When Should You Start Working With a Financial Planner?

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial, tax, or legal advice. Financial planning decisions should be based on your individual circumstances and made in consultation with a qualified financial professional.

Most Australians put off seeing a financial planner until they're staring down retirement and suddenly realize they have no idea if their super will hold up. By then, a lot of the useful planning windows have closed. The honest answer to when you should start is usually about ten years earlier than people think.

What's the right age to get financial advice?

There isn't one. The better question is what life stage you're in and what decisions are coming up in the next two to five years.

If you're in your thirties with a mortgage and young children, advice tends to focus on insurance and choosing the right super fund. If you're in your forties or fifties, the conversation shifts to contribution strategies and whether to start building wealth outside super. By your sixties, the questions become specific: when can you access your super, how much can you draw down, what does the Age Pension look like for you, and how do you avoid paying more tax than you need to in retirement.

Brisbane residents who want a steady, independent perspective on these questions often turn to firms like the Solace financial planners in Brisbane team, who have worked with pre-retirees and retirees through several market cycles since the early 2000s.

What are the signs you should see a planner sooner rather than later?

A few situations make professional advice genuinely worth the fee, rather than a nice-to-have.

You've had a sudden change in income. A promotion, a redundancy, a business sale or an inheritance all shift your tax position and what's possible with super. Without advice, most people park the money in their offset and miss the more useful options.

You're within ten years of retirement. This is the period where contribution caps and asset allocation decisions have the biggest compounding effect. A poorly timed decision at 55 can cost you tens of thousands by 70.

You're going through a major life transition. Divorce, the death of a spouse, an inheritance, or moving a parent into aged care all involve financial decisions that are hard to reverse. Getting advice before signing anything is usually cheaper than untangling things later.

You have an SMSF and you're not sure you're using it well. Self-managed funds are common in Queensland, but a lot of trustees set them up years ago and haven't reviewed the strategy since.

How is a financial planner different from an accountant?

The two roles overlap, but they answer different questions.

An accountant looks backward. They prepare your tax return and report on what your numbers were last financial year. A good accountant will flag opportunities, but their core work is reporting on what's already happened.

A financial planner looks forward. They build a plan for what your money should do over the next ten or twenty years. That includes how much to put into super, how to structure your investments, what insurance you need, how to draw an income in retirement, and how to pass wealth on to your children or grandchildren.

Most people benefit from having both. The accountant handles compliance. The planner handles strategy. They often work together on company structures, trust distributions, capital gains planning, and contribution timing around the sale of a business or property.

What should you expect at a first meeting?

A first consultation should not feel like a sales pitch. With a reputable independent firm, the initial meeting is usually free and runs for an hour or so.

You'll be asked about your current position, your goals, your timeline, and what's keeping you up at night. The planner should listen more than they talk in this meeting. If you walk out and the only thing you remember is the planner pushing a particular product, you've been to the wrong firm.

After that meeting, a fee proposal should be put in writing. Advice fees in Australia are usually somewhere between $3,300 and $11,000 for an initial Statement of Advice, depending on complexity, with ongoing service fees billed annually if you choose to engage them long term. You should know exactly what you're paying before any work begins.

How do you know if a planner is genuinely independent?

This is where a lot of people get caught out. Many advisers are technically licensed under the same parent company that owns the products they recommend, even if the branding looks separate.

Two things to check. Is the firm holding its own AFSL, or operating under someone else's? And are the recommendations you receive limited to a list of approved products from a related entity?

A genuinely independent practice charges fees rather than commissions and is free to recommend any product on the market that fits your situation. That structure costs the firm more to run, but it removes the conflict of interest that has driven most of the major advice scandals in this country over the past fifteen years.

Is it worth paying for advice if you're not wealthy yet?

For straightforward situations, sometimes not. If you're in your twenties with a single super account and no major decisions on the horizon, a low-cost industry fund and a sensible savings rate will get you most of the way.

The point at which advice tends to pay for itself is when complexity creeps in. Two incomes, a mortgage, kids, a small business, an investment property, an inheritance, a partner's super, an SMSF. Once you're juggling four or five of those, the cost of getting it wrong starts to outweigh the cost of getting advice.

A good planner should be honest with you about this. If you don't need them yet, they should say so and tell you when to come back.

What questions should you ask before engaging a planner?

A few worth asking in the first meeting:

• Who owns this firm, and who holds the AFSL?
• How are you paid, and are there any commissions or referral fees involved?
• What does your average client look like, and how long do they usually stay with you?
• What happens to my plan if my adviser leaves?
• Can I see a sample Statement of Advice before I commit?

The answers tell you more about the firm than any brochure will. A planner who answers them directly, without deflecting, is usually one worth working with.