56+

Everyone's different - of course - but here are some interesting things our clients often experience in their late fifties and early sixties:

• winding back, working part-time
• being made redundant
• health concerns
• suffering a serious illness or injury
• paying for weddings
• helping the kids get established
• aging parents needing your time
• finally paying off the mortgage
• downsizing
• selling a business
• caring for young grandchildren
• making a sea change

This is a period of great change for most people. Some of us plan to keep working until we're in our 70's. Others want to start winding back as soon as possible. For many, the family home suddenly seems a bit empty once the children have left home and a whole range of lifestyle options emerge. At this stage of life, a lot of people may think it's too late to boost their retirement nest egg, but in most cases they'd be wrong. With expert advice and assistance, there's so much that can be done to help you get the most out of life.

How can we help?

We can help reduce your tax:

Tax is probably they single biggest expense, so there's enormous potential to save you serious dollars. Dollars that could be used to create wealth instead of deplete it. Here are a few of the main strategies that you may be able to implement:

• income splitting
• pre-paying interest
• disposing of capital losses against capital gains
• establishing a family trust
• using tax-friendly investments
• contributing existing investments into super

We can help you to maximise your super and get ready to retire in the best shape possible:

Super is more attractive than ever and now Reasonable Benefit Limits have been abolished there is a lot more people can do to take advantage of super. Here are two examples:

1. if you are planning on downsizing your home once you retire, you may be a lot better off doing so before you retire and enjoying the tax benefits of contributing the sale proceeds into super.
2. If you have non-super investments that could be transferred into super this could save you thousands of dollars in tax.

It's a complex field, however the biggest risk is that without expert advice you may miss out on extremely valuable opportunties.

The transition to retirement rules create a number of options other than simply retiring:

• you may be able to wind dow by working part-time without compromising your lifestyle
• you may be able to keep working full time but start accessing your super
• you may be able to tak maximum advantage of the salary sacrifice to super option without sacrificing your lifestyle

Addwealth advisers know all the options and can advise you on which is best for you, and then help you put a plan into action.

In addition, we can save you time by creating the strategies, reviewing your financial strategy and ensuring that if your circumstances change, your plan changes with it.

There's a lot at stake and no time left to fix things if you get it wrong - there has never been a more important time to get professional, quality, expert advice and assistance from an Addwealth adviser.

For more information, or to make an appointment, click here