Is a financial adviser worth it? Your wealth, with a plan.

Two scenarios in the same economic world. The current course is what happens if you keep doing exactly what you do now. The illustrative coordinated plan is what happens under the specific strategy changes you choose to model. Both use the same inflation, the same wage growth, the same property assumptions, the same retirement age and the same spending, so nothing in the difference comes from giving one scenario better markets than the other.

No, and it never will. There is no adviser uplift anywhere in the model. Research on adviser value exists and is worth reading, but converting it into an automatic return bonus is how these calculators become sales tools. The only way the two scenarios get different investment returns here is if you deliberately change the risk setting yourself, and if you do that, the results page says so and names it as part of what is driving the difference.

Yes, and they are not optional. A one-off strategy fee, an implementation fee and an ongoing annual fee are all modelled, indexed with inflation, and deducted from wherever you say they are paid from. The fields pre-fill from the midpoints of the published ranges on our fee page and you can replace them with whatever you have been quoted. The results show cumulative fees in both nominal and today's dollars, and an illustrative breakeven year - or a clear statement that there is no breakeven.

Yes. The tool is built to be capable of returning a small, zero or negative difference after fees, and several of the regression fixtures it is tested against do exactly that. If the modelled strategy does not recover its costs, the page says so in the same visual weight as it would say the opposite.

A cash-allocation ledger. The same dollar cannot be invested, contributed to super, paid off the mortgage, spent on property holding costs, spent on premiums and spent on advice fees at once. The projection runs month by month, and when the allocations exceed what the household actually has, the tool shows the shortfall and how much would have to come out rather than quietly letting the scenario run.

As protection, not as wealth. No death benefit, TPD payment, trauma payment or income protection benefit is ever added to the projected net worth. Insurance gets its own stress test showing the illustrative gap between what the household would need and the cover it has. The premiums are the only thing that crosses over, and they cross the right way: they come out of cash or super and make the modelled outcome slightly worse, which is what happens in real life.

No. You enter the price you want to model and the tool reports what that purchase does: the deposit and costs required, the opening and future LVR, household debt to income after the purchase, year-one cash flow after tax, and the same cash flow at three percentage points higher. That is a planning stress test, not a borrowing-capacity assessment or any indication that a lender would approve anything.

No figures are. Every calculation runs in your browser: nothing you enter is written to local storage, put in the web address, or sent anywhere, and there is no email wall in front of the result. Closing the tab is the delete button. The page does record eight anonymous usage events - that the calculator was started, that a step was completed, that a result was viewed, that the print button was pressed, and so on. Those carry the event name and nothing else: no income, no balances, no debts, no property price and no projected result.

No. It provides general information and illustrative estimates only, does not consider your objectives, financial situation or needs, and does not recommend any financial product, property, loan or insurance policy. Richard Leal (AR 327265) and Link Wealth Pty Ltd (CAR 1312767) are authorised representatives of Millennium 3 Financial Services Pty Ltd (ABN 61 094 529 987), AFSL 244252, and personal advice is given in a meeting, not by a calculator.