Our first year of work together is usually the most involved, and consequently has the greatest commitment of funds. These numbers will vary depending on your personal situation and what we do together, but these can be considered ballpark numbers:

• In Year 1:
  - 1:0.33% FUM
  - $16,000 BA
  - Not out of your pocket, but we will receive commissions on Mortgages
  - and Insurances
  - $8000 FP fee

• Year 2 onwards:
  - Any project fees e.g. SMSF or trust establishment $250
  - Ongoing FP fee: $4500
  - 0.33% FUM

• Please see below for a collection of our funds returns over 10 years?

• Average returns outside of the fund? All properties average?

We’re located at 68 Highland Terrace, St Lucia, QLD 4067, just around the corner from Ironside state school. We have parking at the front of the office, as well as plenty of street parking in front of the office. Come in and say hi!

Given an ‘ideal’ situation with no inconveniences, this is what 5 years together would look like:

Year 1:

• Financial Planning - $8000

• Investment Strategy (included in the above)

• Investment property research, purchase and negotiation $16,000

Year 2:

• Investment property research, purchase and negotiation $16,000

• SMSF & Trust establishment $5000

• Portfolio diversification

Year 3:

• Investment property research, purchase and negotiation $16,000

• Investment property research, purchase and negotiation $16,000

The short answer is, busy professionals who are cash rich but time poor. Our strategies benefit those who have $200k+ in their super and are earning $200k+ in household income. That’s not to say that we can’t help you if you are earning less or have less in your super, the returns will simply be mapped out at a different pace.

We’re a financial planning firm first, and our other services are there to compliment this. We usually don’t offer Mortgage Services, Structure Establishment or Buyers Advocacy services outside of a financial plan, but we will be happy to refer you to someone else who may be able to help you with these.

We are accredited with the big banks, as well as numerous smaller more versatile lenders who are happy to lend to trusts with corporate trustees and SMSFs. The lenders that you choose will depend on your situation, however, we don’t limit our recommendations beyond what your objectives and goals are. I.e. We get paid the same no matter who you choose to lend from, so whoever can offer the best rate is often where we recommend you lend from.

Absolutely. Trusts & SMSFs are some of the more common structures that we deal with, however if you are a sole trader or a director of a company we’re more than happy to have a chat to see how this will affect your financial strategies going forward. The rule of thumb is that, so long as the entity is trading profitably, there will be minimal impact on future deals.

That’s perfectly understandable. Not everyone is in a position to benefit from getting professional advice, and we’re not going to be able to provide enough value to everyone either. If you know you should be doing ‘something’ but can’t justify the fees, we have some free resources that can help you work out where you are, and how long it will take you to get where you want to be. Send us a message using the chat box at the bottom-right corner of the page and we'll send you the list of fees.

Our advisers are all qualified, registered on the FAR with ASIC, FPAA members, and have numerous post-grad qualifications. If you’re interested in the particulars, click on the about us menu item above! If you would like to give any feedback about your experience we would love to hear from you to improve things to the best they can be. If you would like to make a complaint, you should direct correspondence to AFCA.

The more specific you can be, the better we can project outcomes. Ballpark figures will give you an idea of the upside vs the cost, however, if you have information about your existing loans and rates etc we can project down to the dollar. If you have them handy most of the information that we need can be considered either a balance sheet item or a cash flow statement item.

The first year is the most involved when it comes to working together on your plan, we will meet roughly 6 times throughout the year. Following that we will have correspondence as we work through projects, but less meetings at around 3 per year. Depending on how many 3rd parties we involve, there may be some hoops to jump through, but as an example, some banks will be significantly more pedantic about details and processes, so this will largely depend on them.

We receive a commission for mortgage and insurance products, however, this doesn’t change from one provider to another. We get paid the same regardless of who you choose to lend from or insure with. 

You are more than welcome to come into the Brisbane office and meet the team, but we know it can be tough to find the time. A large majority of our meetings are over Zoom, so as long as you’ve got a quiet space to talk we’re in business.

Your super options are largely limited by 1. Legislation and 2. The balance. We keep up to date with all of the legislation changes so you don’t have to, but the balance is the important bit from your end. If your super has less than $200k, acquiring a property or establishing an SMSF, or both, will largely not be worth it when we weigh up the costs. These things pay off over a large amount of time, and will be in the red initially. If your balance is ~$200k+ there isn’t a whole lot that you’re limited by, we can look into shares, options, managed funds, investment property, and ETFs.

Insurance comes down to your personal risk appetite, so there isn’t a right or wrong answer. Think of it like this, if you were paying your premiums for 10 years without incident, would you wish that you didn’t have them and rather have the cash working for you elsewhere? There’s a split of people who would rather the peace of mind for the ‘just in case’ over those 10 years, and others who prefer to have the cash flows during that time. Use the sleep test, and test how you feel about insurance. If it keeps you up at night, get it sorted, otherwise enjoy the cash flows and make them work for you.

ASFA data has these ranges as average retirement expenditure in Australia:

• Couples Annual Spend $45k - $70k

• Singles Annual Spend $31k - $50k

• Although, accompanying this data was a survey relating to people's feelings about their finances, and 63% of people had saving for retirement as their 2nd highest concern.

We want to work together and fast track you towards your goals. Sometimes for whatever reason, we won’t meet your expectations and that’s where this comes in. If you’re ever unhappy with the service, get in touch. Let’s have a conversation and we’ll fix it, short of that, we will refund whatever portion of your money that you think is fair, and we can go our separate ways.

A Provisional adviser is someone who has completed their university degree, and is working for a year under supervision of a Senior Adviser. Sometimes we will have provisional advisers come in and work on your file. You’ll always have contact details for the Provisional Adviser and their supervisor if there is anything that you would like to know.

This is a tricky one, let’s take a logical approach. At the time of writing the interest rate is roughly 6.4%, and the average market return is 5.3%, with capital growth rates at 3.2% in Brisbane. When you’re weighing up decisions you have to look at the highest and best use of the resources available. Looking at the rates above, capital growth seems like the least useful, but keep in mind that shares will incur capital gains once you sell with little other benefits. Capital gains might be taxed the same once you sell, but they also open up a line of credit for you to take advantage of. Provided your cash flows are healthy, keeping your loan could provide you with optionality.

Your risk appetite is something that will dictate your strategies when it comes to investing, insurances and overarching strategies. This is a link to a risk profile questionnaire that will help you to understand what kind of investor you are. This isn’t the be all and end all, but it is an indicator of where you sit. If you’re ok with taking risks, high growth is generally what is recommended, if you’re on the other side and want to play things safe, then you’ll want to look at more conservative strategies.

Absolutely! We have clients all over Australia, and internationally. We use Zoom and emails to communicate with our clients who aren’t local and we don’t find any diminishment of results. So long as you have a quiet place to sit and a decent internet connection, we’re good to go.

Watching your balances during volatile times can be stressful and worrying. It helps to know that in our strategies and projections we work on conservative averages, which basically means that, given enough time, things will always revert back to the mean. Things might look alarming, but rest assured that the situation of prices dropping, is simply an opportunity to ride the growth back up.

Provided that you used a solicitor to create and walk through the process, any changes needed are likely very minor. Regulatory changes can require tweaks, but largely this only occurs every 5 years or so, and even then, it won’t completely invalidate your existing wishes. If you’re not sure, let us know, and we can give you the details of the right person to have an exploratory chat with.

As with any structure, you should look at which one will best suit your needs, not just now, but in the future. For example, if you’re looking to build a property portfolio, a trust with a corporate trustee is something to explore in order to increase your borrowing capacity and protect those assets. The upfront establishment cost, and year on year administration fee is also something to consider. If you’re not going to use it in the next 5 years, it’s something that you can revisit later down the line.

Having cash in a down market is a great position to be in, provided you know where the bottom is, which is a bit of a tough question. Holding cash for any period of time needs to take inflation into account. Also what the opportunity cost is of having it sitting idle in a savings account. If you bought shares, and they’re now down, but in 5 years they’re at an all new high, would you have needed that money or can you afford to let it sit in the market? Also, if you invested in property as an example, you might have slightly higher repayments, but that cash sitting in an offset account idle, rather than a savings account, can increase your cash flow by decreasing your interest repayments.

We don’t have lock in contracts or anything like that, but most of our clients will pay for a year in advance, and we ask you to treat our work together as a commitment for a year rather than month by month. Now, there’s no contract that binds you to this so if at any point you change your mind or would like to cease, just let us know and we can refund whatever unused portion of your funds is remaining.

Depending on the projects that you’re looking to undertake, we may work together for 3 years and then go into maintenance mode as activity reduces, or we may continue to chip away at things indefinitely. It’s up to you and how ambitious and fast you want to move on things.

We believe in getting returns, and aim for outperformance. We don’t discriminate against ethical or sustainable investments, but we don’t commit to a minimum portion of them either. Outperformance often involves a myriad of tactics and strategies which can include a form of hedging that often clashes with a strictly ethical or strictly sustainable fund. If this is something that is important to you, let us know and we can look at what will suit you best.

We prefer that you do! Often planning for one person's finances in isolation can be tricky because of outside influences, of which, families and partners are the most significant variables. We’re more than happy to add partners, kids, and any other direct family into your financial plan. The price typically ranges from ~$6,000 for a full single financial plan, and up to ~$12,000 for a complex blended family financial plan including structures, wills, lending and debt consolidation. This will vary depending on your personal circumstances.