Accessing super between 60 and 65

When you turn 60 you reach your preservation age. That makes accessing your super much easier, but don’t celebrate just yet.

You also need to meet a condition of release. One of those conditions is retirement, and the definition may not be as straightforward as you think. Here’s what it takes to get full access to your super balance between 60 and 65.

What is the retirement condition of release?

The retirement condition of release has two branches. Meeting either one lets you access all of your super, as a lump sum, an income stream, or a combination of the two.

The first branch requires you to declare you have permanently retired from the workforce. Under Australia’s super legislation, that means you must have:

• Reached your preservation age (60)
• Ceased gainful employment, at any time in the past, and
• No intention of becoming gainfully employed again.

The second branch requires only that you ceased a gainful employment arrangement after turning 60. You may be changing jobs, you may have resigned from one job and kept another, or you may not intend to return to work at all. What matters is that the date you left a job is on or after your 60th birthday.

Gainful employment has a technical meaning here. It means receiving any sort of monetary reward for working at least 10 hours a week. If you have never worked, you can’t use the retirement condition of release.

Meeting the retirement condition of release under either branch gives you access to the super you have accumulated up to that point. Any super you accumulate with a new or second employer stays preserved until you meet a condition of release again, which could be meeting the retirement condition a second time or turning 65.