Retirement planning in Perth

How much super do I need to retire in Australia?

There is no universal figure, but there is a method. Work out the annual after-tax income you want, subtract any income that will continue regardless, multiply the shortfall by the number of years it must last, then test that total against a realistic return and inflation assumption. The answer is a range, not a number — and the range is what you plan against.

Every article on this topic either dodges the question or quotes a single national figure as though it applied to everyone. Neither is useful. The number depends on four things and nothing else:

1. The income you actually want, after tax, in today's dollars — not a benchmark someone else published.
2. How long it has to last. Planning to average life expectancy is planning for a coin toss. We model well beyond it.
3. What else is coming in — rent, a business earn-out, part-time work, a partner still working, and eventually any Age Pension entitlement.
4. How the money is held, because the tax treatment of a dollar drawn from super, a trust, a company or your own name is not the same dollar.

A household wanting $120,000 a year and a household wanting $180,000 a year are not doing the same exercise, and neither is well served by a national average. If a page gives you a single number without asking any of the four questions above, it is marketing.

What income will I actually need in retirement?

Start from your current spending, not a published standard. Remove what stops — mortgage, commuting, dependent costs, work-related expenses — and add what starts, which is usually travel early on and health costs later. Most households find the first decade of retirement costs more than they assumed and the last decade less.

The ASFA Retirement Standard is a genuinely useful reference point for comfortable and modest living, and we use it as a sanity check. We deliberately do not quote a dollar figure from it on this page, because the figures are updated quarterly and a number quoted without its quarter is misleading within months. At the point of advice you will be shown the current quarter's figure and where it came from.

There is also a spending shape that almost nobody plans for: retirement is not a flat line. It is generally busy and expensive for the first ten years, quieter and cheaper in the middle, then potentially expensive again at the end for care. Modelling it as a flat inflation-adjusted number is the most common technical error in retirement planning.

When can I access my super?

Preservation age is 60 for everyone born on or after 1 July 1964, which now covers everyone approaching retirement. Reaching preservation age is not enough on its own — you also need to meet a condition of release, such as retiring, or turning 65 regardless of work status. A transition to retirement income stream is available from 60 while still working.

The transition of preservation ages finished on 1 July 2024, so the old sliding scale by birth year is now history — which means most of the material online about it is out of date.

The practical distinction that catches people out is between access and retirement. You can be 61, still working three days a week, and drawing a transition to retirement income stream. Or 63, fully retired, drawing an account-based pension. Or 66, working full time by choice, with unrestricted access you have chosen not to use. These are four different tax and strategy positions, and choosing between them is most of what this work involves.

Am I on track to retire?

The honest answer requires modelling, not a rule of thumb. We project your current position forward under conservative assumptions, test it against the income you said you want, and show you the gap in dollars and years. If the answer is "yes, you are fine", we will tell you that — it is a frequent outcome and it does not require an ongoing engagement.

What the modelling has to include to be worth anything: a return assumption that can be defended, inflation, contribution caps, tax at every stage, the drawdown sequence, and at least one bad scenario. What it should not include: a straight-line 7% forever, which is how projections get made to look reassuring.

The output we want is not a single number. It is the answer to three questions: what happens if nothing changes, what is the earliest realistic date, and what would have to change to bring that date forward by two years. That last one is usually where the interesting conversation starts.

How much can I contribute to super before I retire?

For 2026–27 the concessional contributions cap is $32,500, up from $30,000, and the non-concessional cap is $130,000. Unused concessional cap from the previous five years can be carried forward if your total super balance was under $500,000 at the prior 30 June. Unused amounts expire after five years, so the room is genuinely use-it-or-lose-it.

The pre-retirement decade is where contribution strategy earns the most and gets the least attention. Three things are worth knowing:

• Carry-forward room is invisible unless someone looks for it. It sits in an ATO record and expires quietly. People with a career break, a part-time period, or years before a large income rise very often have substantial unused cap and no idea.
• The bring-forward rule can allow more than one year of non-concessional cap to be used in a single year, subject to age and total super balance conditions. This matters enormously in the year a business is sold or a property settles — and it is one of the few strategies where the timing of a contract date can change the outcome.
• Superannuation guarantee is 12%, and there is a maximum contribution base — $270,830 for 2026–27 — above which an employer is not required to contribute (but many employers do). High earners frequently assume their employer contribution scales with their whole salary. It does not necessarily — check your payslip.

How does the transfer balance cap limit my pension?

The transfer balance cap limits how much you can move into the tax-free retirement phase. The general cap is $2.1 million for 2026–27, after indexation on 1 July 2026. Amounts above your personal cap stay in accumulation and are taxed on earnings, so for larger balances the cap decides how much of your pension is tax-free.

The part almost every summary gets wrong: a personal cap is not necessarily the general cap. Indexation is proportional. Someone who has previously used all of their available cap receives no increase at all. Someone who used part of it receives a proportional share of the increase. So two people who retired two years apart can have materially different personal caps, and the headline number applies to neither.

This is also why the timing of starting a pension is a decision rather than an administrative step. Starting a pension is largely irreversible in cap terms, and starting one early to lock in a benefit can permanently forgo future indexation. The cap position is worth checking before a pension is commenced, not after.

What order should I draw my retirement income in?

There is no universal order, but there is a logic: draw first from whatever is taxed most heavily while it is held, preserve the concessionally taxed structures for as long as the rules allow, and keep enough outside super to avoid being forced to sell an asset at a bad time. Minimum pension payments and any Age Pension means testing then constrain the theory.

This is the part of retirement planning with the largest gap between what is optimal and what people actually do. The default behaviour is to draw the minimum from super and spend cash, in whatever order is convenient. Sometimes that is right. Frequently it is not, because it ignores three constraints operating simultaneously: the minimum pension payment the fund must pay, the tax treatment of each source, and the means testing that decides an Age Pension entitlement.

The sequence also has to survive contact with real life — a new car, a child’s wedding, a roof, helping an adult child. A drawdown plan that only works if nothing unexpected happens is not a plan.

What happens if I retire just before a market downturn?

This is sequencing risk, and it is the largest avoidable risk in early retirement. Drawing income from a portfolio that has just fallen means selling more units to fund the same lifestyle, permanently reducing what is left to recover. Two retirees with identical average returns can end up with very different outcomes purely because of the order in which those returns arrived.

Almost no competitor page in this market covers this, which is remarkable given it is the risk most likely to derail an otherwise sound plan. It cannot be eliminated, but it can be managed — and the management is structural rather than clever. Plans that hold enough short-term liquidity are not forced to sell at the bottom of a bad year. Plans where discretionary spending can be reduced for eighteen months are far more robust than plans where every dollar is committed. Asset allocation that has been allowed to drift into whatever felt comfortable during the last good decade is a common weak point. And the first five years are worth considering separately from the following twenty, because they are not the same problem and should not share one assumption.

No strategy prevents markets falling. The point is to make a fall an inconvenience rather than a permanent reduction in a standard of living.

Can I retire gradually instead of stopping?

Yes, and for most of our clients this is the actual goal. From preservation age you can draw a transition to retirement income stream while continuing to work, which allows hours to reduce without income reducing by the same amount. It suits professionals and business owners who want to step back over several years rather than stop on a date.

This is the version of retirement most of the people we work with actually want: three days a week, then two, then a board seat and a consulting arrangement, then whatever comes after that. It is also considerably more complex to plan than a hard stop, because income, contributions, tax and pension settings all change every year for several years running rather than once.

For a FIFO or resources career the calculus is different again — the income is high, the roster is punishing, and the realistic question is often how few more swings are left, not when someone turns 65.

Will I get the Age Pension?

Possibly, and often later rather than at retirement. The Age Pension is means tested on both income and assets, and thresholds are indexed regularly. Many people who receive nothing at 67 qualify for a part pension in their seventies or eighties as assets are drawn down — which is why it belongs in the modelling even when the current answer is no.

We deliberately do not publish the current thresholds on this page. They change several times a year, and a page carrying indexed Services Australia figures is out of date faster than it can be reviewed, which is worse than not stating them. You will be shown the current figures, with their effective date, at the point of advice.

What matters strategically is that the Age Pension is not a binary at retirement. Treating it as "we won't get it, ignore it" routinely understates lifetime income and leads people to work longer than they needed to.

What about Division 296 and large balances?

From 1 July 2026, Division 296 applies additional tax to superannuation earnings attributable to a total super balance above $3 million, with a further 10% above $10 million. For balances near either threshold it changes whether the next dollar belongs in superannuation at all, which is a structuring question as much as a retirement one.

Most people reading this page are nowhere near $3 million and can set it aside entirely. For those who are close, the decision it triggers is about where assets are held rather than when to retire, and it is covered in more detail on our SMSF and tax structuring pages.

What we do, and what we will tell you

We model your position, agree the retirement income you are actually planning for, then build the contribution, pension and drawdown strategy and coordinate it with your accountant. Fees are agreed with you before any work starts. If your existing arrangements are already sound, we will say so.

The most valuable thing we do in this area is usually not a product change. It is establishing that the date assumed to be ten years away is closer than expected — or further — and doing something about it while there is still time for the decision to matter.

How do I start retirement planning in Perth?

Start with a Wealth Gap Conversation — a no-obligation discussion about how you want to live and whether your current position supports it. Justin Porrins is a CFP® and SMSF Specialist Advisor™, ASIC Adviser No. 250071, based in Perth and advising clients across Western Australia. He responds personally within one business day.