We charge a fixed dollar fee, set according to the complexity of your situation and the work involved, rather than a percentage of your assets. The full details are in our Financial Services Guide.

Ongoing advice fees may be tax-deductible to you personally, though this depends on your circumstances. It's worth checking with your accountant, since deductibility depends on your individual tax situation.

In some cases, yes, where certain requirements around the nature of the advice and your super account are met. One of our advisers can talk through whether this applies to you.

A Statement of Advice (SoA) sets out the strategies, investments and financial products recommended to help you work towards your goals, along with the costs and any conflicts or benefits your adviser may receive. Receiving an SoA from a licensed adviser before you act on personal advice is a legal requirement.

No. Custody of your money sits with institutions such as banks and super funds, which are responsible for managing and securing your assets. We don't take control of your funds at any point.

We only take on clients where we're confident we can add real value. If it turns out we're not the right match after an initial discussion, we can point you toward another firm better placed to help.

There's no set retirement age in Australia. You can retire whenever you're able to financially support yourself, whether that's a full stop at a set age, a gradual wind-down of hours, or more than one 'retirement' over time.

A commonly used rule of thumb is 70 to 85 per cent of your pre-retirement income, though this varies a lot from person to person. Rather than a single figure like '$1 million', it comes down to building a budget for the retirement lifestyle you want and working backwards from there, which is where financial modelling can help.

A Transition to Retirement strategy lets you draw an income from your super while you're still working, once you've reached your preservation age. It's often used to reduce working hours without a full drop in income, or to salary sacrifice more into super while topping up cash flow from a TTR pension.

An account-based pension is the main way most people turn their super into a retirement income once they stop work. It's tax-effective, flexible on how much you draw (subject to minimum annual drawdown rules), and investment earnings become tax-free after you turn 60 in the retirement phase, up to the transfer balance cap.

Eligibility depends on your age, residency and the value of your assets and income outside your home. The assets test threshold changes periodically and differs for singles, couples and homeowners versus non-homeowners, so it's worth checking your position against the current Services Australia figures or discussing it with an adviser.

Common options include maximising your concessional (before-tax) contributions cap, using 'catch-up' concessional contributions if you haven't used your full cap in previous years, or making non-concessional (after-tax) contributions up to the relevant cap. Which combination makes sense depends on your income, existing balance and timeframe, so it's worth working through with an adviser or accountant.

It depends on your situation, but many people find that, once the tax benefits of super contributions and typical investment returns are weighed against home loan interest, extra super contributions can come out ahead. Where a mortgage is a source of stress rather than just a number, some people choose to prioritise paying it down instead. If it's not cleared before retirement, a tax-free lump sum from super can be used to pay it out once you've retired and reached 60.

Rather than defaulting to a generic 'conservative' or 'growth' label, an investment approach can be built around the return your money actually needs to produce to fund your plans, sometimes called an 'intention-led' approach. Because your super may need to last several decades of retirement, most people still need a meaningful amount of growth assets, not just income-generating ones, to keep pace with drawdowns over time.

This comes down to modelling your likely living costs, travel, asset mix, investment returns and the age you retire, projected forward over your expected retirement. As a general guide, drawing down more than around 6 per cent of your balance a year can increase the risk of running out of money later in retirement, so this is worth stress-testing rather than assuming.

A few things worth checking: whether the adviser or firm holds a current Australian Financial Services Licence (searchable on ASIC's Financial Advisers Register), how much of their work is genuinely focused on retirement rather than general wealth advice, and whether their fee structure is transparent and clearly explained upfront. It's also worth asking how they'd approach your specific mix of super, pension timing and any Centrelink considerations.

Some people manage parts of their own retirement planning, particularly where their situation is straightforward. Where things get more complex, such as combining super drawdown strategy, Centrelink entitlements, tax and investment decisions, many people find it worth having a licensed adviser pressure-test the plan or build it with them, given how much a misstep can cost over a multi-decade retirement.