The honest answer is between five and ten years before you plan to stop. Earlier than that and the variables are too fluid to optimise. Later than that and you've lost the runway to compound the important decisions.

In your early fifties, you've usually got enough super accumulated to model scenarios meaningfully. You can see what your balance will be at 60, 65, and 67 under different contribution settings. You can still use carry-forward concessional caps from unused prior years (they only go back five years, so the 2020-21 year drops off at the end of 2025-26). You've got time to restructure debt, shift insurance, and plan around capital gains.

By mid to late fifties, the Transition to Retirement pension becomes relevant, the age at which you can access super preservation opens up, and the Age Pension eligibility rules start to shape your strategy. An adviser who gets involved here has real levers to pull.

After retirement, the work shifts. Drawdown strategy, pension applications, and aged care take over. Still valuable, but most of the big pre-retirement moves have already closed off.

The headline job is answering a simple question with real numbers: can I afford to retire, and if so, when? That involves modelling your super, any other investments, the family home, Age Pension entitlements, and your target spending in retirement. The output is a plan you can see on paper, not a vague reassurance.

Underneath that are the specific decisions that move the needle. Contribution strategy. Concessional, non-concessional, carry-forward, spouse splitting. Tax planning. When to sell assets, how to structure capital gains, what to deduct. Super consolidation and fund selection. Insurance review. Most pre-retirees are carrying cover they don't need anymore. Estate planning. Binding nominations, beneficiary structure, power of attorney. Debt reduction sequencing.

Where advice earns its keep

None of this is hard in isolation. The value is in doing it all together, across five or six years, so each move supports the next.

Some calls benefit from an adviser more than others. These are the ones where the cost of getting it wrong is highest.

The short answer: yes, if you're within five to ten years of stopping work and you don't have a clear picture of what your retirement looks like financially. A good adviser earns their fee many times over by optimising your super contributions, pension eligibility, tax structure, and withdrawal strategy in the years before you retire. The window for the biggest wins closes once you've stopped working, so the timing matters more than most people realise.

Most people put off seeing an adviser because they're not sure they've got enough, or they think it's something you do once you're already retired. Both assumptions cost people money. Here's what the decision looks like, when to make it, and what a pre-retirement adviser should be doing for you.

A full pre-retirement Statement of Advice runs $3,500 to $6,000 in 2026 depending on complexity. Ongoing advice (the strategy reviewed each year as rules and your position change) sits at $4,000 to $6,000 a year. Those are the fees the well-built practices in Australia charge right now.

What that buys back depends entirely on your situation, and none of it is guaranteed. For the couple with $800,000 five years out, the year-one value from contribution, insurance and tax optimisation might fall somewhere between $8,000 and $22,000. For the single home owner with $500,000 three years out, getting the pension structure and super strategy right might be worth $6,000 to $12,000. For the couple with $1.5 million on ongoing advice, the drawdown strategy, tax, pension and aged-care planning might add $15,000 to $40,000. These are estimates, not promises, and the actual value depends on your circumstances and on market conditions no one controls.

Where advice earns its keep

Advice fees are tax deductible in many cases where the advice relates to ongoing income generation or existing investments, which further improves the net cost. Your accountant can tell you what applies to your situation.

Plenty of people manage their own super and retirement planning well. The question isn't whether DIY is possible. It's whether you'll do the work, stay current with the rules, and avoid the behavioural mistakes that cost more than any adviser fee.

DIY works when you enjoy the research, have the time to stay on top of contribution cap changes, pension threshold updates, and legislation shifts, and you're emotionally steady enough not to panic-sell during a market drop. That's a smaller group of people than most realise.

Where advice earns its keep

An adviser adds value in places DIY rarely matches. The interactions between super, pension, and tax are complex enough that most laypeople miss something worth thousands. There's also the behavioural side. A good adviser stops you from making the one decision in a decade that wrecks the plan. And if you're still earning, the five to ten hours a year you'd spend staying current can be worth more than the fee itself.

A good first meeting is free and takes about an hour. Bring these documents and the adviser can give you a meaningful read on your position without charging for a full SOA.

You don't need to have all of this perfectly organised. Half the value of the first meeting is the adviser showing you what's missing.

Not every adviser is worth what they charge. Four things to watch for:

• No clear fee disclosure up front. The fee should be written down, in dollars, before you commit to anything.
• Pushing specific products in the first meeting. Proper advice starts with strategy, not products. Product selection comes at the end.
• No degree qualification, no AFP or CFP designation. Post-2019 reforms lifted education standards across the industry: new advisers need a relevant degree, and existing advisers had to pass the national exam and meet education requirements to keep practising.
• Commissions on investment or super advice. These have been banned since 2013. If an adviser is still earning them, something's wrong.

You can check any adviser's credentials on the ASIC Financial Advisers Register in about two minutes.

Full pre-retirement advice is a fixed fee, disclosed in writing, with a scope document showing exactly what's covered. Ongoing advice is reviewed annually and the fee is agreed year by year. No commissions on super or investments. Advice fees are tax deductible where applicable.

Because we work with a lot of families across the retirement-to-aged-care arc, we end up helping the same clients with their parents' care planning, estate administration, and later inheritance questions. That's unusual in the industry. Most advisers stop at retirement. The whole-of-life picture is what we think distinguishes the practice.

Where advice earns its keep

We see most clients five to ten years before retirement. First meeting is free, takes about an hour, and we'll tell you whether full advice is worth the cost for your specific situation. If we don't think you need us, we'll say so.