Super, cash, property: what you can reach, and when

Wealth can pay a bill only once it can be spent. The owner page sorts everything a person holds into three groups. The first is what they can reach now. The second is what is preserved in super until they can access it. The third is what a company or trust holds.

Two households can have the same total. One with most of it in the second and third groups plans differently from one with most of it in the first.

Accessible now

Cash accounts, shares and property held in the owner's own name can be reached. But property takes months to turn into cash, and it costs money to sell. The owner page's When it can be reached panel puts these together as Accessible now. The cash forecast draws on the cash first and shows the year it runs out.

Preserved super

Super can be reached from preservation age, and generally only after retiring from work. Preservation age is 60 for anyone born after 30 June 1964. Until then, super counts in the position but not in the cash the household can spend.

The retirement plan treats super as available from each participant's preservation age. It shows the years before that as funded from cash and property alone.

Held by a company, trust or SMSF

An asset owned by a company, a family trust or an SMSF belongs to it. The person reaches it only as a distribution or a benefit payment, under its rules.

Portfolio position shows these holdings as Held by a company or trust, or Held by an SMSF. The retirement plan's wind-up strategies model what a distribution would look like.

Reading the access panel

The owner page's When it can be reached panel starts from Owned assets. It takes out what is Held by a company or trust and Preserved super, where there is any. What is left is Accessible now, the headline.

Accessible now and Preserved super decide what a plan can spend before and after preservation age. If preserved super is most of the total and the owner is under 60, the years until then are funded from the smaller number.