Advice from Parramatta. Clients right across Sydney. 

Public sector superannuation is its own world. Commonwealth employees may be in the CSS, PSS or PSSap depending on when they started; NSW public sector employees may be in SASS, SSS or State Super. Each scheme has its own rules on contributions, preservation and retirement age, how a defined benefit is calculated, and how any defined benefit and accumulation components interact. Working out exactly which scheme you are in, and what it does and does not allow, is the foundation everything else is built on — and it is an area where general advice is often simply wrong.

Usually it begins with a conversation rather than a document. Families want to know how to help children into their first home without creating a tax problem, how to fund education, whether gifting now is better than leaving it in the will, and how assets should be owned so they end up where they are intended to. From there it can involve testamentary trusts, family trusts, binding death benefit nominations on superannuation, and careful sequencing so that support given in one generation does not create a Centrelink or capital gains issue in the next. Where a family holds assets or has beneficiaries overseas, cross-border tax and estate rules need to be built into the plan from the start.

More than the obvious ones. Yes, there is usually superannuation scattered across former employers that should be consolidated — but the bigger question is often whether the fund you have landed in is underperforming, because over a working life that gap compounds into a great deal of money. Beyond that: reviewing personal insurance held both inside and outside super, dealing with employer shares or options, managing the concessional contributions cap as income rises, and tax minimisation strategies that go beyond salary sacrifice. For anyone self-employed or carrying professional risk, asset protection and succession planning belong in the conversation too. Our starting point is the whole position, not the easiest part of it to fix.

 First, that it belongs in the plan at all. Many financial planners will not discuss property, which leaves clients making their largest financial decisions without advice. We take the opposite view: for most Australian households, property is an integral part of the overall picture, and any plan that ignores it is incomplete. Our clients hold property in Sydney, on the Central Coast and in Newcastle, and also in Queensland, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia — people buy where the numbers work, not where they live. What matters is how that property sits alongside everything else: the after-tax, after-cost return rather than the headline price movement, the concentration risk of holding one large asset, the debt structure, and the tax treatment on eventual sale. We also have considerable experience with property held inside self-managed super funds, where the rules are strict, and the consequences of getting the structure wrong are expensive. 

 The documents are the straightforward part: a current will, binding death benefit nominations on superannuation, enduring powers of attorney and guardianship appointments, and in some cases a testamentary trust. The complications are human. Providing fairly for children whose circumstances differ. Blended families, where the will and the super nomination can pull in opposite directions. Making sure superannuation, which does not automatically form part of your estate, actually reaches the person you intend. Business interests that need a succession plan rather than just a beneficiary. These are the conversations worth having while there is time to act on them. 

 The usual first step is consolidation — but not before checking what you would give up, because insurance held inside an old fund can be difficult or expensive to replace, and any defined benefit component needs assessing on its own terms before it is touched. Once the picture is consolidated, the questions become what the money is invested in, whether the fee structure is reasonable, how much income you will actually need, and how that income is drawn in the most tax-effective way. Complexity rises with the number of funds, the mix of industry, retail, corporate and public sector schemes involved, and whether any defined benefit sits in the mix. It is entirely normal to arrive with six statements and no clear idea of where you stand. That is the starting point, not a problem.