When the weekend (aka retirement) arrives, you may choose to activate a smartMonday PENSION and start receiving a regular income for you to spend on…whatever floats your boat basically. It’s like getting paid without having to work for it any more. Awesome!

• While there is no legal maximum amount that you can hold in a smartMonday PENSION account, any amount above $1.6 million held by a member in all of their pension accounts, may be subject to additional tax.
• You decide the amount you receive as regular payments and how frequently you receive them – monthly, quarterly, half-yearly or annually – although the government does set a minimum level of annual income that must be drawn from a pension as listed in the Income payments section below.
• The money sitting in your account will continue to be invested on your behalf. There are multiple investment options including pre-mixed and sector options to make it super simple
• Investment earnings in your smartMonday PENSION account are generally tax free.
• You can withdraw some or all of your balance at any time – to get those one-off expenses out of the way.
• You can easily track your payment and full account details in your smartMonday Personal Home Page.

Anyone can open a smartMonday PENSION account if they:

• are permanently retired and have reached your preservation age, or
• leave employment at or after reaching 60 years of age, or
• are over age 65, or
• are permanently incapacitated or terminally ill and rolling in benefits from their super fund.

Regular income payments are made from your smartMonday PENSION account until your account balance is exhausted. Just choose the frequency and amount of the income you wish to receive (within the limits set by the Government – see Minimum payments below) and give us the details of the bank account in which you’d like us to deposit your payments.

Note, under government regulations, you cannot add to an account-based pension once it is established. If you need to transfer more super benefits into your pension you will either have to start a second pension account or, commute (i.e. convert) the remaining balance in your current pension account and then set up a new account-based pension.

Income payments from your smartMonday PENSION have a minimum annual limit based on your age and account balance at the start of your pension and, following that, at the start of each financial year.

You can work out the minimum annual drawdown you must take by multiplying the balance in your account when you open your pension account and then at the start of each financial year, by the percentage relevant to your age as shown in the table below. Note, the standard minimum drawdown has been reduced for financial years 2019/20 and 2020/21 as illustrated in the table.

And, just so you know, lump sum payments from your smartMonday PENSION account (for that cruise, deposit for the kid’s house, reservation on the first commercial flight around the moon, etc) do not count towards meeting the minimum annual payment.

You can withdraw as much as you like above the minimum level of payment – so, think it through, life expectancy has been trending up a lot lately. 

If you aren’t ready for retirement but would like to start working less, once you’ve reached your preservation age, a smartMonday PENSION Transition to Retirement (TRP) might be a good move.  A TRP can allow you to supplement your income with regular payments from your super savings while you  transition to full retirement. Check it out.