you hold with you. Free, confidential support is available from Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636 and Lifeline on 13 11 14.

It helps to plan for the end of the job from the first week. If an award covers you, daily hire means one day’s notice on either side, or one day’s pay instead, and the hourly rate already takes into account the loss of wages between jobs. Points to work through:

• A share of each pay held back for the gap after the project, sized to your fixed costs.
• Super on your statements, and whether your existing fund is receiving it.
• Any income protection waiting period, matched to the buffer you hold.
• Cover through any fund you’re joining, compared with any cover you already hold.

We can work through each of these with you.

Yes. We can begin wherever you are now, whether that’s a first scaffolding ticket, an advanced rigging class or years as a leading hand.

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.

To help us prepare, bring recent payslips, from more than one job if you have them, the tickets you hold, a recent super statement, any crew deal or employment terms in writing, and the details of any cover you already have. We can meet in person or by video.