RADIANCE WEALTH GUIDE
Ravi Moolchandani, Principal Financial Adviser & Director
Ages 50–64 are your critical window. The earlier you start planning, the more options you have to shape a comfortable retirement.
Start with lifestyle, not numbers. Define the retirement you want first — the financial plan follows from there.
Focus on income, not just a lump sum. You need a realistic annual income target based on how you actually want to live.
Your spending changes over time. Retirement has three distinct phases — your plan and investment strategy need to evolve with each one.
Powerful tools are available to you. Super contributions, catch-up rules, investment strategy, and tax planning can all help you retire on your terms.
A good adviser asks the questions you don't know to ask. Professional guidance helps you coordinate everything and avoid costly mistakes.
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In the financial planning world, pre-retirement generally refers to the period roughly 5 to 15 years before you plan to stop full-time work. For most Australians, that puts us somewhere in the 50 to 64 age bracket.
But here is an important nuance. From my experience working with hundreds of clients at Radiance Wealth, I would actually break this bracket into two distinct phases:
Why do I draw the line at 55 rather than 50? It comes down to longevity. Australians are living longer than ever. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, life expectancy at birth is now 81.1 years for men and 85.1 years for women. A 60-year-old man today can expect to live another 24.2 years on average, and a woman another 27.1 years.
Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Life Expectancy 2022–2024, released November 2025.
Because we are living longer, the government has raised the Age Pension age to 67. It used to be 65, and it may well increase again over time. So the goalposts have shifted — what we used to call pre-retirement at 50 is now more accurately an accumulation phase. You are still building, still growing. Pre-retirement planning, in the truest sense, really kicks in from around 55.
That said, if you are reading this at 50 and thinking about your future — that is a great instinct. The earlier you start, the more runway you have to build wealth, correct course, and set yourself up properly. 50 is a good age to begin getting ready, even if the real pre-retirement work intensifies from 55 onwards.
There is a unique challenge with planning for retirement that does not apply to most other major life projects. If you are building a house or launching a business, you generally know your start date and your end date. Retirement planning is different — you have an approximate start date, but the end date is completely uncertain.
At 55, you might live to 70, or you might live to 95. That is a potential 25-year difference in planning horizon. No other financial project asks you to plan for that level of uncertainty.
This is precisely why the 5 to 15 year window before retirement is so important:
From my conversations with clients, there are typically two main triggers that prompt someone in the 50 to 55 age bracket to make that first appointment:
In both cases, what they are really seeking is confidence. They want to know: am I on track? Can I actually do this? What do I need to change?
It does not matter whether you are in a strong asset position or a more modest one. If you still have a mortgage, kids at home, and an average super balance, you need to work harder and smarter to get retirement-ready. If you are debt-free with a solid asset base, then it is about restructuring those assets to work harder for you in the next phase. Either way, an adviser helps you create a clear path forward and protect what you have built.
The triggers I just described — an inheritance or a desire to retire early — are what typically bring people through our door. But there are a number of other reasons you should be thinking about retirement planning in your 50s, even if none of those triggers apply to you yet.
These are the things that many people do not think about until it is too late:
When people sit down with me for the first time, the same questions come up again and again:
If any of these worries sound familiar, you are not alone. And the fact that you are thinking about them now, rather than ignoring them, puts you ahead of most people.
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This is always where we start the conversation at Radiance Wealth, because the money side of retirement planning only makes sense when you know what kind of life you are planning for.
Retirement does not mean the same thing to everyone. Some people want a complete stop — they are done with work and want to enjoy their freedom. Others want a phased transition, working one or two days a week while they ease into it. From my experience, here are the three things most Australians over 60 tell me they are most focused on:
Hobbies tend to sort themselves out naturally. Once people retire, they find time for the things they enjoy. But travel, part-time work, and volunteering are the three pillars that most pre-retirees I work with are actively planning around.
That said, your priorities may be completely different — and that is perfectly fine. Perhaps you are passionate about starting a small business, or you want to spend more time with grandchildren. Maybe your focus is on creative pursuits, study, or caring for an ageing parent. Some people dream of a sea change to the coast; others want to stay exactly where they are and simply slow down. There is no standard template for a good retirement.
The point is that your retirement plan should be built around your life, not someone else’s. Whatever matters most to you — whether it appears on the list above or not — is what your financial plan needs to support. Every person’s situation is unique, and the best retirement plans are the ones that reflect that.
Before you can put numbers on your retirement plan, you need to get clear on the lifestyle questions. These are conversations to have with your partner, or with yourself if you are planning solo:
Here is the key insight: money is the support act to your lifestyle, not the main event. Too many people start with the question “how much money do I need?” when they should be starting with “what kind of life do I want to live?”
Once you have a clear vision for your retirement, the financial planning becomes much more purposeful. You are not chasing arbitrary numbers or overreacting to headlines. You are building a plan that supports a specific, realistic lifestyle.
And a clear vision helps you avoid two common traps: underspending and overspending. I cannot emphasise enough how important it is to get this balance right. You do not want to leave too much money behind for your kids while denying yourself a comfortable life right now. But you also do not want to burn through your savings in the first five years.
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One of the biggest misconceptions in retirement planning is that you need to hit a single magic number — some mythical lump sum that means you are “set for life.” The reality is more nuanced than that.
What actually matters is income. Specifically, you need to understand:
Both are important. If you have assets that can produce your income, you are in a strong position. So during the accumulation phase between 50 and 60, you are constantly growing those assets — through super contributions, inheritance, savings, and investments. The goal is to build an asset base that, combined, gives you a comfortable income from 60 through to 85 and beyond.
This is something that surprises a lot of people: your spending needs in retirement are not constant. They change significantly as you age. At Radiance Wealth, we plan around three distinct phases:
| Phase | What Life Looks Like | Income Needs |
|---|---|---|
| Phase 1: Ages 60–67 | Still working part-time, travelling overseas annually (4–5 week trips), active lifestyle, mortgage ideally paid off. | Higher income needed to fund travel and active living while bridging the gap before Age Pension. |
| Phase 2: Ages 67–75 | Less overseas travel, more time with grandchildren, local outings, family gatherings, potentially part Age Pension. | Moderate income. Overseas travel reduces, but local spending and family support continue. |
| Phase 3: Ages 75–85+ | Mostly local, interstate travel tapers off, more time at home, potential health and care costs. | Lower lifestyle spending, but possible increase in health and care expenses. |
Source: Based on Radiance Wealth client planning methodology.
Understanding that your income requirements are different in each of these phases is critical. It means your investment strategy also needs to evolve over time — from growth-focused in the early years to more income-focused as you move through retirement.
This is one of the most important transitions in retirement planning, and it is something many people miss.
During the accumulation phase (50 to 60), you might be perfectly comfortable holding an investment property for its capital growth, even if the rental income is modest. Capital growth is the priority because you are building your asset base.
But from 60 onwards, the conversation shifts. Income becomes the big priority. Some clients tell me: “I do not want capital growth anymore — I want products that drive more income.” So we help them transition their asset base from growth-oriented investments to income-producing ones.
And when you are making that switch, timing matters. There are capital gains tax considerations about when you sell or restructure assets. Getting the timing right can save you tens of thousands of dollars. This is exactly the kind of nuance that a financial adviser helps you navigate.
The Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) publishes the ASFA Retirement Standard, which is a widely used benchmark for retirement spending. As of the December quarter 2025, the numbers for homeowners aged 65 and over are:
| Lifestyle Level | Couple (per year) | Single (per year) |
|---|---|---|
| Comfortable | $77,375 | $54,800 (approx.) |
| Modest | $50,866 | $35,199 |
Source: ASFA Retirement Standard, December Quarter 2025. Assumes homeownership. See superannuation.asn.au.
A comfortable lifestyle includes things like private health insurance, a reasonable car, regular dining out, domestic and occasional international holidays, and a good standard of living. A modest lifestyle covers the basics — essential healthcare, a cheaper car, limited dining out, and one domestic holiday per year.
The lump sums ASFA estimates you need at retirement to fund these lifestyles are $730,000 for a couple or $630,000 for a single person at the comfortable level. For a modest retirement, it is $120,000 for a couple and $110,000 for a single — with the Age Pension making up most of the income.
Source: ASFA Retirement Standard lump sum estimates, updated February 2026. See superannuation.asn.au.
From my experience, the average Australian couple spends about $72,000 a year after retirement at a moderate level — not the bare minimum, but not extravagant either. That lines up closely with the ASFA comfortable standard.
People ask me this all the time: “Ravi, how much do I need to retire?” And the honest answer is: there is no magic number.
The right amount depends entirely on your spending habits, where you live, your household expenses, and your goals. It all comes back to your individual situation.
Most people actually know their own situation quite well. They have a realistic sense of what they can and cannot afford. That makes the planning process easier, because we are working with realistic numbers from the start.
Interestingly, I find that most people tend to overestimate what they will actually do in retirement. They imagine a very active, expensive lifestyle, but in practice, spending often settles into a more moderate pattern. That is not a bad thing — it just means the plan needs to be realistic, not aspirational.
What I encourage clients to do is think in terms of a range: what is your “comfortable minimum” and what is your “ideal”? Then we plan for both and revisit regularly.
There are some useful online tools available, such as ASIC’s Moneysmart Retirement Planner, where you can input your own information and get an estimate of your retirement income.
These tools are useful as a starting point, particularly for people who are diligent about tracking their expenses and who know their financial situation well. But they have significant limitations. A standard online calculator will not factor in your capital gains tax liability, inflation adjustments, your specific risk profile, or the interaction between different asset types.
Several key factors can significantly shift how much you need for a comfortable retirement:
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Understanding the key ages in Australia’s retirement system is essential for planning. There are three important age milestones, and they are not the same thing:
Your preservation age is the earliest age you can access your superannuation savings, provided you meet a condition of release (such as permanently retiring from the workforce). For anyone born on or after 1 July 1964, the preservation age is 60.
| Date of Birth | Preservation Age |
|---|---|
| Before 1 July 1960 | 55 |
| 1 July 1960 – 30 June 1961 | 56 |
| 1 July 1961 – 30 June 1962 | 57 |
| 1 July 1962 – 30 June 1963 | 58 |
| 1 July 1963 – 30 June 1964 | 59 |
| From 1 July 1964 | 60 |
Source: Australian Taxation Office (ATO). See ato.gov.au.
Once you reach 60 and leave an employer, you can access your super without having to declare permanent retirement. At age 65, you can access your super regardless of your employment status.
Important: there is a difference between taking a lump sum and starting an income stream (pension). Many people choose to convert their super into an account-based pension that provides regular payments in retirement, rather than withdrawing everything as a lump sum. We help clients determine which approach suits their situation.
The Age Pension age in Australia is 67 for anyone born on or after 1 January 1957. This is completely separate from your superannuation preservation age.
To receive the Age Pension, you must meet both age requirements and means testing (which considers your assets and income). As at March 2026, the full Age Pension rate is approximately $1,178.70 per fortnight for singles and $1,777 per fortnight (combined) for couples.
Source: Services Australia. Rates current as at March 2026. See servicesaustralia.gov.au.
Many retirees use a combination of their own super savings and a part Age Pension. Whether you qualify for the full pension, a part pension, or no pension at all depends on your total assets and assessable income.
For people in their 50s, the Age Pension is not the primary planning focus. The means testing thresholds change over time, and what applies today may be different in 10 to 15 years. At this stage, the priority is accumulating and saving on tax. The Age Pension becomes a more active planning consideration as you approach 65.
Here is where it gets interesting from a planning perspective. Many people want to stop full-time work before they can access the Age Pension — sometimes even before they reach preservation age.
For example, if you want to retire at 60 but cannot access the Age Pension until 67, that is a seven-year gap where you need to fund your lifestyle entirely from your own resources. Planning for this gap is one of the most important things you can do.
Strategies to bridge the gap include accessing super after reaching preservation age, using non-super investments, Transition to Retirement (TTR) income streams, and careful management of any redundancy or long service leave payouts.
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One of the first things I do with every client is what I call a super health check. A superannuation review is critically important, because the vast majority of people I see are in a default investment option. And that default is almost always too conservative for someone with 10 to 15 years until retirement.
Here is what I mean. If you joined your employer’s super fund at 25 or 30 and never changed your investment option, you have probably been sitting in a “balanced” or “moderate” profile for your entire working life. For someone with decades of earning ahead of them, that is a significant missed opportunity.
In my experience, being in the wrong investment option at a young age can cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars by the time you reach retirement. If you were earning $100,000 and sitting in a moderate profile from age 27, you may have compromised as much as half a million dollars of potential retirement savings.
So, the three questions to ask about your super right now are:
One of the most powerful tools available to Australians aged 50 to 64 is the ability to boost super contributions. Here are the key options:
As of 1 July 2025, the Superannuation Guarantee rate is 12% of your ordinary time earnings. This is the minimum your employer must contribute. It represents the completion of the legislated increase from 9.5% that began in 2021.
Source: ATO; AustralianSuper FY26 guidance. The SG rate reached 12% from 1 July 2025.
The concessional contributions cap for 2025–26 is $30,000 per financial year. This includes your employer’s SG contributions, any salary sacrifice arrangements, and personal contributions for which you claim a tax deduction. Concessional contributions are taxed at a flat 15% inside your super fund, which for most people is significantly less than their marginal tax rate.
Source: ATO, Key Superannuation Rates and Thresholds 2025–26.
If your total super balance is less than $500,000 at 30 June of the previous financial year, you may be able to carry forward unused concessional cap amounts from the last five years. This is one of the best catch-up strategies available, particularly for people returning from career breaks, parental leave, or periods of part-time work.
For example, if you did not use your full $27,500 cap in the 2021–22 through 2024–25 years, those unused amounts can be added to your current year’s $30,000 cap — potentially allowing you to contribute $80,000 or more in a single year.
The non-concessional contributions cap for 2025–26 is $120,000 per financial year. If you are under 75 and your total super balance is below $1.76 million, you can also use the bring-forward rule to contribute up to $360,000 over three years.
This is particularly relevant for people who receive an inheritance. If you inherit a lump sum, the money goes into your bank account first, as a normal transaction. If that money is sitting in a bank account earning interest, that interest is taxable at your marginal rate. But if you contribute it to super via a non-concessional contribution, the earnings inside super are taxed at just 15%. So the strategy here is about getting the right amount into the right structure at the right time.
Source: ATO, Non-Concessional Contributions Cap. Caps current for 2025–26 financial year.
If your spouse is a low-income earner or not working, you may be eligible for a tax offset of up to $540 per year by making super contributions on their behalf. Additionally, the Low Income Super Tax Offset (LISTO) provides a government contribution of up to $500 per year for people earning $37,000 or less.
| Contribution Type | Cap (2025–26) | Key Conditions |
|---|---|---|
| Concessional (before-tax) | $30,000/year | Includes SG + salary sacrifice + personal deductible. Taxed at 15% in fund. |
| Catch-up concessional | Varies (up to 5 years unused caps) | Super balance must be under $500,000 at prior 30 June. |
| Non-concessional (after-tax) | $120,000/year | Bring-forward: up to $360,000 over 3 years if balance < $1.76m. |
| Spouse contribution offset | Up to $540 tax offset | Receiving spouse income < $40,000. |
| LISTO | Up to $500 govt payment | Adjusted taxable income $37,000 or less. |
Source: ATO Key Superannuation Rates and Thresholds 2025–26.
This is where I find the biggest gap between where people are and where they should be. Most people I see are in a default option that is less aggressive and more passive than it should be for their age and time horizon.
There are two broad approaches to investing inside super:
Active strategies tend to carry a higher risk profile, but they also offer the potential for higher returns. The right balance depends on your age, your time horizon, and your appetite for risk.
If you are 50 with 10 to 15 years until retirement, you still potentially have 30 or more years of life ahead of you. That is a long investment horizon. Being too conservative too early can cost you significantly in missed growth. On the other hand, if you are 63 and planning to retire next year, taking on too much risk is dangerous because you do not have time to recover from a downturn.
The question of whether to invest inside or outside super is one I discuss with virtually every client. The answer depends on three key factors: whether you have a mortgage, your age, and your tax bracket.
The key trade-off is always between tax efficiency and accessibility. Super gives you the best tax treatment but locks your money away until preservation age. Outside super, you pay more tax but can access your money whenever you need it. Your adviser helps you find the right mix.
If there is one section of this guide you turn into an action plan, make it this one. Here is what I recommend for anyone in their 50s:
This first part has covered the essential foundations: understanding where you are now, defining your retirement lifestyle, figuring out how much money you need, when you can actually retire, and getting your super working harder.
In Part 2, we will continue working through the remaining steps:
A Transition to Retirement (or TTR) income stream is a way of accessing some of your superannuation before you have permanently retired. From the age of 60 onwards — which is the preservation age that applies to anyone born on or after 1 July 1964 — you can move part of your super into a TTR pension account and start drawing an income from it, even if you are still working full time.
The mechanics are straightforward. When you start a TTR strategy, your super is split into two accounts. The first is your accumulation account — which keeps a minimum balance of around $10,000 — and continues to receive your employer’s Super Guarantee contributions and any extra contributions you choose to make. The second is your TTR account, which holds the bulk of the rolled-over balance and is the account you draw your income from.
The Australian Taxation Office sets the drawdown rules. From your TTR account you must take a minimum of 4% of the balance each financial year, and you cannot take more than 10%. Within that range, the percentage is your choice and you can vary it from year to year.
Source: ATO — Transition to retirement.
In my experience advising Melbourne clients in their 60s, TTR suits a much wider group than people realise. There are three scenarios that come up again and again.
Funding a yearly overseas trip
A client is working full time, enjoys their job, and has no plans to slow down — but every year they want to take a four- or five-week trip somewhere. Travel is the number one priority for Australians over 60, and it adds up. In a case like this we might draw down the maximum 10% from super as a one-off lump sum each year and use that to pay for the trip. The rest of the year, life carries on the same way it always has.
Knocking down the mortgage by age 67
This is the most common one. A client comes in at 62 with a decent super balance and a home loan that still has $200,000 or $300,000 sitting on it. We work backwards from age 67 — which is when they want the home loan gone, ideally before they switch to an account-based pension — and we use a TTR drawdown of somewhere between 4% and 10% to make additional repayments and chip away at the mortgage. By the time they actually retire, the loan is paid out and they walk into retirement debt-free.
Reducing working hours without dropping income
Some clients don’t want to keep working full time, but they don’t want to take a pay cut either. If they drop from five days a week to three or four, the gap in their take-home income can be supplemented from super through TTR. Their lifestyle expenses don’t change, but the work intensity does — and that is often what people are really after when they say they want to ‘slow down’.
There is a small group of clients I would not put into a TTR strategy. The profile is fairly specific: they are over 60, debt-free, have strong cashflow from their salary, and they are already maximising their concessional contributions to super each year (currently $30,000 across employer Super Guarantee plus salary sacrifice and personal deductible contributions). For someone in that position, TTR adds complexity without adding much value. They are better off leaving the super alone to compound and concentrating on contributions instead.
If I had to put a number on it, around two in ten of the people we see in their early 60s fall into that category. The other eight benefit from TTR in some form.
Once we set up the two accounts, your TTR balance stays invested in the market. It is not parked in cash, and it is not earning a fixed return. It continues to be invested across the same kind of asset mix you had before — typically growth-oriented if you are still 5–10 years from full retirement — and it continues to receive compounding returns.
As an example: if a client has $500,000 in their TTR account and plans to draw down 4% — about $20,000 a year — and the underlying portfolio earns 10%, the client is up by 6% net for the year. The balance still gets compounding returns. The drawdown does not stop the engine — it just takes the cream off the top.
How you take the money depends on what it is for. If TTR is replacing salary because you have dropped a couple of days at work, we usually set it up as a fortnightly payment so it lands the same way a pay cycle would. If it is being used for a holiday, a renovation or a one-off mortgage repayment, we set it up as a single annual pension payment that lands when you need it.
And the percentage you draw is not locked in. You can run at 4% one year, 10% the next year, and 6% the year after that, depending on what you have planned. The flexibility is part of why the strategy works for so many people.
There is one more piece of the TTR puzzle worth understanding. Some clients draw funds out of their TTR account and re-contribute the same money back into super as a personal deductible (concessional) contribution. The contribution is then claimed as a tax deduction in their tax return for that year, which reduces their assessable income.
This is a strategy that needs to be modelled carefully — the concessional contribution cap, the size of the existing super balance and the client’s marginal tax rate all matter — but when it suits, it is one of the most tax-efficient moves available to Australians in their early 60s.
Yes — it is not a risk-free strategy and we are upfront with clients about that. The main risk is the combination of a high drawdown rate and a poor run of investment returns. If you draw 10% every year for five years and the market has not done well, by the time you reach the actual retirement age of 67, you may not have as much in super as you would have had if you had simply kept the money invested and untouched.
This is why we always model the strategy first — looking at projected returns, drawdown rates and the time horizon — before we recommend it. TTR works best when it is planned carefully and reviewed every year as conditions change.
The other thing worth being aware of is that TTR can be undone. If your circumstances change — you decide to keep working full time, the holiday gets cancelled, the mortgage gets paid off another way — you are not locked in. The TTR account can be wound back, the funds rolled into accumulation, and the strategy paused.
TTR is not the only way to step out of full-time work, and for some clients it is not the right answer. Other approaches we discuss with people in their early 60s include:
For most Australians between 60 and 67 with a mortgage, a travel goal, or a desire to ease out of full-time work — yes, in some form. For people who are debt-free, on strong income and already maximising contributions, the answer is more often no. Either way, this is a strategy we never recommend without modelling the numbers first. If you are weighing it up, the cost-benefit of TTR for your specific situation is exactly the kind of question to bring to a discovery meeting.
For most Australians in their pre-retirement years, three financial questions sit on the kitchen table at the same time: should I pay off the mortgage faster or invest the surplus, should I downsize the home, and should I keep or sell the investment property? There is no universal answer to any of these, but in our experience the goal of being debt-free by age 67 is the anchor that pulls the rest of the plan into shape.
Paying off the mortgage before retirement is one of the highest-priority items in any pre-retirement plan we put together. The reasoning is straightforward: a paid-off home removes a fixed monthly cost, removes interest-rate risk from your retirement budget, and gives you full ownership of an asset that can fund aged care later in life if it ever needs to.
That said, paying down the mortgage is not the only place your surplus cashflow should go. The right answer depends on how far away you are from retirement.
When clients come to see us in their early 50s, we will typically direct more of the surplus into investment — either inside super through additional contributions, or into a high-growth investment portfolio outside super. The reasoning is that with 12 to 15 years until retirement, a high-growth allocation has time to weather market volatility and is likely to earn a return well above the mortgage rate. The mortgage gets paid down on schedule but is not the priority.
Closer to retirement, the strategy flips. Your investment portfolio will usually be sitting in a more moderate or balanced profile, which earns a lower expected return than a high-growth profile. At that point, the certain return of paying down the mortgage — effectively saving the mortgage interest rate — starts to look better than the uncertain return of investing the same dollars. So we shift more of the surplus toward extra mortgage repayments. By age 67, in most cases, the home loan is gone.
It is rarely all-or-nothing. The real work is finding the right split between investing for growth and accelerating the mortgage — and that split shifts every few years as your age and your goals shift. This is the kind of thing we model and review at every annual meeting.
Downsizing is one of the most loaded financial decisions a Melbourne family ever makes — partly because it is rarely just a financial decision. There is a house full of memories, a community you may not want to leave, kids who still come and go, and the practical reality that downsizing in this market doesn’t always free up as much cash as people expect.
From a strict financial planning perspective, though, there is one specific feature of the rules that makes the timing of a downsize matter: the downsizer contribution.
If you are 55 or older and you sell a primary residence you have owned for at least 10 years, you can contribute up to $300,000 of the proceeds into super as a downsizer contribution — and your spouse can do the same. That means a couple can move up to $600,000 from the sale of the family home into the super system in one go. The contribution does not count against your ordinary contribution caps, and it does not require you to meet a work test.
It depends on three things: your existing super balance, your current cashflow, and your future objectives. There are scenarios where downsizing two or three years before retirement — with the proceeds going into super — produces the best long-term result, because the downsized contribution then has time to compound inside the super environment. There are other scenarios where it makes more sense to stay in the family home until well into retirement and downsize later, when health or lifestyle reasons drive the move.
This is genuinely individual. We will not tell a client when to sell their family home; what we will do is model the numbers under both timing options and let the client see, in plain language, what each one looks like for them.
Reference: ATO — Downsizer contributions.
A reasonable proportion of the clients we see in their late 50s and early 60s own one or more investment properties alongside their super. There is nothing wrong with that mix in principle — a blend of property and super can produce a strong overall result. But there are two specific issues that need to be planned for in the years before retirement.
If you sell an investment property after you have stopped working, you will generally still have a capital gains tax (CGT) liability — even if your other income has dropped. The 50% CGT discount applies to assets held for more than 12 months by an individual, so for many investors the effective rate ends up at around 33% of the gain once the discount and your marginal rate are factored in. On a property that has grown by a few hundred thousand dollars over a couple of decades, that is a meaningful amount.
There is a strategy that helps. In the financial year you sell the property, you can use catch-up concessional contributions to make a large personal deductible contribution to super. That contribution reduces your assessable income for the year and therefore reduces the tax payable on the capital gain. The catch-up rules let you use unused concessional cap from the past five years, provided your total super balance is under the relevant threshold. Used well, this can save tens of thousands of dollars in CGT in the year of sale.
The other issue is more subtle, and it is one I find clients have rarely thought through. Investment property is good at producing capital growth but is not particularly good at producing cashflow. And in retirement, cashflow is what you actually live on.
Take a $1 million investment property. The rental yield in the Melbourne market is typically around 2–3% gross, and after rates, insurance, repairs, agent fees and the occasional vacant week, the net cashflow is closer to 3% — say $30,000 a year. That same $1 million held inside a balanced superannuation portfolio might earn 7–8% — around $80,000 a year — which is the entire ASFA comfortable couple budget on its own. And because the assets test on Centrelink will treat the investment property as a counted asset, your Age Pension entitlement may be reduced or eliminated. Same dollars, very different outcomes.
This does not mean investment property is the wrong asset for retirement. It means it is the wrong asset for cashflow in retirement. As people approach retirement, having more of the wealth held in liquid, income-producing assets — mostly inside super — gives a much better cashflow result and far more flexibility. The conversation we have with clients in this position is usually about timing the sale, managing the tax, and rebalancing the portfolio in a way that matches the income they will actually need in retirement.
One of the things we build into every retirement portfolio we manage is a cash buffer. As a default, we hold around 10% of the portfolio in cash — enough to cover 12 to 24 months of the client’s expected expenses.
The reason is simple. Markets fall. They have always fallen, and they will fall again. If a 30% market correction lines up with the year you need to draw $60,000 from your portfolio, the worst possible thing you can do is sell investments at the bottom to fund your living expenses. The cash buffer means you don’t have to. You spend down the cash bucket, you leave the investment portfolio alone to recover, and at the next annual review we top the cash bucket back up.
As people get older, the case for a buffer gets stronger. Health costs rise, the chance of an unexpected event — a hospital stay, a major repair, a need to help a family member — goes up, and the time available to recover from a market downturn shrinks. A cash buffer is one of the simplest, lowest-tech parts of a retirement plan, and it is one of the things that does the most to keep clients comfortable when markets are noisy.
Protection has three layers: personal insurance for the years you are still working and still carry debt; a clear plan for your superannuation in the event you die; and the legal documents — wills and powers of attorney — that make the rest of the plan stand up. None of this is the most enjoyable part of pre-retirement planning, but it is one of the most important.
Personal insurance changes shape between 50 and 67 — the premiums get more expensive, the level of cover you actually need usually drops, and the insurance you bought 15 or 20 years ago when the kids were young is rarely still the right fit. This is the decade where insurance has to be actively managed, not left on autopilot.
The starting point for every conversation we have is two questions: what debts do you still have, and what is the financial risk to your family if you cannot work? Between 50 and 60, those answers usually shape the level of cover — a high mortgage and a single income earner means we keep the cover relatively high; a low mortgage and two incomes means we can shave the cover down so the premiums stay manageable.
By the time most of our clients are 60 and over, around 95% no longer have personal insurance in place — because the debts are gone, the kids are independent, and the super balance has grown to the point where it is doing the work the insurance used to do. This is the natural endpoint of a well-managed plan.
It is worth understanding what each cover actually does, because the right combination depends on your situation.
Life cover pays a lump sum to your nominated beneficiary or surviving partner if you die. It is the most straightforward of the four covers and the one most people are familiar with. The amount is usually set to clear the mortgage and provide a buffer for the family, and it is reduced over time as those needs reduce.
TPD pays a lump sum if you become unable to work — either in your own occupation, or in any occupation you are reasonably suited to, depending on the policy definition. There is one detail we always factor in: TPD payouts can be taxed, particularly when the policy is held inside super. So when we set the cover level, we work backwards from the after-tax amount the client actually needs in their hand and gross the policy up so that the after-tax payment matches the target. People who don’t do this end up with a payout that looks adequate on the policy schedule but turns out to be too small once the tax is taken out.
Income protection covers somewhere between 75% and 85% of your income (the maximum allowed under the current rules) for an extended period if you cannot work due to illness or injury. The two levers that affect the premium are the waiting period — how long you have to be off work before payments start — and the benefit period — how long the payments last. A 30-day wait with a five-year benefit period is much more expensive than a 90-day wait with a two-year benefit period. We work out which combination matches the client’s sick leave entitlements, savings position and risk tolerance.
Trauma pays a lump sum on diagnosis of a defined serious illness — cancer, heart attack, stroke, severe burns and a few others. The point of the cover is not to replace income (income protection does that) but to give the client enough money to take time off, get good treatment, and not have to rush back to work before they are ready. For people in their 50s, with a meaningful family medical history, trauma cover is often the cover that matters most.
There are two ways insurance premiums can be structured.
If a client comes to us in their early 50s with the intention of holding insurance through to 60 or 65, level premiums almost always win. If they come to us at 58 with a defined three- or four-year debt to cover, stepped is usually the better fit.
Most clients we meet at 50 or older already have some insurance — either inside their super fund’s default cover, or through a policy they took out years ago. The rule we apply is simple: never replace existing cover before the new cover is in place and confirmed.
The reason is medical underwriting. If you have developed any pre-existing medical condition since your existing policy started, the new policy may decline to cover that condition or may load the premium significantly. The existing policy, on the other hand, will continue to cover you for the same condition at the original terms. Cancelling existing cover before the new policy is approved — or even after, without checking the exclusions carefully — is one of the most expensive mistakes you can make in this part of the plan.
So whenever we restructure insurance for a client, the work is methodical: review what is in place, identify the gaps and the duplicates, get the new cover in place first, and only then unwind any existing cover that is no longer needed.
Superannuation is unusual in the way it passes on death — it does not automatically follow the instructions in your will. The decision about who receives your super sits with the trustee of your super fund, and the trustee’s decision is guided by the beneficiary nomination you have lodged with the fund.
If you have lodged a binding nomination, the trustee is required to pay your super to the person or people you have named, in the proportions you have specified, provided the nomination is valid at the date of death.
If you have lodged a non-binding nomination — or no nomination at all — the trustee has discretion. They will usually pay it to your dependants or to your estate, but they have the power to decide how, and the process can become messy if there is any dispute among the beneficiaries.
In our practice, around 90% of clients have a binding nomination in place. It is the simpler, cleaner option in almost every case.
There are two reasons we still see non-binding nominations on a regular basis. The first is that some older super products simply don’t offer a binding nomination as a feature. The second is that traditional binding nominations expire after three years, and a small but consistent number of clients forget to renew them — at which point they revert to non-binding by default.
The newer generation of super products generally offer a binding non-lapsing nomination, which stays in place indefinitely once lodged. If your fund offers it, this is the option to use.
How your super is taxed when it is paid out as a death benefit depends on who receives it and how.
Recipient | How it is paid | Tax on the taxable component |
|---|---|---|
Tax dependant (e.g. spouse, minor children, financial dependant) | Direct from the super fund | No tax |
Non-tax dependant (e.g. adult independent children) | Via the deceased estate | 15% (Medicare levy not added) |
Non-tax dependant (e.g. adult independent children) | Direct from the super fund | 15% + 2% Medicare levy = 17% |
Reference: ATO — Tax on a super death benefit. Rates current at the date of writing.
In practical terms: the most tax-effective outcome is for super to be paid directly to a tax dependant, where it passes free of tax. Where the beneficiaries are independent adult children, the cleanest path is usually direct payment from the fund rather than going through the estate, because it avoids the 2% Medicare levy. There are also strategies — sometimes called recontribution strategies — that can reduce the taxable component of the super balance during the client’s lifetime, which then reduces the tax payable on death. These need careful modelling but can save significant tax over the long run.
Three legal documents do most of the work in a well-organised estate plan, and we recommend all three are in place before retirement.
These three documents do not need to be reviewed every year, but they do need to be reviewed when your circumstances change — a marriage or separation, a child reaching adulthood, the death of a named executor, a major change in assets. As a rule, we go through them with clients every three years to make sure they are still fit for purpose.
Aged care is the part of pre-retirement planning that almost no-one wants to think about, and that is exactly why it deserves a few paragraphs here. The decisions are too complex — and the dollar amounts too large — to be left until the moment care is actually needed.
One of the reasons we are so focused on getting the home loan paid off by 67 is that, for most Australian families, the family home is the asset that ultimately funds aged care. Residential aged care in Victoria carries an upfront accommodation cost — most commonly paid as a Refundable Accommodation Deposit (RAD) of several hundred thousand dollars — plus ongoing daily care fees. A debt-free family home is the cleanest source of those funds: it can be sold to fund the RAD, or kept and rented to fund the daily fees and any Daily Accommodation Payment (DAP).
When a client or a client’s parent enters residential aged care, they are usually offered three ways of paying the accommodation cost: pay the full amount as a refundable deposit (full RAD), pay it as a daily fee instead (full DAP), or pay a combination of both. The right choice depends on the size of the client’s assets, their cashflow needs, the impact on the Centrelink Age Pension means tests, and the way each option interacts with the family home if it is being kept rather than sold.
This is its own dedicated piece of advice, with its own modelling. We mention it here because clients who are aware of these decisions while still in their 60s tend to make better choices about their home, their super and their cashflow than clients who only encounter the topic for the first time when a parent is being assessed.
The principle we work to: while a client is active and well, we want them to spend on the lifestyle they have worked their whole life to enjoy — the trips, the renovations, the family weekends. We don’t want them dying with millions in super they never used. But we also don’t want the balance to run out so far ahead of aged care that the options narrow. The balance between spending now and reserving capacity for later is one of the conversations we have with clients every year.
Steps 5, 6 and 7 cover the strategy work that takes a pre-retiree from ‘I’m thinking about it’ to ‘I have a real plan’. The decisions in these sections — whether to start a TTR, when to downsize, how to balance debt and investing, what insurance to keep, who inherits the super — are not decisions to make in isolation. They interact, and the right answer to one of them shifts the right answer to the others.
If you would like to talk through any of these in the context of your own situation, the next step is a discovery meeting — free of charge, no obligation, in person at our office in Wheelers Hill or online by video. Bring your latest super statement and a rough sense of your goals for the next ten years; we will do the rest.
Steps 8 to 10 — covering tax and rule changes that affect your retirement, the most common pre-retirement mistakes, and a practical 12-month action plan.
Tax is one of the areas where the right structure makes the biggest difference to your retirement. The rules are not especially complicated once they are explained clearly, but they do change over time, and the difference between getting the structure right and leaving it on autopilot can be many of thousands of dollars over a retirement. This section covers how super is taxed as you move from working life into retirement, the new tax on very large super balances, and why a plan needs to be reviewed regularly rather than set and forgotten.
The tax you pay inside superannuation depends on your age, your work status, and-most importantly-the structure your super sits in. It is worth understanding the three stages.
Before age 60. While your super is in the accumulation phase, the earnings inside your fund are taxed at a flat 15%. This applies regardless of how much you have, and it applies to everyone still building their balance.
From age 60, if you have retired. Once you are 60 or over and you have retired, the picture changes depending on how your super is structured. If you move your super into the right structure-an account-based pension-the earnings on that money become tax-free, and the income you draw is tax-free as well. This is one of the most valuable features of the Australian super system, and it is the reason the structure of your super matters so much as you approach retirement.
From age 60, if you are still working. If you have reached 60 but are still working, your accumulation account continues to be taxed at 15% on earnings. However, as covered in Step 5, you can use a Transition to Retirement strategy to access some of your super and, in the right circumstances, re-contribute it in a way that reduces the tax you pay.
There is an important nuance here that catches a lot of people out. Reaching a particular age does not automatically make your super tax-free. If you leave your money in the accumulation phase-regardless of your age-you keep paying 15% tax on the earnings. The tax-free treatment only applies once you have converted the account into a pension (retirement phase) structure and you meet the conditions to do so. Two people the same age, with the same balance, can pay very different amounts of tax simply because one has structured their super correctly and the other has not.
One more point worth knowing: once your account-based pension is set up correctly in the retirement phase, it generally stays tax-free for life, even if you return to work. So a client who retires at 60, sets up an account-based pension, and then decides to take on some work again at 61 or 62 does not lose the tax-free status of that money. This is exactly why we spend so much time getting the structure right at the point of retirement-the benefits last for the rest of your life.
There has been a great deal of coverage of the new tax on large super balances, often called the “$3 million super tax.” Its formal name is Division 296. The most important thing to say up front is that the vast majority of Australians will not be affected by it. It targets the largest super balances in the country, and if your total super is comfortably below $3 million, this is not something you need to lose sleep over.
That said, it is worth understanding, because balances can grow-particularly for people who have run strong investment strategies or hold assets inside a self-managed super fund-and because it is now law. The legislation passed Parliament in March 2026 and takes effect from 1 July 2026, with the first assessments issued after 30 June 2027.
Here is how it works, in plain terms:
A few practical points that are often misunderstood:
The reason this matters for planning is that the value is assessed on your balance, not just your contributions. If your investments perform strongly, a balance can grow toward the threshold over time without you having contributed anything extra. For clients with a self-managed super fund, the balance is assessed each year as part of the fund’s audit and tax return, so it is monitored as a matter of course. For clients in an ordinary fund who are with us, we monitor it as part of the annual review.
If you are approaching the $3 million mark, there are legitimate structures worth considering, for example, holding some wealth in investment bonds, which have their own internal tax treatment and can, in some circumstances, be more tax-effective than holding the same money inside super above the threshold. Whether that suits you depends entirely on your situation, and it is exactly the kind of question worth bringing to a review.
Beyond super, the change generating the most discussion among our clients this year relates to capital gains tax and negative gearing on property. Changes of this scale come along perhaps once a decade, and they have prompted some of our clients – particularly those holding investment properties – to review their position and consider the timing of any sale.
Where a client is considering selling an investment property, the questions we work through are around timing, the capital gains tax payable, and where the proceeds are best redirected-whether that is into super via a contribution, into investment bonds, or into another structure that offers better tax effectiveness for their circumstances. As covered in Step 6, the timing of these moves matters a great deal, and the sequence in which you act can be the difference between claiming a deduction and missing it entirely. This is a live area, and anyone with a significant property holding outside super should be reviewing their position sooner rather than later.
Rules change. Lifestyles change. Markets change. Those three realities are the reason a retirement plan is never truly finished.
On the rules: most changes to super have been progressive and predictable, the Super Guarantee stepping up half a percent at a time, contribution caps rising gradually, and so on.
Occasionally there is a larger change, such as Division 296 or the property tax changes, and when that happens it is important to understand whether it affects you and whether it calls for any action. The Australian system has generally been good about protecting existing arrangements, but you still need someone keeping an eye on the detail.
On lifestyle and cost of living: this has been the dominant theme in client conversations over the past year. Costs across housing, food and transport have risen, and many clients have found that the expenses they modelled a year or two ago no longer match reality. When last year’s budget of $60,000 has become this year’s $75,000, the question becomes where that additional income comes from-and whether the investment strategy needs to work a little harder to meet it. We are seeing more clients comfortable lifting their risk profile a notch in pursuit of a slightly higher return, precisely because standing still no longer keeps pace with the cost of living.
On markets: portfolios drift. An allocation that was right two years ago may have moved out of shape, and the years immediately before and after retirement are the ones where getting the balance wrong hurts the most.
Our recommendation is straightforward: review your plan at least once a year, and more often – every six months -if your situation is more complex. A regular review is not about constant tinkering; it is about making sure the plan you built still matches the life you are actually living and the rules that actually apply.
Over more than two decades of advising Australians through this stage of life, the same avoidable mistakes come up again and again. None of them are the result of carelessness – they are the natural consequence of a system that is complex and rules that are easy to misread. The good news is that every one of them is avoidable with a plan and the right guidance. We have written about several of these in more detail in a dedicated article, 7 Common Mistakes Australians Make in the 5 Years Before Retirement.
This is the single most common mistake. Everyone’s retirement age is different – some aim for 60, others 65, 67 or even 70 – but the right time to see a financial adviser is at least 10 years before you intend to stop work. Starting a decade out gives us room to restructure things properly. There are real, mechanical reasons for this. Take the non-concessional contribution cap, which is currently $360,000 over three years under the bring-forward rule. If you receive a $1 million inheritance at 59, you cannot simply place it all into super at once-you are capped. But if we start planning at 50, we can stage those contributions across several three-year windows, so that by the time you are 60 the money is inside super, in the right structure, working tax-effectively. Leave it too late and those options simply are not available to you.
Putting all of your money into cash is one of the costliest mistakes you can make at any age. It feels safe, but it is not because you lose the compounding returns that would otherwise be growing your balance, and inflation quietly erodes the buying power of the cash you are holding. Over a long retirement, that lost compounding is enormous.
That does not mean the answer is to take on maximum risk. The markets rise and fall, and they always will. For more conservative clients, a sensible approach is to hold around two years of expenses in a cash bucket-enough to ride out a downturn without having to sell investments at the bottom-and keep the remainder invested in the market where it can grow. That balance protects you against volatility without sacrificing the growth you need.
You can read about almost any strategy online. The hard part is not knowing what to do – it is knowing how to implement it, and when. Timing is where do-it-yourself plans most often come unstuck.
Here is a real example of how it goes wrong. A common plan is to sell an investment property, contribute the proceeds into super, and claim a tax deduction against the capital gain. Sensible in theory. But if you sell in May and the property settles 90 days later-in the next financial year – and you contribute the funds in that next year, you cannot offset the deduction against the gain you made in the previous year. The strategy fails on timing alone. The lesson we give clients is counter-intuitive: do not wait until you have the money in hand to seek advice. Get the advice before you make the decision to sell, because the sequence and timing of each step is what determines whether the strategy works.
The Age Pension is an important safety net, but it was never designed to fund the retirement most people actually want. Relying on it alone will not be sufficient. What most clients aim for-and what tends to work best-is a combination of self-funded income and a part Age Pension. That blend can deliver something in the order of $70,000 to $80,000 a year, which lines up with the ASFA comfortable benchmark for a couple. Building toward that combination, rather than defaulting to the pension, is what gives you real choice in retirement.
At Radiance Wealth, the first thing we do is ask both partners come to the meeting – whether or not both are formally our clients. Retirement planning cannot be done on one person’s numbers alone. Couples often have different ages, different super balances, different life expectancies, and different income histories, and the strategies that flow from those differences can be very valuable. For instance, where one partner has spent years out of the workforce raising a family while the other has built a large super balance, there are strategies-such as moving part of the funds into the younger or lower-balance partner’s super-that can improve the couple’s combined tax position, Age Pension entitlement and estate outcome. Plan around one person and you leave a great deal on the table.
This one cuts two ways. On one side is the risk that an unexpected event – a health problem, a redundancy, or a caring responsibility-interrupts your ability to keep working and contributing in the crucial years before retirement. This is exactly why the protection strategies in Step 7 matter: the right personal insurance keeps a plan on track when life does not go to plan.
On the other side is a quieter mistake we see surprisingly often: people who keep working tirelessly, sacrificing their health and their time, without realising they already have enough. Someone might have built a million dollars in super over a thirty-year career and still not appreciate that their position can comfortably support the life they want. Part of good advice is simply holding up a mirror-assessing the overall position, modelling how long the money will last, factoring in the Age Pension, and giving people permission to step back and look after themselves. Working yourself into the ground to fund a retirement you could already afford is its own kind of mistake.
Many people arrive at our office feeling that the whole thing is a mess and they do not know where to start. That feeling is completely normal, and it is not a reason to put off the conversation-it is the reason to have it. You do not need to have it all figured out before you walk in. Our job is to bring order to the picture. We have a clear process for exactly this situation, which is what Step 10 describes. The most powerful thing you can do is take the first small step; the rest follows from there.
Everything in this guide comes together here. If you have read this far and felt at any point that there is more to think about than you first realized – that is exactly the point. The strategies matter, but what matters just as much is having someone coordinate them and walk the road with you.
This final section explains what actually happens when you become a client of Radiance Wealth: a clear, structured process that takes you from your first conversation to a fully implemented plan in about twelve weeks, and then supports you year after year.
Before your first meeting, we send you a short email with a couple of simple tasks to prepare. This is not homework for its own sake – it means that when we sit down together, we can spend the time on what matters rather than hunting for paperwork. You do not need a clear vision or a fixed set of goals to begin. Many people do not, and that is perfectly fine. Part of our job is to help you work out what you actually want.
From your first meeting to a fully implemented strategy takes around twelve weeks. Here is exactly how that unfolds.
From start to finish, this process takes around twelve weeks. At the end of it, your structures are in place, the strategy is working, and you are formally onboarded as a client.
Once your plan is implemented, the relationship shifts into an ongoing rhythm. At a minimum we catch up once a year to review how things are tracking; where your situation is more complex, we review every six months. This is where we keep the plan aligned with the three realities from Step 8-rule changes, lifestyle changes, and market movements. We check that your investment strategy still matches your goals, revisit your cash flow as costs change, make sure your structures remain tax-effective, and confirm your insurance and estate arrangements are still fit for purpose. The plan is a living thing, and the annual review is how we keep it in good health.
You do not need to wait for a crisis or a windfall to seek advice. In our experience, it is worth having a conversation when any of the following apply:
As a general guide, we suggest speaking with an adviser at least ten years before you intend to retire. That timeframe gives us the room to use the contribution rules, restructure assets, and manage the timing of any major decisions-all of the things that become harder, or impossible, if you leave them too late.
To make the most of that first conversation, it helps to bring a few things along-though if you do not have everything to hand, do not let that stop you booking. A rough picture is more than enough to begin.
And bring your partner. As covered in Step 9, the best planning looks at both of you together.
There is no single magic number-it depends on how you want to live, where you live, and your household expenses. As a benchmark, the ASFA Retirement Standard suggests a couple who own their home need around $77,000 a year for a comfortable lifestyle and a single around $55,000. Most people are best served by planning around a range-a comfortable minimum and an ideal-rather than one figure. We cover this in detail in our article How Much Super Do I Need to Retire Comfortably in Melbourne?
No. Fifty-five is squarely within the window where meaningful change is still possible. You have time to adjust your super investment option, use catch-up contribution rules, reduce debt, and structure your assets before you stop work. The earlier the better-but 55 is a genuinely useful starting point, not a missed opportunity.
There is no universal answer-some of our clients retire at 60, others at 65, 67 or 70. What matters more than the age itself is whether your plan supports the lifestyle you want for the years you will spend retired. The key ages to understand are your preservation age (generally 60, when you can access super) and Age Pension age (67). Planning for any gap between when you stop work and when those become available is one of the most important things we do.
Retiring at 60 usually means funding seven years of living costs before the Age Pension becomes available at 67, entirely from your own resources. Whether that is achievable comes down to your super balance, any investments outside super, your expenses, and your desired lifestyle. This is exactly the kind of question a cash flow model answers-we can show you, in plain terms, whether retiring at 60 works for your numbers and what would need to change to make it work.
It depends on your structure. If you are over 60, retired, and your super is in an account-based pension (retirement phase), the earnings and the income you draw are generally tax-free. If your money stays in the accumulation phase, the earnings continue to be taxed at 15% regardless of your age. Getting the structure right at the point of retirement is what unlocks the tax-free treatment.
A TTR income stream lets you access some of your super from age 60 while you are still working, by moving part of your balance into a TTR pension account and drawing between 4% and 10% of it each year. People use it to fund travel, pay down the mortgage before retirement, or reduce their working hours without cutting their income. We explain how it works, who it suits, and the risks in our article Your Salary, Your Super – How a Transition to Retirement Strategy Could Let You Have Both, and in Step 5 of this guide.
For the vast majority of Australians, no. The Division 296 tax applies only to the portion of an individual’s total super balance above $3 million, and it taxes the realised earnings on that portion-not your whole balance and not your contributions. It became law in March 2026 and takes effect from 1 July 2026. If your balance is approaching $3 million, it is worth reviewing your structure. Our article The $3 Million Super Cap: What Melbourne Couples Need to Know Before It Hits covers it in full.
Being debt-free by retirement-ideally by 67-is a high priority in most plans we build, because a paid-off home removes a fixed cost and interest-rate risk from your retirement budget. But whether you should direct surplus cash to the mortgage or to investing depends on how far you are from retirement, interest rates, and your expected investment returns. In your early 50s we often favour investing for growth; closer to retirement, the certainty of paying down the mortgage usually wins. It is rarely all-or-nothing.
Both can play a role, but they behave very differently. Property is good at capital growth but relatively poor at producing the cash flow you actually live on in retirement, and it is counted under the Age Pension assets test. Super held in a balanced portfolio typically produces far stronger income and better tax treatment in retirement. We weigh up the trade-offs in our article Super vs Investment Property for Retirement: Pros, Cons and Tax Implications.
At least once a year for most people, and every six months if your situation is more complex. Rules change, costs of living change, and markets move-a regular review keeps your plan aligned with the life you are actually living and the rules that actually apply.
You can find a great deal of information online, and some people manage well on their own. The value an adviser adds is less about knowing the answers and more about knowing the questions you did not think to ask-and getting the implementation and timing right, which is where do-it-yourself plans most often come unstuck. For anyone with a meaningful balance, multiple assets, or a partner to plan around, professional advice usually pays for itself many times over.
Pre-retirement is the best time to take control of your financial future. Confidence in retirement does not come from having every answer-it comes from having a plan you understand, built around the life you actually want to live. Whatever stage you are at, and however tidy or messy things feel right now, the first conversation is where clarity begins.
Book a pre-retirement planning conversation with Ravi or Sunny-free of charge and with no obligation, in person at our office in Wheelers Hill or online by video. Bring your latest super statement and a rough sense of your goals for the next ten years, and we will take care of the rest.
Disclaimer: The information provided in this guide is general advice only. It has been prepared without taking into account any of your individual objectives, financial situation or needs. Before acting on this advice, you should consider the appropriateness of the advice, having regard to your own objectives, financial situation and needs.
Radiance Wealth is a Corporate Authorised Representative of RI Advice Group Pty Ltd ABN 23 001 774 125 AFSL 238429, an Australian Financial Services Licensee.
All figures, rates and thresholds referenced in this guide are believed to be current as at March 2026 but are subject to change. Readers should verify current rates with the Australian Taxation Office (ato.gov.au), Services Australia (servicesaustralia.gov.au), and ASIC Moneysmart (moneysmart.gov.au) before making financial decisions.
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