What’s the best retirement planning advice your small business accountant can give you?

Retirement planning is one of the most important things you can do for your future. Too often however, retirement planning isn’t given the same careful thought and attention business owners give to their operations.

An important first step is to ensure your small business accountant is asking the right questions to provide you with solid retirement financial advice and help you make the best possible retirement financial plan.

The key to a stress-free retirement is building wealth, however, there’s more to it than simply putting money away in superannuation. While that is part of the nest egg - it’s not the whole nest!

Running a small business takes incredible dedication and focus, but we often find people who are extremely successful at managing their professional financial affairs do not apply the same level of energy to their personal affairs.

This can be the cause of enormous stress, particularly if they are not seeking proper support and advice. The best way to stop worrying and take control is to ask your small business accountant to help you understand your personal financial habits. This includes not only the fundamentals of how much you earn, how much you spend and how much you save, but the detailed picture of where your money goes.

Many of us are better at keeping an eye on the big-picture items like home loans and car loans and the weekly grocery shop than the smaller, daily routines that cost us money. Whether that’s parking fees, bottles of water, a coffee on the run or a new gadget for the shed - it all adds up.

Ask your small business accountant for help in identifying those reflex expenditures. Then, when you are seeking retirement financial advice you will have the clearest picture of how much cashflow you can divert into building long-term wealth.

Pay down debt is sound retirement financial advice

It is rather startling that Australia’s collective household debt is actually larger than the entire annual national GDP. While savings ratios as a proportion of household income are currently growing after a prolonged period of flat-lining, there is a vast difference between paying interest on debt and the one per cent or less interest you can earn on savings.

Work with your small business accountant to find out where you can make the savings in your weekly personal budget so you can pay down debt more quickly. The less interest you pay on debt, the more liquidity you have for first building an emergency fund and then building an investment and savings nest egg.

Your small business accountant needs to help you budget

So let’s talk about budgeting. Any small business owner knows that keeping operational costs low is a crucial part of making the balance sheet stay in the black.

The same is true for your household and personal budget. Operational costs include electricity and gas, phones and data, streaming services, water usage, fuel for the car and any regular household services such as pool cleaners or lawn mowers. These can really add up - and asking our small business accountant to help you identify where you may be able to find a better deal or make some savings is a wise approach.

Remember, each dollar you do not spend on today’s power bill can be used to build the wealth that will keep the lights on when you retire!

To learn more about getting the right retirement financial advice and the questions to ask your small business accountant, download our free eBook ‘Your Money, Your Choice - Make Money’