May 2017
Landing a new job often means a change in salary or income. While it’s tempting to spend your extra money on goodies you've been dreaming of, you could put that pay rise to really good use and improve your financial health. Here are some things to consider when a new job means more money coming through.
Your mortgage
If you have a mortgage, you could increase repayments—which can save you interest and help you pay your home off sooner.
If you’re saving for a home or investment property, a pay rise could be an excellent way of boosting your property deposit. By channelling extra dollars to your savings before they hit your day-to-day spending account, you won’t even miss them.
Salary sacrifice
A pay rise provides an opportunity to potentially contribute more in your super. Ask your new employer if they allow staff to make contributions via salary sacrifice. This allows you to pay some of your pre-tax income into your super account before tax has been deducted. You could boost your savings and benefit from compounding investment returns (bearing in mind returns can be positive or negative).
You could also save on tax because salary sacrificed contributions are generally taxed at 15%, which is lower than most people’s marginal tax rate.
Watch our video on salary sacrifice for more information.
Set up a budget and get your cash flow under control
Our online budgeting tool can help you work out your income and expenses, giving you a clearer picture of your financial situation.
Your super
You probably know that when you change jobs, you can take your super fund with you. Multiple super accounts can make it harder to keep track of your total super, and also means paying multiple sets of fees.
Remember to weigh up all your options before combining your super and check whether your other funds charges any withdrawal fees or if there’s an impact on any other entitlements (like insurance).
It’s now a lot easier to get your super together. Especially if you let us do it for you.
SuperMatch is an Australian Tax Office tool that lets us find and consolidate your lost, unclaimed and active (where a contribution has been received in the past two years) super accounts, including any accounts you don’t have details for. By giving us your consent, we can find all of your super entitlements, do the paperwork for you, and transfer everything to your UniSuper account.
If you’d like us to search for your lost super and move it together in to one account using SuperMatch, we need your consent. You’ll have to give us your Tax File Number (TFN) before giving us your consent. To provide your TFN and consent, simply log-in to MemberOnline, or call or email us.
Income protection insurance
Starting a new job is also a good time to consider protecting your income, or checking that any income protection insurance you have is still adequate.
If you were unable to work because you were sick or injured, income protection insurance could potentially cover your rent or mortgage, bills and medical expenses.
Get advice
A new job can be a logical time to touch base with a financial adviser to find out more about what you can do to make the most of your new salary package. UniSuper members have exclusive access to UniSuper Advice, our in-house team of financial advisers who can help you manage your super and broader finances.
Our advisers have a unique, in-depth knowledge of both the Fund and the sector your work in, and they operate on a fee-for-service basis. This means you’ll get a fixed-fee quote for your advice.