Using this site in Australia

First, set the picker

Every page on this site has a country selector in the top bar. Setting it to Australia does three things: it changes the currency symbol and number formatting, it loads Australia starting figures into the jurisdiction-sensitive input boxes, and it shows a short note on any calculator that works differently here.

What it does not do is change the arithmetic. There is one engine underneath all twenty-six calculators and it is the same for everybody. The country layer only sets defaults — and every one of those defaults stays editable, because a national average is a starting point rather than your situation. Your choice is remembered on your device and sent nowhere.

The translation layer

The calculators use deliberately generic language so that one set of tools works everywhere. Here is what each generic term means in Australia.

The big one: the Age Pension means test is not modelled

This deserves to be first rather than buried, because it is the omission most likely to change an Australian answer.

The Age Pension is means-tested on both income and assets, and the assets test tapers: above the threshold, your pension reduces as your assets rise. The practical effect is an extraordinarily high effective marginal rate on assets sitting just above the cut-off — every extra dollar of assessable assets costs you pension entitlement, and over a retirement that can outweigh the return the asset earns.

This site models none of it. Which means several calculators can point you the wrong way if you are anywhere near the thresholds:

• Helping the kids — gifting reduces your assets, but Centrelink's deprivation rules keep counting gifts above the allowable amounts for five years. The calculator sees a smaller portfolio; Centrelink may not.
• Opportunity cost and pay off or invest — paying down the mortgage on your own home converts assessable assets into an exempt one. That can be worth considerably more than the interest saved, and none of it appears in the arithmetic.
• Reverse mortgage suitability — the money released becomes an assessable asset, where the equity in the home was exempt. The government's own Home Equity Access Scheme is also usually cheaper than a commercial product and is not modelled here at all.

The honest instruction: use these calculators for the investment arithmetic, then check any conclusion against a means-test calculator or a financial counsellor before acting on it. Services Australia's Financial Information Service is free.

Preservation age, and the two ages that matter

Preservation age is now 60 for everyone. The old sliding scale by birth date has finished working through, so if you have retired after turning 60 you can access your super. At 65 you get full access regardless of whether you have retired.

The Age Pension age is 67, and it is a separate question entirely — being able to reach your super has nothing to do with qualifying for the Age Pension.

That gap is what the liquidity risk calculator is for: money you cannot touch yet is not money you can spend in an emergency, and the site treats "what you have" and "what you can reach" as different questions on purpose.

Why calculator 03 barely applies here

The pension deferral calculator asks whether to claim a state pension early at a reduced rate or wait for a larger one. Australia has neither option. The Age Pension starts at 67, there is no early claiming and no deferral uplift, so the preset sets both adjustment rates to zero and the page tells you it has limited application.

The genuinely Australian version of that question is different: when should I move super into retirement phase, and how does the means test interact with drawing on it? Neither half of that is modelled here. It is the main thing this site cannot do for an Australian user, and it is worth knowing before you spend time on that page.

Minimum drawdowns

Once super moves into retirement phase you must draw a minimum percentage each year: 4% under 65, 5% to 74, 6% to 79, 7% to 84, 9% to 89, 11% to 94 and 14% from 95. The calculators implement this properly.

Because payments are generally tax-free after 60, the cost of a forced withdrawal here is not an income tax bill — it is losing the tax-free earnings environment on money you did not need to spend. The site models it that way: the money is reinvested outside super, and only the tax on the surplus counts against you.

What this site deliberately does not model here

This is the important section, and it is deliberately blunt. The calculators contain no tax logic and no means-testing logic of any kind — not for Australia, not for anywhere. Where a page asks for a tax rate, it is a number you type in and the calculator multiplies by it. That design decision means the site cannot be wrong about the law, because it never states any; but it also means the following are entirely absent from every answer you will get:

• The Age Pension income and assets tests, and the taper. The largest omission on this page by a wide margin.
• Deeming rules, which assess income on your financial assets regardless of what they actually earn.
• Gifting and deprivation rules, which keep counting gifts above the allowable amounts for five years.
• The transfer balance cap limiting how much can move into the tax-free retirement phase.
• Contributions tax, Division 293 and the concessional and non-concessional caps.
• Aged care means testing, including the refundable accommodation deposit and its exemption from the Age Pension assets test.
• Death benefits tax on super paid to non-dependants, which is a real cost to adult children and is invisible in calculator 08.
• The Home Equity Access Scheme, the government's own reverse mortgage, which is usually cheaper than the commercial products calculator 26 assumes.

None of these are oversights — they are the price of one honest engine that works in four countries rather than four half-modelled ones. In Australia, though, the means test is load-bearing in a way tax is not elsewhere: treat the calculators here as the investment half of the answer and get the Centrelink half separately.

The Australia defaults, and how far to trust them

These are the figures the picker loads. Confidence is recorded honestly: verified means checked against a current published source, indicative means a reasonable planning figure that varies enormously and should be replaced with yours, and n/a means the concept does not apply here.

Every one of these is audited in full, with the primary source and the date it was checked, in the tax assumptions audit. If a number here looks wrong to you, that is the document to check — and the one to tell us about.

Where to check the official figures

Nothing on this site should be the last word on a Australia rule. These are the primary sources:

• Services Australia — the Age Pension assets test, plus the income test and deeming rates. Their Financial Information Service is free and independent.
• ATO — payments from super for the minimum drawdown factors, contribution caps and the transfer balance cap.
• Moneysmart.gov.au, ASIC's free consumer site, which has a retirement planner that does model the Age Pension — worth running alongside this one.
• My Aged Care for care costs and the means assessment.
• Your super fund for your actual balance, insurance inside super, and what moving to retirement phase involves.

Where to start

Start with will your money outlive you?, entering the Age Pension as guaranteed income only if you are confident you will qualify — and running it again with the Age Pension set to zero, to see how much of your plan is leaning on it. Then liquidity risk, because the preservation rules make "what you have" and "what you can reach" genuinely different numbers here.

If you have not used the site before, start here works out which calculators are worth your time, the numbers you'll need covers gathering your figures, and the plain-English list defines every term the site uses.